Newgrounds Explained

Newgrounds
Registration:Optional
Language:English
Website Type:Entertainment
Company Type:Private
Foundation:1995
Founder:Tom Fulp
Headquarters:323 W Glenside Ave
Location City:Glenside, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Newgrounds is a company and entertainment website founded by Tom Fulp in 1995. The site hosts user-generated content such as games, films, audio, and artwork.[1] Fulp produces in-house content at the headquarters and offices in Glenside, Pennsylvania.[2] [3]

In the 2000s, Newgrounds played an important role in Internet culture, and in Internet animation and independent video gaming in particular. It has been called a "distinct time in gaming history", a place "where many animators and developers cut their teeth and gained a following long before social media was even a thing", and "a haven for fostering the greats of internet animation".[4]

Content

User-generated content can be uploaded and categorized into either one of the site's four web portals: Games, Movies, Audio, and Art. A Movie or Games submission entered undergoes the process termed "judgment", where it can be rated by all users (from 0 to 5 stars) and reviewed by other users. The average score calculated at various points during judgment determines if whether the content will be "saved" (added onto the database) or "blammed" (deleted with only its reviews saved in the "Obituaries" section).[5] [6]

Since Adobe Flash Player was shut down on most browsers by late 2020, Newgrounds uses the Ruffle emulator, an Adobe Flash emulator written in Rust and sponsored by Newgrounds along with other popular sites like Cool Math Games and Armor Games.[7] In 2022, Ruffle supported most Flash content written in ActionScript "1.0" and 2.0, and only a select few Flashes written in 3.0,[8] which meant to play then unsupported content, users had to use the "Newgrounds Player", the site's previous downloadable Flash end-of-life solution which it used prior to Ruffle for playing content.

Art and Audio are processed using a different method called "scouting", which the site describes as "a way to vet users and weed out spam, stolen works, low quality submissions, etc." All users can put art and audio onto their own page, but only those that are "scouted" will appear in the public area. Like the judgment system, it stops stolen content, spam, or prohibited material reaching the public area, relying on users and site moderators. Once an individual is scouted, they are given the privilege to scout others, though users caught scouting other users who regularly break the site's terms of service and/or guidelines ("abusing the system") get unscouted themselves.[9]

Content and context are liable to be reported for review to the moderators and staff members by flagging it for violations to the site's guidelines. A weighted system recognizes experienced users and gives their flag more voice. Newgrounds' homepage includes featured submissions from each category, as well as awards and honors to users whose submission that fall under the site's requirements to earn them.[10] Members of Newgrounds also organize animations called "collabs" through the discussion forum on the site.[11] [12] Some scholars noted that while hundreds of these "collabs" are produced every year, only 20% are completed due to stress on those making the animations, while other scholars said that animators maintain a "strong sense" of authorship and ownership of what they produce, especially solo animators.[13]

Although the site hosted animations about Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban, with right-wing views seeming to reflect a "sizable part" of the site's user base in the early 2000's, some scholars argued that the site has had a "relatively balanced" conversation on politics throughout the sites growth.

History

In 1991, at the age of 13, Tom Fulp launched a Neo Geo fanzine called New Ground and sent issues to approximately 100 members of a club originating on the online service Prodigy.[14] Using a hosting service, he launched a website called New Ground Remix in 1995, which increased in popularity during the summer of 1996 after Fulp created the BBS games Club a Seal and Assassin while a student at Drexel University.[15] He then created Club a Seal II and Assassin II, along with a separate hosting site titled New Ground Atomix.[16] The 1999 release of Pico's School, a Flash browser game that "exhibited a complexity of design and polish in presentation that was virtually unseen in amateur Flash game development"[17] of the time helped establish Newgrounds as a "public force."[18]

1999 also saw the consolidation of both sites into one domain name (newgrounds.com), and the creation of "The Portal", a place on the site for Fulp to put his Flash projects that were smaller and more unfinished. Site visitors began to reach out through e-mail with their own Flash content, which was showcased on a webpage in The Portal.[19] By 2000, there were so many Portal submissions that submitting Flash content to the Portal would become an automated process with the help of Fulp's friend Ross.[20] Tom has stated that the automated Portal "ultimately defined [Newgrounds]'s purpose".[21]

While Macromedia Flash Player was required for Newgrounds in order to play games, the site also brought together members who were interested in producing Flash games and gained "considerable online influence" as a result.[22] It subsequently became one of the most "active Flash creator communities in the English-speaking Internet" and served as a place that video game developers could begin their careers. Flash was once described by Newgrounds as the "driving force" behind the site. Even so, those on the site had a "low tolerance for poor quality work", referring mainly to humor and storytelling instead of animation quality. Some animators on the site moved to YouTube by the mid-2000s.[23]

By November 2008, Newgrounds had over 1.5 million users and over 130,000 animations.[24] This had increased by August 2010, when it was reported that the site had over 2.2 million users and over 180,000 games and animated films, most of which were animations made by only one person, with others collaboratively made by various individuals. It was also said in 2013 that users had created "hundreds of thousands of animated movies and online games".[25]

Time ranked the website at No. 39 on its list of "50 Best Websites" in 2010.[26]

In 2018, Newgrounds began to encourage contributors to submit their games in an HTML5 format rather than Flash. In November and December, it experienced surges of new members originally from Tumblr when that site began restricting adult content after illegal child pornography was found on it, resulting in the Tumblr iOS app being removed from the App Store.[27] [28]

In the summer of 2019, with the discontinuation of Flash upcoming, the administration of Newgrounds unveiled the Newgrounds Player for Windows, which was described as a "solution for playing Flash games and movies" hosted on the site. The application would launch via the website upon a request to view Flash content and play it.[29] The player would later be followed up with the Ruffle Flash emulator in August 2019, with the two options being offered in tandem as development on Ruffle progressed.[30]

In April 2021, an update for the browser game Friday Night Funkin' was exclusively released on Newgrounds at the time, causing the site's server to become overloaded after an influx of site traffic.[31]

In July 2021, Fulp received the Game Developers Choice Awards Pioneer Award for his contributions to establishing Newgrounds and subsequent work in The Behemoth.[32]

In September 2023, an update to the site's Art Portal was rolled out, implementing it in the existing Project system for animation, games and audio, as well as adding the ability to use multi-author credits on Art submissions and adding multi-art support in either Inline, Strip or Gallery formats.[33]

In March 2024, the site's reporting system was updated to enable users to report content predominantly generated by artificial intelligence (AI).[34]

See also

References

Sources

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Newgrounds: Everything by Everyone. Buckelew. Sean. December 27, 2014. Sean Buckelew. April 21, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20210110184908/https://medium.com/@SeanBuckelew/newgrounds-64831b97a5a8. January 10, 2021. live.
  2. Web site: Cheltenham Township Business Directory. January 2007. November 20, 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304134317/http://cheltenham.municipalcms.com/businessView.aspx?l=n. March 4, 2016 . live.
  3. Web site: Rector . Seth . Smiling Friends: 10 Things You May Have Forgotten About Season One . ScreenRant . 20 June 2022 . 1 March 2022.
  4. Web site: Watts . Rachel . Friday Night Funkin' is the DDR beatboxing game driving players back to Newgrounds . PC Gamer . 15 July 2021.
  5. Book: Paolillo . John C. . Warren . Jonathan . Kunz . Breanne . Genre Emergence in Amateur Flash . Genres on the Web . Text, Speech and Language Technology . 2010 . 42 . 277–302 . 10.1007/978-90-481-9178-9_13. 978-90-481-9177-2 .
  6. Warren . Jonathan . Stoerger . Sharon . Kelley . Ken . Longitudinal gender and age bias in a prominent amateur new media community . New Media & Society . February 2012 . 14 . 1 . 7–27 . 10.1177/1461444811410390. 28962153 .
  7. Web site: Diamond Sponsors . ruffle.rs . March 27, 2022.
  8. Web site: Fulp . Tom . August 28, 2022 . Ruffle AS3 Update . September 15, 2022 . Newgrounds.
  9. Web site: Newgrounds Wiki - Frequently Asked Questions . September 15, 2022 . Newgrounds.
  10. Web site: The History Of Newgrounds. Retro Junk. April 21, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20210116084836/http://www.retrojunk.com/community/post/index/45064. January 16, 2021. live.
  11. Predicting successful completion of online collaborative animation projects . Luther . Kurt . Zielger . Kevin . Caine . Kelly E. . Bruckman . Amy . October 2009 . C&C '09: Creativity and Cognition 2009 . https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/1640233 . Nick Bryan-Kinns . Mark D. Gross, Hilary Johnson, Jack Ox, Ron Wakkary . C&C '09: Proceedings of the seventh ACM conference on Creativity and cognition . Association for Computing Machinery . https://web.archive.org/web/20200628155536/https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1640233.1640316 . June 28, 2020 . New York . 391 . 978-1-60558-865-0 . 10.1145/1640233.1640316. April 30, 2021 .
  12. Book: Bruckman . Amy . Luther . Kurt . Fiesler . Casey . 2015 . When Should We Use Real Names in Published Accounts of Internet Research? . https://books.google.com/books?id=d1c1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA243 . Hargittai . Eszter . Sandvig . Christian . Digital Research Confidential: The Secrets of Studying Behavior Online . live . Cambridge, Massachusetts . 9780262029889 . . 243, 250 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210430162901/https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=d1c1CwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA243 . April 30, 2021 . April 30, 2021 .
  13. Redistributing leadership in online creative collaboration . Luther . Kurt . Zielger . Kevin . Bruckman . Amy . February 2013 . CSCW '13: Computer Supported Cooperative Work . https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/1640233 . Amy Bruckman and Scott Counts . Cliff Lampe and Loren Terveen (Less) . CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work . Association for Computing Machinery . https://web.archive.org/web/20200628155536/https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1640233.1640316 . June 28, 2020 . New York . 1007, 1010–1011, 1013–1018, 1020–1021 . 978-1-4503-1331-5 . 10.1145/2441776.2441891. April 30, 2021.
  14. Web site: 1991: The Zine. Newgrounds. April 20, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20210331062514/https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/about-newgrounds/history. March 31, 2021. live.
  15. Web site:
    1. 105 At World's End
    . Gimlet Media. September 25, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170929015606/https://gimletmedia.com/episode/episode105-how-we-first-met/. September 29, 2017. dead.
  16. Web site: 1997: The Tale of Two Newgrounds. Newgrounds. April 20, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20210429232222/https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/about-newgrounds/history. April 29, 2021 . live.
  17. Book: Williams . Andrew . History of digital games: developments in art, design and interaction . 2017 . CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, an A K Peters Book . Boca Raton, FL . 9781138885554 . 219.
  18. Book: Salter . Anastasia . Murray . John . Flash: building the interactive web . 2014 . The MIT Press . Cambridge, Massachusetts . 9780262028028 . 76.
  19. Web site: 1999: Hot New Games . Newgrounds . December 8, 2023.
  20. Web site: 2000: Full-Time Job . Newgrounds . December 8, 2023.
  21. Web site: Newgrounds Wiki - Staff. Newgrounds . December 9, 2023.
  22. Fiadotau . Mikhail . August 2020 . View of Growing old on Newgrounds: The hopes and quandaries of Flash game preservation . . 5 . 8 . April 30, 2021 . 10.5210/fm.v25i8.10306. 225498838 . free.
  23. Darlington . Joseph . May 22, 2018 . Techno-Wizardry and movie magic: the trace of labour (or lack thereof) in 3D digital animation . Information, Communication & Society . 21 . 9 . 1258 . 10.1080/1369118X.2018.1476571 . 149557860.
  24. Opening The Black Box: Four Views of Transparency in Remix Culture . Yardi . Sarita . Luther . Kurt . Diakopoulos . Nick . Bruckman . Amy . November 2008 . CSCW Workshop on Tinkering, Tailoring, & Mashing: The Social and Collaborative Practices of the Read-Write Web . Association for Computing Machinery . https://web.archive.org/web/20181221095604/http://yardi.people.si.umich.edu/pubs/Yardi_BlackBox08.pdf . December 21, 2018 . San Diego . 3 . April 30, 2021 . en.
  25. Let's Get Together: The Formation and Success of Online Creative Collaborations . Settles . Burr . Dow . Steven . April 2013 . Wendy E. Mackay . Stephen Brewster, Susanne Bødker . CHI '13: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems . https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/2470654 . CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems . Association for Computing Machinery . New York . 2009 . 10.1145/2470654.2466266. April 30, 2021.
  26. 50 Best Websites 2010 . August 25, 2010 . Time . 0040-781X . August 18, 2019.
  27. Web site: Aparajita_1989. Tumblr shutting down? No. But there's exodus and Newgrounds is gaining from it. Piunika Web. December 5, 2018. November 22, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20210118101049/https://piunikaweb.com/2018/11/22/tumblr-shutting-down-no-but-theres-exodus-and-newgrounds-is-gaining-from-it/. January 18, 2021. live.
  28. Web site: Asarch. Steven. Why Is Tumblr Banning Adult Content? Censorship Causes Alternative Platforms to Rise. Newsweek. December 5, 2018. December 4, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20210325124636/https://www.newsweek.com/tumblr-censorship-ban-alternatives-pillowfort-1244094. March 25, 2021. live.
  29. Web site: Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone . 5 December 2023.
  30. Web site: Flash Emulation & Brave BAT . Newgrounds . December 5, 2023.
  31. News: Cohen . Skylar . Friday Night Funkin' Week 7 Reveal Crashes Newgrounds . April 19, 2021 . Game Rant . April 19, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210425043759/https://gamerant.com/friday-night-funkin-week-7-crashes-newgrounds/. April 25, 2021. live.
  32. Web site: GDC To Honor Newgrounds Founder Tom Fulp And Industry Veteran Laralyn McWilliams At 21st Annual Awards . Cameron . Koch . July 1, 2021 . July 1, 2021 . GameSpot.
  33. Web site: Art Portal: Multi-Art and Multi-Author! . Newgrounds. December 7, 2023.
  34. Web site: Tom . Fulp . This Week's Site Updates . Newgrounds . March 2, 2024 . April 22, 2024.

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