Newgrounds

Newgrounds

This file may be deleted after Wednesday, 21 November 2007. This file may be deleted after Wednesday, 21 November 2007.
Company type	Private
Industry	Internet services
Founded	July 6, 1995
Headquarters	Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA
Key people	Tom Fulp: Founder & CEO Ross Snyder & James Holloway: Back-End Programmers Tim Miller: Sysadmin Will Stamper & Jeff Bandelin: Web and Media Designers Bob Rudderow: CSS Designer Wade Fulp: Administrator & Public Relations
Website	www.newgrounds.com

Newgrounds is a website headquartered in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA and created in 1995 that primarily hosts Adobe Flash animated films and games. The site was created and is owned by Tom Fulp (born April 30, 1978), who still oversees every aspect and regularly produces in-house content. Newgrounds is distinguished from other Flash websites by its sophisticated and impartial automated submission/rating system.

Newgrounds allows its users to submit their own flash movies, games, and music, and view submissions from other users. Over the years Newgrounds has grown significantly, by relying on the cooperation of its visitors. Newgrounds ranks in the top 500 sites on the Internet according to the website Alexa. Visitors are encouraged to review and vote on submissions. The rating system produces lists that direct visitors to the most popular flash movies and allows the site designers or users to easily locate any submission based on a number of factors, including score or Portal Awards. The site has over 1.3 million registered members and over 410,000 flash submissions submitted as of November 2007. Of those, around 115,000 have survived the auto-delete system known as "blamming."

On 16th July 2007, Newgrounds underwent a total redesign. The redesign process to about one and a half days. Most members of Newgrounds went into chat rooms, while some others flooded other image boards.

Voting system

The automated portal system has a simple voting system in which a user can vote from a scale of 0 to 5 on a submission. The system deletes low-scoring submissions and sends their reviews and stats to the "obituaries", which is a list of blammed entries since March 14, 2001. An entry is blammed when its score is below a certain threshold based on how many votes have been cast (with the required average score increasing with more votes). A submission is blammed if it is lower than 1.00 (after 100 votes), 1.25 (after 150 votes) or below 1.60 (after 200 votes). If it has a score of 1.60 or higher after 200 votes, it is "saved" or "protected" and thus permanently kept on the website (unless it is removed by an administrator, or if the author chooses to delete it). Authors have recently been given the power to manually delete their submissions (rather than wait for an administrator to do so) if their flash meets the following criteria:

• Has less than 400 votes.
• Hasn't won any portal awards
• Hasn't been featured in any collections or the front page.

These criteria can be bypassed by an administrator if the movie is found to be stolen, or the submission violates copyright laws in any way.

Experience and levels

Any unregistered user can vote on new submissions, but the power of one's vote can be increased by registering at Newgrounds. Once registering, one's vote is automatically increased. After that, as a member there are two ways of increasing the worth of one's vote (known as "Voting Power"). The primary method is to gain "experience points" (also known as "Grounds Gold"). Members may gain 10 experience points per day by voting on 5 different flash movies or games in the Flash Portal, these points are deposited as soon as the user votes on the fifth flash, unlike the old system where they had to click a link. Another way of increasing one's Voting Power is done through the acquiring of Blam and Protection points (see below). There are 60 levels, all of which are static in their experience requirements. This is different from the previous system with 30 levels, where a sliding scale based of the highest level user affected the experience requirements. To illustrate a user's level, an icon of a weapon is shown on each member's userpage and below their names on each of their forum posts . Levels influence one's voting power in the Portal and indicate amount of experience. Thus higher levels do often command respect. Certain amounts of experience also unlock secret information etc. and options, although this has often been overlooked.

Blam/protect system

The other method of gaining voting power is by accumulating "blams" and "saves" (also called "protects"). This system is often referred to as the "blam/protect" system. Existing primarily to encourage voters to vote on movies under judgment (thereby streamlining the process), users are given points based on whether or not their votes on flash under judgment reflect the flash's ultimate fate. Thus, if a user votes a two or higher on a flash that survives, the user is awarded a "save" or "protect point" and if a user votes a zero or 1 on a flash that is removed, the user is awarded a "blam point." Votes which are contrary to the flash's outcome award no points. In order to prevent groupthink and attempts to game the system, a submission's score and reviews are not shown while it is under judgement. The author can still respond to reviews while the submission is under judgement, which the person who wrote the review can then read, and until recently, the author could also see the movie's current score while under judgement.

While blams and saves are tallied independently, only their total is relevant to one's "rank," a title given to a user on their profile which also determines by what percentage their voting power is increased. For example, a "civilian" (a user with less than 100 combined blams and saves) receives no bonus to his or her voting power, however, an "Elite Guard Supreme Commander" (a user with more than 30,000 combined blams and saves) receives a 60% bonus. Each rank is also accompanied by another icon, a badge/insignia, however, unlike the level icon, this icon is only visible on a user's profile.

Portal awards

When a movie or game is submitted to the Flash Portal, it has the chance to win any of the following awards. Awards are presented on midnight (11:59) PST on Tuesday.

• Daily Feature: The award given to the submission that scored the highest for the day (submitted before 9pm GMT).
• Daily 2nd/3rd/4th/5th Place: Lesser awards given to high-scoring submissions each day.
• Weekly Users' Choice: The award given to the submission that scored the highest for the week.
• Weekly 2nd/3rd/4th/5th Place: Lesser awards given to high-scoring submissions each week.
• Review Crew Pick: This award is given to the submission with the best "overall" score in reviews.
• Underdog of the Week: (Often referred to as UDotW) This award is given to the submission with the biggest discrepancy between the review score and the popular vote.
• Turd of the Week: (Frequently referred to as TotW) This award is given to the submission with the lowest score that manages to pass judgment that week. If the file has been swapped once it has passed, it can no longer win this award.
  • TotW is seen as a bad award because of the poor quality and lack of user approval, UDotW, however, shows an artist who isn't good with making flash but has the right ideas to attract an audience.

Other awards:

• King of The Portal: (Frequently referred to as KOTP) This award is given to the user with the most portal awards during the previous month. Only the Daily Feature, 2nd, and 3rd Place awards count towards becoming KOTP, with each award being worth 3, 2, and 1 point respectively. Whichever user that accumulates the most points during the month will be awarded KOTP. The title King of the Portal is also often referred to as being held by Strawberry Clock. However, this should not be confused with the monthly award.
• Best of the Month: Since February 2005, the 2000 active highest-ranked (based on experience points) Newgrounds users, as well as moderators and nominees, have been able to vote for the best five submissions of the month (later updated to five movies and five games). Any submission that wins at least one of the first five awards above or is selected to appear on the front page within the month is eligible. Each of the ten winners is sent a cheque of $250, a certificate, a t-shirt of choice and stickers and often another prize that changes from month to month and is often supplied by sponsors. In the case that a prize is won by a Newgrounds-exclusive submission made by NG staff, the prize is passed onto the next winner.

Front page icons

On April 19, 2001 the first front page icon for a user-submitted Flash game was posted under the heading "Tom and Wade Recommend:". The game that was posted was Taipan 3000 by Psycho_Goldfish, a remake of a popular Apple II game called Taipan!.

Over the years, as Newgrounds received more and more quality submissions the "Tom and Wade recommend" section grew from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, and 4 to 6 icons. There are currently 22 icons on the front page. The rate at which these icons was updated also increased, from weeks to days, eventually leading to the removal of the "Tom and Wade recommend" heading and becoming a staple of the front page, making it easy for new users to the site to find quality content.

Originally the icons were created by Newgrounds admins, as were the short text descriptions (The same process used for the collections pages), but this proved to be extremely time consuming and soon users were given the ability to attach their own icons with their submissions, and write their own brief descriptions.

In January 2005 the front page archive was launched, keeping a month-by-month list of Flash content that was deemed to be worthy of display on the Newgrounds front page.

On July 26, 2005, the Icon Helpers system was launched for Newgrounds volunteers to make and submit icons for older Flash content that was lacking an icon, making the integration to automated collections pages much more effective.

Newgrounds BBS (Bulletin Board System)

The NG BBS consists of multiple forums. Some are all-access, where all users are welcome to read, post and reply. Some are reply-only, where one cannot start a new topic, but only read and reply to existing ones. Other forums are private, for use by moderators.

Categories

• General
• Where is/How To?
• Flash
• Politics
• Programming
• Clubs & Crews
• Audio
• Art
• NG News
• Network News
• P-bot's Postings

Audio Portal

The Newgrounds Audio Portal is a place where amateur artists can submit all types of music. When you submit your first song an administrator or audio moderator will have to review it before it gets listed, this can take two days or longer. All the music is free to use (under a Creative Commons license).

Since the redesign, the Audio Portal has become more flexible and allows artists to edit their submissions or remove them providing it hasn't been used in a flash yet, also they are able to add an icon like with flash submissions. Unlike the Flash Portal, Audio can not be "blammed", this might be due to the lack of popularity of the Audio Portal or other reasons.

Newgrounds Flash Collection(s)

Submitting a Flash video or game to Newgrounds gives the viewers a chance to choose to recommend the Flash to a collection or not. The collections help viewers of Newgrounds navigate the website easier to help find what they are looking for. For example; the Clock Crew collection contains Flash videos pertaining to the Clock Crew, a specific flash group on Newgrounds as well as on their own personal website[1]. Series collections are also alloted to popular serial Flash, such as Salad Fingers. A certain amount of votes for a collection as well as approval from an administrator/moderator is required for the flash to go into the collection.

In the media

• Numa Numa Dance: Gary Brolsma first published his "Numa Numa Dance" on Newgrounds on December 6, 2004, where it has since been seen more than 14 million times, and copied onto hundreds of other websites and blogs, making it the second-most watched viral video of all time (only losing out to Star Wars kid). He has also received mainstream media coverage from Good Morning America, The Tonight Show and Best Week Ever, and, according to The New York Times, was an "unwilling and embarrassed Web celebrity." In September 8, 2006, he reappeared with a professionally produced video titled "New Numa". The release of the video has prompted the New Numa Contest which offers up to $45,000 in prizes.
• Teletubbies: In 1998, Tom Fulp of Newgrounds created a spoof of "Teletubbies" called "Telebubby Fun Land" which resulted in a law suit from the BBC. This resulted in a boost of notoriety and media exposure.
• Attack of the Show! From July 5-8th 2005, Tom Fulp was a co-host on Attack of the Show! in which he would showcase and describe popular Newgrounds flash submissions.
• Kaboom!: In mid-2002, Newgrounds received notoriety for hosting Kaboom!, a game in which the player controls an apparent Palestinian suicide bomber who kills innocent men, women and children in Israel. Despite receiving criticism and calls for its removal from the internet by congresswoman Nita Lowey, several groups including the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, and other sources, Newgrounds continued to host the game.
• Oklahoma City Escapades: Newgrounds received more negative attention in 2004 by refusing to remove Oklahoma City Escapades from its site, which is a game that was developed by Joshua Bend, that spoofs the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
• Jeff Weise: Jeff Weise, infamous for the Red Lake High School massacre, posted a violent animation on Newgrounds.com. Its existence was discovered and widely reported after the massacre.
• The Virginia Tech Massacre media blowout: V-Tech rampage, Virginia Tech Shootout!, and others achieved questionable fame from allegations of making fun of the Virginia Tech massacre.

See also

• Alien Hominid
• Castle Crashers
• The Behemoth
• Jeff Weise
• Salad Fingers
• Numa Numa Dance
• All your base are belong to us
• Adam Fulton

External links

• A collection of historic newgrounds flashes
• Newgrounds.com
• Dissertation Focusing on Newgrounds
• Newgrounds BBS
• The Newgrounds Wiki