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Newgrounds is a website based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania created in 1995 that primarily hosts Macromedia Flash animations and games. The site was created and is owned by Tom Fulp, who still maintains every aspect and regularly produces in-house content.
Tom is currently joined by a staff consisting of:
- liljim - Administrator and back-end programmer, currently residing in England.
- Tim - Tom's former roommate and NG's systems engineer.
- Stamper - Web and media designer.
- Bob - CSS designer and programmer.
- Jeff - Artist and illustrator.
- Jose - Artist and animator.
- Mike - Game programmer.
This site 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, and must rely on the cooperation of its visitors. Visitors are encouraged to review the submissions. A rating system produces lists that direct visitors to the most popular flash movies and allows the site designers to easily locate any material that might be considered for deletion or promotion. The site now has over 1 million registered members and over 300,000 flash submissions. Out of those about 75,000 still exist due to the auto delete system known as "blamming". Newgrounds is partners with many other flash and media websites.
Voting system
The automated portal system has a simple voting system. One can vote from a scale of 0 to 5 on a submission. The system sends low-scoring submissions to the "obituaries", which is a collection of all blammed entries.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). After a certain number of votes have been cast, if the submission hasn't hit the "blam" threshold, it is permanently kept on the website (unless if removed by an administrator, or if the authour chooses to delete it). That deleting system was recently added to Newgrounds, and if a submission meets a certain 'criteria' (the submission has less than 400 votes, the submission hasn't been been featured in any collections or on the front page, and the submission hasn't won any awards), it may be deleted. Submissions with more than 400 votes (or meet the other criteria) can still be deleted, but not by the authour of the submission.
Experience and levels
There are two ways of increasing the worth of one's vote (known as "Voting Power"). The primary method is to gain "levels" by accumulating "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 they may also get points by Blamming and Protecting (see below). There are 30 levels within Newgrounds with progressively increasing requirements in terms of experience. The level requirements and range of levels 1 through 8 remain the same: 50 experience points to reach the next level. The requirement for level 30 is equivalent to the experience points of the user (or users, in the event of a tie) with the highest amount of experience. Levels 9 through 30 expand to even out the experience point differential between 9 and 30. Because they are variable, their requirements and range cannot be accurately given. To illustrate a user's level, an icon of a weapon is shown on each member's profile and below their names on each of their BBS posts (see here for both the icons and experience requirements for each level). Levels influence one's voting power in the Portal and to indicate amount of experience. Thus higher levels do often command respect. Certain levels also unlock secret flash and options. These secrets are not allowed to be discussed at all, as stated by the BBS rules.
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 judgement (thereby streamlining the process), users are given points based on whether or not their votes on flash under judgement 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. 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. See here for a more detailed explanation and a link to a list of ranks, icons, and statistics. In order to prevent group think and attempts to game the system, a submission's score and reviews are not shown while it is under judgement. Also, users who uniformly vote zero or five on flash under judgement are often detected and punished by having their accounts erased. Most users make a big deal out of this system, which often irratates other users. Take for example, the NGPD, a group of users who are in the police officer range through police captin range, they usaully post in a thread called NGPD in the clubs/crew part of the forum, complaining about movies they hate underjudgement. To be in the NGPD, you have to go to the thread and ask to be in it. On the portal's page, movies that are about to be blammed are highlighted in red, but due to the efficiancy of the system, the red highlight is rarely seen.
Reviews
Reviews are submitted by members of Newgrounds and have a 0-10 rating system in 7 categories: Graphics, Style, Sound, Violence, Interactivity, Humor and Overall. Besides ratings, reviewers also supply either praise, helpful information, criticism, or an abusive rant that often makes the reviewer look foolish. Certain rules have been set up to stop the spread of abusive reviews, but are usually not taken into consideration by the reviewers. Any user can only review a flash game or movie 1 time, and the review system does not have an edit option, so if s/he makes a typo, they are unable to go back and fix it. Many people do not consider the scores for the category, giving a 10 for all categories if they like it, 5 if they think it's average, and 0 if they think that it's bad. This often results in reviews and feedback that are worthless to the flash maker.
Portal awards
When a movie or game is submitted to the Flash Portal, it has the chance to win any of the following awards:
- Daily Feature: The award given to the submission that scored the highest for the day.
- 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 UOTW) 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 judgement that week.
- It is also possible to achieve the four highest awards for a single submission
Notes: One must have at least 30 reviews that week to win an award that involves calculating the review score as well, such as the Underdog or Review Crew Pick awards. Weekly awards are awarded on Wednesdays.
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 18 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 of 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.
Site mascots
Besides Pico, the unofficial mascot of NG, there are P-Bot and A-Bot, each respectively the mascot of their own portal (P-Bot being the Flash Portal Mascot and A-Bot being the Audio Portal Mascot) and both appearing on their own pages.
The bots were originally designed by Andrew Dickman years ago. He was commissioned to design them for the site at the time (the original design can be viewed here). Since then, the two mascots have been redesigned by MindChamber, a popular NG artist and current staff member.
According to the P-Bot's NG profile, they have been with the site for 6 years now.
If one permits it to do so, the P-Bot alerts one each week of his/her Flash submissions' ranking and if one of his/her Flash submissions is blammed. An email received from P-Bot always ends with "Note: Do NOT reply to this message. If you do, it will get sent back to you.", however this is rarely the case.
Recently, the P-Bot character has received a boost in popularity, mostly in the form of silly forum posts, but also in an obscure short called The PBot Collab and in a very popular, award winning movie SD 06: Death of P-Bot
There is also a G-Bot ('Grounds Bot), pictured right in gold. Email notifications for lost passwords, Newgrounds account creation, etc. are sent from G-Bot. G-Bot is also seen on the NG BBS for the BBS rules and the sticky section for the Flash and Audio section.
Other unofficial mascots include strawberry clock, which is a strawberry with a clock imbedded in it; Alien Hominid, a small yellow human-like alien; clay, a claymated person that is blue; and finally banana man, which is a banana with stick hands and feet which on occasion carries maracas.
Collaborations
Another popular activity on Newgrounds is the collab—various animators, artists and programmers collaborating on a single movie or game. It began with group works by the Clock Crew and flourished when the Newgrounds Time Trials sparked a more general interest among authors. Collaborations are a great way for artists to work together and get to know each other. They are also a great way for up-and-coming artists to get in the spotlight with the bigshots. Currently there are a lot of collaborations based on songs, with each participating author animating one or more line each, because of the huge amount of collabs being started at the same time and spamming the Newgrounds Flash forum some members took it upon themselves to create the website NGCollabs where people with a batting average (average score of their 3 best Flash submissions) of higher than 3.00 could start collaborations.
Daily collections
Daily collections existed between 2004 and 2005. The collections were headed by the user "Coolboyman(StrawberryClock)". They were written, created, and submitted to Newgrounds within the course of one day. Due to the short timeframe, the majority of the included animations are of poor quality, featuring little (if any) animation and for the most part, speech to voice synthesis used for voices. Each collection features from four to five animations, typically with each cartoon produced by a single animator.
These collections are generally themed. Most of them are based on TV shows, mainly sitcoms, anime productions, and kids' shows. Certain collections are based after people, while others have been based on movies, cartoon characters, and video games.
The collections have been taken up by the user, "Mr. Show" in early 2006; 8 months since a daily collection has been submitted. However, these collaborations are higher in quality. After a short test run two new collections lampooning The Daily Show and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, "Mr. Show" announced that it would be best for the collections to resume in the summer and that he would be glad to continue them.
The BBS
Newgrounds has its own message boards known to its members as the BBS (Bulletin Board System). Members can chat about various subjects such as Flash, Politics, Programing and Audio. There are also boards for people who are stuck with the way Newgrounds works & people who want to join/start a crew on the BBS. There is also a "General" board which is the most popular of them all. The BBS is moderated by a selected few of its high ranking members known as "Mods". These "Mods" have the power to ban people or lock topics that are unsutiable for the BBS. The most registered users ever on the BBS at one point in time was 385, which was on Sunday 30th October, 2005, at 1:00 AM.
Criticism
Pop-up advertising
Newgrounds is a free service, transferring approximately 7 TB daily, as of June 2006 . This is funded by advertising revenue, including both banner adverts and pop-up advertising.
Those who dislike pop-up advertising could have them blocked using the browser or add-on software. However, to use the site, users would have to configure an exception for Newgrounds because the flash files themselves will appear in a new popup window.
Linking to an item on Newgrounds can only be made to a launch page, where the user has to click on a Watch this movie/game link. Clicking this button spawns a pop-up window embedding the flash. Users cannot link directly to a page with the flash file without the interstitial launch page; this is to prevent leeching and hotlinking.
According to the administators, most or all popups on Newgrounds are blocked when logged into a Grounds Gold Account.
Controversial content
Newgrounds is a fairly controversial website because of the heavy violent and sexual content on the site. They have faced many lawsuits from many companies such as the BBC, the MPAA, MGM and many others.
Important dates
Every year groups on Newgrounds like the Clock Crew and Lock Legion celebrate their birthday or special day.
- Clock Day (August 15): On August 15 2001, Strawberryclock, the leader of the Clocks submitted "B" to the Newgrounds Portal. Now, the Clock Crew celebrates this day every year.
- Lock Day (May 26): On May 26 2003, Strawberrylock, the leader of the Locklegion at the time, submitted "N" to the Newgrounds Portal. Despite being blammed, it marked its place in history as Newgrounds' 100,000th submission. Now, the Lock Legion celebrates this day every year.
- Glock Day (November 25): Glock Revival Day
- Star Syndicate Daily Day (October 7 (2005)): The day on which the Star Syndicate submitted their 100th Daily Toon. This day has been celebrated with loads of Star Syndicate movies. The Star Syndicate won 4 of the 5 daily awards that day.
- Pico Day (April 30): Started in 2006. It's also Tom Fulp's birthday