Sandy's Soapbox
Even in those early days, the name "RPG.com" was taken (by a repro graphics company). We had to get permission to have a '.net' name, by proving we offered internet services. Enforcement was strict then.
RPGnet's first webmaster was Emma Antunes. She wanted to do a site as an example of her skills, in order to get game industry clients and earn big money. Since we were both gamers, RPG.net was born. Yes, originally, it was a live demo.
She soon learned that it was a stupid business model to go after clients with no money, which describes most of the game industry. So RPG.net became a hobby for her. Her slightly obsessed spouse (me) ended up taking the daily workload.
In that early web era, most people had small sites focusing on a narrow aspect. Etrigan had his gamer finder (I only later found out his name was Shawn Althouse). Brian David Philips had his LARP links. I'd researched a "writer's guide" to game companies that was published, once, in the short lived print journal 'Gamer Connection'.
Our 'radical' idea was to unite these under one site, like a bad superhero team-up. Back then, the name 'portal' still hadn't been coined. And there was genuine reluctance by most people putting stuff on the web to 'lose control' by *gasp* sharing a domain with others. Silly people.
Everyone wanted to be their own little island. We thought it'd be cooler to put several islands together into an archipelago so visitors would have one place to go.
Oh boy, we were right. But not everyone believed it at the time.
We asked a lot of people who ran sites, and got a lot of "no"s. But Shawn and Brian thought it was a neat idea. Between them and us, we had enough to make our play. To this day, I don't believe in doing any significant venture without at least two partners on board. The value that others bring is immeasurable.
A lot of what RPGnet did over that and subsequent years was zeitgeist stuff. What we did was totally new-- but it was also what others were spontaneously inventing at the same time. It was just 'right', stuff that made sense. A lot of the pieces we used were from Matt's Script Archive, rewritten and kitbashed by us for our own purposes. Invention, reinvention, and recombination was the way of the web.
New went beyond just gathering separate aspects into a portal. We (us and all the folks doing edgy web stuff that year) invented blogs-- we added forums to columns to allow readers to do a dialog with writers. That was pretty novel back then, and had the elegant name of 'forums attached to a column'. Now it's called a blog. So it goes.
Having multiple companies under one site, making a searchable review archive, having multiple columnists under one banner-- this isn't rocket science, but it was new at the time.
We set up regular updates every Tuesday, a quirky bit that worked out really well. Our traffic had a neat little curved pattern, peaking on update-day and with smooth rises and falls. It was beautiful statistics. Heck, I used to give talks on how to get, measure, and assess web traffic. I gave talks at GTS, to NASA... it was a new field then. Everything was an experiment.
For example, we introduced forums to allow general conversing. They died a dismal, unused death. We retired the idea, tried it again a year or so later, and by then web visitors were into the concept and they thrived... and visitors said "oh, you finally have forums". Irony!
Web evolution was rapid stuff. Some ideas rose and fell due to business cycles. Our early business of selling "rpg.net/YOUR_COMPANY_NAME" went well when the web was a mystery. But once the web as a whole became prominent, that evaporated because having "YOUR_COMPANY_NAME.com" was the norm.
Other ideas died because they sucked. I don't remember all of those, but I'm sure we did a few. Allowing users to select their own color scheme for the site, for example-- it was fun, quirky, and probably broke all the new, modern rules for branding. But I still wish the site had kept it.
From the start we wanted to bridge the gap between 'gamer' and 'industry' by providing 'insider information' and allowing cross-talk. It was already a friendly industry, so that wasn't radical. But in that web era, most sites were trying to _publish_, while we were working to engage in dialog.
It is this final aspect-- removing barriers-- that still is somewhat revolutionary on the web. The majority of websites today are either push sites (publishing info for readers) or crosstalk sites (allowing readers to talk to each other).
That third axis, of crossing the creator/reader barrier, is rare. And I feel that's what makes RPGnet still relevant today.
And I'm very glad we changed logos after first year:
. The wayback
machine even has rpg.net in its original clothes, at
http://web.archive.org/web/19961219054102/http://rpg.net/.
We've already doubled our five year promise. We've always loved the archival value of the web just as much as its newness. After 10 years of RPGnet, 10 years of writing a column every month, I'm genuinely looking forward to writing for another 10.
So until next month,
Sandy
sandy@rpg.net
