I have fond memories of Planet Quake and also Blues News (for the latest
scoop). I remember it spawned a whole bunch of other planet sites. I think some
of them became part of GameSpy (or its parent company). I
probably moved on by then.
Video Game Websites in the early 00s
51–60 of 95 posts
Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#52I miss the official Nintendo forums every day. I was a dumb kid back then but I really got my online sea legs on those message boards, and other ones related to Pokémon fan sites.
Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#53It's not quite as stylish as these, but my personal favorite video game site was the Super Smash Bros. Brawl blog site, which had its heyday around 2007 or so.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071001132450/http://www.smashb...
It was the first time I had ever seen pre-release information about a game, and I checked the site religiously. The game director himself wrote all the posts, and it felt like a revolutionary way to get me excited about the game.
Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#54Looking at many of these now they definitely appear dated. At the time, of course, these would have been “cutting edge”
I think one clear thing we can see is a trend toward more homogenized UI on web in the last 20years.
I worked as a web dev in ad agencies in the early 2000s and built a lot of Flash sites, banners ads, and games that - like a lot of the sites showcased here - were quite unique in their design and aesthetic.
Slowly over time these started to disappear as people embraced web design trends and techniques that meant everything started to look the same.
I think a large part of this at the time was due to Flash being killed off, trends like “flat design”, frameworks, jQuery, and Wordpress becoming popular.
Marketers and designers became more savvy to what “works” online and everyone copied each other in a race for attention.
Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#55Video game sites back then were cool, yes. Now do video game fan sites. These have in so many ways been replaced over the years by generic ad-ridden wikis but back in the day games often had crazy interesting fan sites for specific video games. So many unique designs and layouts were done for those niche communities and so many of those designers and developers went on to do really cool things in the future. What an…
The Metroid database has always been my favourite!
https://metroiddatabase.com/old_site/m1/
It's still running now with a new design, but they went through several different styles over the years, each of them clearly made with love and care.
Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> generic ad-ridden wikis This is the fault of Wikia (now "Fandom") which jam-packs every wiki full of ads and auto-playing videos they'll helpfully reopen for you if you accidentally close them.
You can fight back against Fandom by being willing to use https://miraheze.org
Along with Breezewiki, which was specifically designed to combat Fandom/Wikia.
An another note it's always struck me as extremely presumptuous that the company thinks it can just call itself "Fandom" like the word hasn't existed in generic form for nearly a century and a half before they ever did. The lack of willingness to fend off what should be unenforceable trademarks and copyrights is creating a snowball that's going to get too big to stop in the next decade.
Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#57I think we underestimate the creative downside of forcing responsive design on everything
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Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#58Video game sites back then were cool, yes. Now do video game fan sites. These have in so many ways been replaced over the years by generic ad-ridden wikis but back in the day games often had crazy interesting fan sites for specific video games. So many unique designs and layouts were done for those niche communities and so many of those designers and developers went on to do really cool things in the future. What an…
Right, there have been some really good ones, for example http://myth.bungie.org/ or https://halo.bungie.org/ , two that I frequented a lot back in the day!
I love that HBO still carries on even if Halo is a limping franchise.
Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#59XGen Studios belongs on this page. Spent a lot of time mucking around on their interactive homepage, and even more time playing their flash games or on their forums.
Re: Video Game Websites in the early 00s
#60Video game sites back then were cool, yes. Now do video game fan sites. These have in so many ways been replaced over the years by generic ad-ridden wikis but back in the day games often had crazy interesting fan sites for specific video games. So many unique designs and layouts were done for those niche communities and so many of those designers and developers went on to do really cool things in the future. What an…
Right, there have been some really good ones, for example http://myth.bungie.org/ or https://halo.bungie.org/ , two that I frequented a lot back in the day!
HBO was where I cut my teeth learning to write via fan fiction. Such a shame to see it languishing now.