Since I scored an interview with the guys at Newgrounds.com, I’ve been running my mouth to friends, reminiscing about the animations the site hosts. I was surprised how many people knew what the eff I was talking about. More than many seemed to remember almost a decade ago, when the site was on the cutting-edge of HTML, Javascript, and pissing off moms everywhere. Club A Seal and Pico’s School, two games that your mousey, nerdy friend tried to show you while you were trying to beg your sister to drive you to the mall, are without a doubt, responsible for a lot of the Flash-driven games and movies we watch now. Oh yea, and they’ve been based near Philly since the beginning — their office is currently located in Glenside.

Today, the site remains what it always aimed to be: An automated portal of user submitted Flash movies, games, and music. But the site’s creators have been busy. Their game designing side-company is responsible for the first Flash to game-console port: In 2004, Alien Hominid was released on Playstation 2, and Game Cube, Xbox (in the U.K.), and has since been ported to the Xbox 360, thereby giving financial validity to all these kooky games people have been making, and hope to 15-year-old Spielbergs and Carmacks everywhere.

But it hasn’t been an easy ride. The company surived the Internet bust in the early ’00s and now faces the challenges YouTube hath wrought. They are working on their second console game, Castle Crashers and a model that will share royalties with artists for their work on Newgrounds.com. And while founder Tom Fulp and his buds at Newgrounds may have grown up, they’ve been fighting it with as many gay, dick, and poop jokes as they can.

What Once Was, Is [Almost] No More

Newgrounds Class Photo 2008

I hear people refer to Newgrounds as the YouTube of Flash. YouTube is the Newgrounds of video. — Tom Fulp, Newgrounds

Looking at the image above, I can almost guarentee that you’ll recognize a character. Whether it’s Salad Fingers or Pico, take those chills of nostalgia as a reminder of Newgrounds’s influence. In the past, the concern of venture-backed projects that would square off against Newgrounds was their biggest threat. But the site’s community, who was always active on the forums or submitting new content, propelled the company through its hardest time. They arose from the Internet bust in 2002 as the premiere portal for Flash content. Bottom-feeding copycats stole the site’s work or mimicked the business model, but few could inch close to Newground’s dominance.

But YouTube changed it all. Suddenly, you were the new content creator. Not to say that Fulp wasn’t doing the same thing on his end of the Internet, but the difference was in the video. And while Fulp is aware that his Flash concept isn’t going to live-up to high resolution streaming video that is surely on the way, he says that Newgrounds is more of a cult then a catalyst. A pretty big cult: The site has 500,000 unique visitors a day, and almost 12 million unique page views this month, inching closer to the popularity of this column. Ahem.

And Then There’s Fulp’s Other 108-Hour-A-Week Day Job

Somewhere admist all the progress, Fulp and Newgrounds artist Dan Paladin made a game called Alien Hominid. The game was an instant hit. The main character, a yellow blaster-totin’ alien, was quirky, the storyline hilarious (fat kids are the only ones who believe in you and thus, are your friends), and the baddies (beefed-up FBI agents), tongue-in-cheek. With Paladin’s hand-drawn art, the game was a throwback to classics like Metal Slug and Contra, and the best part? It was free.

But the game’s growing popularity, even outside the Newgrounds community, ended up getting attention from professional game designers. John Baez, an industry veteran, contacted Fulp and Paladin, and it wasn’t long before they were all working on a retail console conversion of the Internet phenom. Baez mortaged his house and the grassroots, basement integrity of independent game design was re-born within their new company: Behemoth.

The boys had to produce and self-fund the game using a very untraditional model. According to Fulp, the retail model made it extremely hard to self-publish a game. Normally, a developer makes a design document, presents it to a publisher, and then publishers provide financial backing if they like what they see. Or, publishers seek out a developer to make a title. That’s why you see so many sequels and licensed properties; like a million fuckin’ Star Wars games.

But with the release of Alien Hominid in 2004, Behemoth gave hope to indie game designers. They took home 4 awards from the Independent Gaming Festival, top honors from sites like IGN and GameSpot, and plenty of press in mags like Wired and Playboy.

‘Cos There’s No Way This Party’s Getting Crashed, We Present Castle Crashers

Behemoth creates its own merchandise, ‘cos they have the rights to all their trademarks. That’s sooo totally scene.

Despite critical success, Behemoth had issues after Hominid was released. Although they wouldn’t talk about their publishing issues, it was apparent that things didn’t go well. But the experience seems to have been good for them in the long-run: They are now in the third year of development of their upcoming XBox 360 Live Arcade title, Castle Crashers. Skipping publishers, they’ll be dropping the game directly to gamers and taking more royalties as a result. XBox 360’s LIVE Arcade’s model is changing the playing field for indies. As bandwidth increases and more games are being released online, retail stores are slowly getting pushed out of the picture; and the indies are able to survive on more than just bread and water. Shops like Gamestop, who try to push their buy-low/sell-not-so-low used game model, thus cutting into new game sales that would go to developers, won’t have the chance to profit off of someone else’s creation.

I think it’s EB and Gamestop getting what they deserve. Downloading is so much better for the developer and you can sell it for less. — Tom Fulp of Newgrounds

Now, Fulp & Co. can look forward to concentrating on the content. Castle Crashers has all the character of Alien Hominid, but with a half-decade of experience under its belt. We didn’t get to talk much about the game, but gamers can look forward to an online multi-player platform, including a co-op storyline and arena-style deathmatch. In one mini-game, players chase chickens to power-up, or if they can’t, run from other players who’ve already been ‘roided. Or, look forward to a button-mashing throwback where players battle it out in an eating competition. Not to mention, it looks damn good in HD.

Castle Crashers will be released in Summer 2008 for XBox LIVE Arcade.

Brian James Kirk is a writer and adventurer living in Philadelphia. By adventuring, he means occasionally to friends’ homes for games of Balderdash. If you know a Philadelphia technology scoop that would fit this space, you are graciously encouraged to get in touch.

Previously: Technologicology Special Report: Like A Pussy Boyfriend, Earthlink Finally Breaks It Off With Wireless Philadelphia

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 3:58 pm.