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43-531: Newgrounds is an American company and entertainment website founded by Tom Fulp in 1995. The site hosts user-generated content such as games, films, audio, and artwork. Fulp produces in-house content at the headquarters and offices in Glenside, Pennsylvania. In the 2000s, Newgrounds played an important role in Internet culture , and in Internet animation and independent video gaming in particular. It has been called

86-510: A Flash browser game that "exhibited a complexity of design and polish in presentation that was virtually unseen in amateur Flash game development" of the time helped establish Newgrounds as a "public force." 1999 also saw the consolidation of both sites into one domain name (newgrounds.com), and the creation of "The Portal", a place on the site for Fulp to put his Flash projects that were smaller and more unfinished. Site visitors began to reach out through email with their own Flash content, which

129-573: A "complexity of design and polish in presentation that was virtually unseen in amateur Flash game development" of the time. Many Flash games in the late 1990s and early 2000s received attention through the use of shock comedy or real-world events , like McDonald's Videogame , a satire of McDonald's ' business practices, or Darfur is Dying , about the War in Darfur , Sudan . In 2017, Julie Muncy writing for Wired said, "Flash games lent themselves to

172-410: A "distinct time in gaming history", a place "where many animators and developers cut their teeth and gained a following long before social media was even a thing", and "a haven for fostering the greats of internet animation". User-generated content can be uploaded and categorized into either one of the site's four web portals: Games, Movies, Audio, and Art. A Movie or Games submission entered undergoes

215-537: A club originating on the online service Prodigy . Using a hosting service, he launched a website called New Ground Remix in 1995, which increased in popularity during the summer of 1996 after Fulp created the BBS games Club a Seal and Assassin while a student at Drexel University . He then created Club a Seal II and Assassin II , along with a separate hosting site titled New Ground Atomix . The 1999 release of Pico's School ,

258-431: A different method called "scouting", which the site describes as "a way to vet users and weed out spam, stolen works, low quality submissions, etc." All users can put art and audio onto their own page, but only those that are "scouted" will appear in the public area. Like the judgment system, it stops stolen content, spam, or prohibited material reaching the public area, relying on users and site moderators. Once an individual

301-530: A few years to prepare for this event. With little future in Flash, developers moved away from the browser platform in the mid 2010s. As for Adobe Flash games, various collections of such games can be found. Even though Adobe Flash is "broken" and hard to launch after 2021, one can use alternatives, such as the Flashpoint Archive . Browser games were an important platform for the emergence of indie games . In

344-616: A genre of free, online multiplayer that gained popularity with the success of Agar.io in 2015. The games are usually characterized by simple graphics and gameplay in a free for all multiplayer arena. The term ".io" comes from the . io domain , which was originally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory but became popular for game developers due to its short and memorable nature. Thousands of .io games exist, and many of them have been subject to controversy for both political use and lack of moderation. Agar.io

387-500: A large online audience. Fulp is also known for his browser game preservation work. Fulp was born and raised in Perkasie , Pennsylvania , on April 30, 1978. In 1991, Fulp launched a Neo Geo fanzine called New Ground and sent issues to approximately 100 members of a club originating on the online service Prodigy . Using a hosting service, he launched a website called New Ground Remix in 1995, which increased in popularity during

430-504: A result. It subsequently became one of the most "active Flash creator communities in the English-speaking Internet" and served as a place that video game developers could begin their careers. Flash was once described by Newgrounds as the "driving force" behind the site. Even so, those on the site had a "low tolerance for poor quality work", referring mainly to humor and storytelling instead of animation quality. Some animators on

473-631: A self-taught independent developer who was inspired to make it after playing Agar.io. The game quickly rose to be the top game on many platforms. Starting in around 2016, soon after the popularity spikes of Agar.io and Slither.io , more games in the .io games genre began to be released. Many of these games were simple clones of popular games, usually released in a top down-format. Some notable games released in this period include Diep.io (another game by Matheus Valadares), ZombsRoyale.io , Krunker.io, Wings.io, Surviv.io , Hole.io , and Snake.io . These games all remain popular and are some of

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516-556: Is an American programmer known for creating the website Newgrounds and co-founding the video game company The Behemoth . Fulp has been credited with "changing the landscape of the Internet forever" by kickstarting the browser game scene in the late 1990s, both with the releases of his own advanced Flash games and the launch of the Newgrounds Portal, one of the first sites that allowed creators to easily share their creations with

559-447: Is considered the first ever .io game. The game was announced on 4chan on 27 April, 2015 by Matheus Valadares, a then 19-year-old Brazilian developer. In the game, players control one or more circular cells in a map representing a Petri dish . The goal is to gain as much mass as possible by eating cells and player cells smaller than the player's cell while avoiding larger ones which can eat the player's cells. Agar.io went viral, and

602-586: Is scouted, they are given the privilege to scout others, though users caught scouting other users who regularly break the site's terms of service and/or guidelines ("abusing the system") get unscouted themselves. Content and context are liable to be reported for review to the moderators and staff members by flagging it for violations to the site's guidelines. A weighted system recognizes experienced users and gives their flag more voice. Newgrounds' homepage includes featured submissions from each category, as well as awards and honors to users whose submission that fall under

645-655: The App Store . In the summer of 2019, with the discontinuation of Flash upcoming, the administration of Newgrounds unveiled the Newgrounds Player for Windows, which was described as a "solution for playing Flash games and movies" hosted on the site. The application would launch via the website upon a request to view Flash content and play it. The player would later be followed up with the Ruffle Flash emulator in August 2019, with

688-509: The Internet Gaming Zone , offering various card and board browser games. ClassicGames.com was created in 1997 to host a selection of classic, Java-based online multiplayer games such as chess and checkers; its popularity led Yahoo! to purchase the site in 1998 and rebranding it as Yahoo! Games. In 1999, Tom Fulp kickstarted the Flash games scene with the release of the game Pico's School on his site Newgrounds that featured

731-680: The Ruffle emulator , an Adobe Flash emulator written in Rust and sponsored by Newgrounds along with other popular sites like Cool Math Games and Armor Games . In 2022, Ruffle supported most Flash content written in ActionScript "1.0" and 2.0, and only a select few Flashes written in 3.0, which meant to play then unsupported content, users had to use the "Newgrounds Player", the site's previous downloadable Flash end-of-life solution which it used prior to Ruffle for playing content. Art and Audio are processed using

774-558: The back end, numerous server technologies can be used. Most browser games were originally created with Adobe Flash , but as Adobe Flash was shut down on December 31, 2020, special browser plug-ins are now required. Thousands of these games have been preserved by the Flashpoint project. The emulation plug-in Ruffle aims to continue browser accessibility of Flash games. When the Internet first became widely available and initial web browsers with basic HTML support were released,

817-451: The claimed "death knell" for Adobe Flash by way of Steve Jobs ' open letter to Adobe in 2010, stating that Apple would not support Flash on the iPhone platform due to security concerns and other factors. About a year after Jobs' letter, Adobe announced it would start deprecating Flash and transition users to HTML5 and other open standards in its other products. Adobe completely shut down Flash by January 12, 2021 after giving web developers

860-458: The creation of Newgrounds and for being a trailblazer of the Macromedia Flash games that helped define a generation of indie developers. Browser game Some browser games are also available as mobile apps , PC games , or on consoles . For users , the advantage of the browser version is not having to install the game; the browser automatically downloads the necessary content from

903-454: The creation of similar games using the .io domain, and eventually the .io game genre. Slither.io was the second .io game to be released, which is a free for all multiplayer game that is in the Snake genre. The basic premise of the game has 50 players compete to eat colored orbs and grow as large as possible, while destroying other player's snakes. The game was created in 2016 by Steven Howse,

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946-465: The current ad-driven revenue model of browser games. Google used the same concepts for developing the Android storefront Play Store . Developers either augmented browser games or shifted to the mobile platform to take advantage of the new revenue opportunities; notably, King transitioned one of its browser games into one of the most successful mobile games, Candy Crush Saga . The second factor came from

989-440: The earliest browser games were similar to text-based Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) , minimizing interactions to what implemented through simple browser controls but supporting online interactions with other players through a basic client–server model . One of the first known examples of a browser game was Earth 2025 , first released in 1995. It featured only text but allowed players to interact and form alliances with other players of

1032-563: The early 2000s. Flash games were considered to have hit their peak in the mid-2000s but waned by the early 2010s. Their popularity had fallen due to two primary causes. First was the introduction of mobile gaming , primarily with Apple's iPhone release in 2007 and the availability of the App Store . Through the App Store, anyone could release apps for the iPhone, and with the addition of in-app purchases , new revenue models such as free-to-play quickly emerged for mobile games, well surpassing

1075-469: The exaggerated and cartoonish, a style that eventually evolved into an affection-at least amongst its best creators-for beautiful grotesquerie. Like much of the younger gaming internet, Flash games defined boundaries simply to cross them; the best titles straddled a weird line between innocence and cruelty, full of gorgeous gore and enthralling body horror". In Pico's School , based on the Columbine shootings ,

1118-473: The game's website . However, the browser version may have fewer features or inferior graphics compared to the others, which are usually native apps. Browser games also had a huge influence on independent video games . The front end of a browser game is what runs in the user's browser. It is implemented with the standard web technologies of HTML , CSS , JavaScript , and WebAssembly . In addition, WebGL and WebGPU enable more sophisticated graphics. On

1161-710: The game. Browser technology quickly began to mature in the mid-1990s with support for browser plug-ins and the introduction of JavaScript . More advanced browser interactions, unbounded by the restrictions of HTML and that used client-side processing were possible. Among other browser extensions, these new plug-ins allowed uses to run applets made in the Java language and interactive animations created in Macromedia Flash . These technologies were initially intended to provide web page developers tools to create fully immersive, interactive websites, though this use fell out of favor as it

1204-418: The late 1990s and early 2000s, the video game industry had started to coalesce around triple-A development, games made by large studios with multi-million dollar budgets. Because of the money involved, the industry took few risks in these major titles, and experimental games were generally overlooked. Browser games gave a venue for such titles during the early 2000s, and the broader interest in-browser games by

1247-576: The mid-2000s highlighted several of these titles. Subsequently, a number of early indie games are those based on browser games, such as The Behemoth 's Castle Crashers , inspired by Newgrounds' Alien Hominid and Edmund McMillen 's Super Meat Boy based on his Meat Boy browser game. Other indie developers got their start in browser and Flash games, including Vlambeer , Bennett Foddy , and Maddy Thorson . Post-2010, browser games written in other formats besides Flash remain popular, such as HTML5, WebGL , and WebAssembly . The .io domain , which

1290-1123: The player must take down a goth school shooter. There are a few other controversies involving browser games and real-world events, such as the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting reenactment V-Tech Rampage , and NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre targeting the game Kindergarten Killers after the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings . Expansion of broadband connectivity in the early 2000s drew more people to play browser games through these sites, as well as added attention as viral phenomenon . New sites like Kongregate and Armor Games arose for hosting Flash-based games while also offering their own titles, while companies like PopCap Games and King launched their own portals featuring titles they had developed. Social media sites also drove more players to browser games. Facebook , after launching in 2004, added support for browser game functionality that integrated with its social network features, creating social network games , notably with Zynga 's Farmville . The success of browser games did hurt some developers. Humongous Entertainment reported that they lost players to Flash games in

1333-423: The process termed "judgment", where it can be rated by all users (from 0 to 5 stars) and reviewed by other users. The average score calculated at various points during judgment determines if whether the content will be "saved" (added onto the database) or "blammed" (deleted with only its reviews saved in the "Obituaries" section). Since Adobe Flash Player was shut down on most browsers by late 2020, Newgrounds uses

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1376-548: The site hosted animations about Osama bin Laden , Saddam Hussein , and the Taliban , with right-wing views seeming to reflect a "sizable part" of the site's user base in the early 2000's, some scholars argued that the site has had a "relatively balanced" conversation on politics throughout the sites growth. In 1991, at the age of 13, Tom Fulp launched a Neo Geo fanzine called New Ground and sent issues to approximately 100 members of

1419-513: The site moved to YouTube by the mid-2000s. By November 2008, Newgrounds had over 1.5 million users and over 130,000 animations. This had increased by August 2010, when it was reported that the site had over 2.2 million users and over 180,000 games and animated films , most of which were animations made by only one person, with others collaboratively made by various individuals. It was also said in 2013 that users had created "hundreds of thousands of animated movies and online games". Time ranked

1462-481: The site's Art Portal was rolled out, implementing it in the existing Project system for animation, games and audio, as well as adding the ability to use multi-author credits on Art submissions and adding multi-art support in either Inline, Strip or Gallery formats. In March 2024, the site's reporting system was updated to enable users to report content predominantly generated by artificial intelligence (AI) . Tom Fulp Thomas Charles Fulp (born April 30, 1978)

1505-451: The site's requirements to earn them. Members of Newgrounds also organize animations called "collabs" through the discussion forum on the site. Some scholars noted that while hundreds of these "collabs" are produced every year, only 20% are completed due to stress on those making the animations, while other scholars said that animators maintain a "strong sense" of authorship and ownership of what they produce, especially solo animators. Although

1548-439: The summer of 1996 after Fulp created the BBS games Club a Seal and Assassin , after graduating from Pennridge High School . Eventually, this site turned into Newgrounds.com. In 1999, Fulp created the game Pico's School in Macromedia Flash 3, before the launch of the scripting language ActionScript that subsequent Flash game developers would use. The game "exhibited a complexity of design and polish in presentation that

1591-621: The two options being offered in tandem as development on Ruffle progressed. In April 2021, an update for the browser game Friday Night Funkin' was exclusively released on Newgrounds at the time, causing the site's server to become overloaded after an influx of site traffic. In July 2021, Fulp received the Game Developers Choice Awards Pioneer Award for his contributions to establishing Newgrounds and subsequent work in The Behemoth. In September 2023, an update to

1634-468: The website at No. 39 on its list of "50 Best Websites" in 2010. In 2018, Newgrounds began to encourage contributors to submit their games in an HTML5 format rather than Flash. In November and December, it experienced surges of new members originally from Tumblr when that site began restricting adult content after illegal child pornography was found on it, resulting in the Tumblr iOS app being removed from

1677-491: Was considered elitism and broke expected browsing behavior. Instead, these technologies found use by programmers to create small browser games among other unexpected uses such as general animation tools. Sites began to emerge in the late 1990s to collect these browser games and other works, such as Sun Microsystems ' HotJava . These sites started to become a popular commodity as they drew web visitors. Microsoft acquired one such site, The Village, in 1996, and rebranded it as

1720-501: Was featured on the free online games site Miniclip . The mobile version of Agar.io for iOS was released on 8 July 2015 and Android on 7 July 2015 by Miniclip. The browser version was released in June 2015 by CrazyGames . The YouTuber PewDiePie created a video titled "REDDIT WANTS TO EAT ME! (Agario Part 1) | PewDiePie," which has over 8.5 million views as of July 2024. The creation and quickly-growing popularity of Agar.io led to

1763-430: Was first used in 2015 by Agar.io , has become a popular domain attached to browser games, because of its short length, the ease of acquiring the domain, and the association with programming because "io" can also stand for input/output . Subsequently, these game developers have found ways to monetize their work by creating versions for mobile devices or other platforms which they can sell. .io games or IO games are

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1806-607: Was showcased on a webpage in The Portal. By 2000, there were so many Portal submissions that submitting Flash content to the Portal would become an automated process with the help of Fulp's friend Ross. Tom has stated that the automated Portal "ultimately defined [Newgrounds]'s purpose". While Macromedia Flash Player was required for Newgrounds in order to play games, the site also brought together members who were interested in producing Flash games and gained "considerable online influence" as

1849-477: Was virtually unseen in amateur Flash game development" until then and has been credited both with helping kickstarting the Flash games scene and launching Newgrounds as a "public force". Fulp co-created the Flash game Alien Hominid , which he later developed for consoles under The Behemoth, and the console game Castle Crashers . Fulp received the Pioneer award at the 2021 Game Developers Choice Awards for

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