OH FUCK
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Good Morning Newgrounds! I hope your morning has gone better than mine. It started off well, I had this whole paper ready to go, I was right at the end posting the Patreon wall, when the page froze and thus everything was gone. I had to walk away before putting a fist through the monitor. I lost quite a bit in the process so this is an attempted salvage. Sorry for the inconvenience. With that said the holidays are approaching, Christmas is in full swing and Hanukkah will be starting this Thursday! Here's all the hip happenings of Newgrounds last week.
The-Great-One
THEME SONG BY @sorohanro
FEATURED COMPOSERS
@CHGangBoy05 @Unigodspawn @GrizzlyCogs @stouf7908 @RejSende @JohnMontoya @Lucasberry @FUNKbrs @liljim @RetroCarrot @PaulyBFromDa303 @TheZatesee @Syamori @monkeycat @Banana-head @DruoxtheShredder @MilkGilk @Bezo @TheBenjerman @Waterflame
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“本当のウィーブーはこれを読むことができます”
THE LATEST FROM THE FOUNDER AND CEO OF NEWGROUNDS @TomFulp
Drawing Tablet Giveaway!
With the holidays and the season of giving underway, Tom is giving out drawing tablets. This is a special event that has been going on for the past couple of days ago. The tablet is the XP-Pen Deco 01 V2. If you are an aspiring artist who is interested then PM Tom with the following information.
- Why you need and what you hope to achieve with a new drawing tablet.
- Links with examples of your existing art / animation (your odds improve greatly if you have work here on NG).
- Your full name and US mailing address.
There is no specified number of tablets that will be given away, if you want to raise the amount given then please consider Supporting Newgrounds. PM Tom afterwards to state your donation towards this giveaway. This isn't the first time Newgrounds has taken on a project like this. Tom gave away Wacom Tablets on different occasions in the past.
Here are the recipients of tablets so far. @Warxwell @prosimban, @DoctorGrambo, @Aluterrian, @GojiBean, @tanzaniterush, @AllSeeingHat, @pizza602slut, @Pablosaurs910, @Dungeonation, @MaximumNightmare, @seAnceTM, and @DraculKitten. Congratulations to all of you!
The Newgrounds Voice Acting Collaboration 2020 & 2021
@VoicesByCorey has released the NGVAC 2020. If you missed it, go listen to it. Be prepared though, it is over an hour and a half long. He has already started on plans for NGVAC 2021, so if you're interested check out the thread.
Section 230
Tom asks that you watch the video below concerning Section 230. It is a part of the Common Decency Act of 1996 that President Donald Trump wishes to revoke. Which this is not a partisan issue, because President-Elect Joe Biden also wishes to revoke Section 230. They feel it will help crack down on social media platforms for spreading misinformation and propaganda, when in actuality it will do the opposite and hurt the voices of many on the Internet. This is something to keep an eye on in the coming months. Just in case you need to contact your representative.
Flash Forward Jam
Tom started to toy around with the next jam being about Flash. Drawing Tablet Winner @Dungeonation made a large donation in favor of the Jam. There is now over $1000 in the prize pool alongside an interview with @TheInterviewer for the winners of Best Movie and Best Game. There is also a Bonus $100 to Most Mobile-Friendly version, no matter where it places.
Jam Requirements:
- Make something interactive with Flash, either a game or interactive movie, which could include an animation collab with a cool menu interface, or something with decisions / alternate endings.
- Make it with ActionScript 2 and confirm it works via Ruffle before publishing. You will see a “Test with Ruffle” link on your preview page. Ruffle is what we use to run Flash on NG without the Flash plugin, you can read more about it below!
- Upload any time in January and tag it “Flash-Forward-Jam” to participate!
Last Week's Daily Features from the Portal as posted through P-Bot's Postings are listed here.
[ DISCORD | TWITTER | PATREON ]
The winners of Best Game in the Spooktacular, the creators of Dead Estate were on the podcast recently. Producer @GoodL recently contracted COVID-19. He has been recovering lately and gave us a new game entitled Chucan Fall.
These are the people who make Newgrounds possible. Thank you!
SUPPORTER OF THE WEEK
I need your help Newgrounds. The people who I know contribute a lot to the site and are also huge supporters, I have gone through my list. If there are any supporters out there who have contributed a great deal to the site over the years or someone who you feel should have Supporter Status, but doesn't, then please let me know. The Tank Tribune will be prepared to offer someone without Supporter Status a full year! Please send your messages here or comment below.
SUPPORTER PARTY
A super fun secret forum, exclusively for NG Supporters
Welcome to the supporter forum!
A lot of users become supporters, but don't drop by the Party. Stop in and introduce yourself!
Why Did You Support Newgrounds
A thread made early in the Supporter launch. What made you want to purchase a Supporter upgrade and give your hard earned money to Newgrounds?
DEADLINE: December 10
Fraymakers Kickstarter Art Contest
DEADLINE: December 11
DEADLINE: December 24
January 23
ARTIST NEWS
300 FANS!?!? And more updates!!
@AlbeGian has reached over 300 fans at the time of this paper. He has had a busy year. Placing 2nd Place in the Newgrounds Audio Deathmatch 2020, collaborating with @RealMrSnuggles, and having his music feature in Tankmas ADVENTure 2020. His music has been featured in the Tribune Phonograph in the past as well!
New Site Skin
If you noticed the new site skin on the site. It involves the popular characters from 2020 as snowmen. It was made by @Shamfoo. Check out his other works here on the site!
Geronimo
Shamfoo
@W-P-S would bring us this strange parody of Mickey's Christmas Carol and I guess A Christmas Carol in general. It wound up on the Front Page and either made people angry that it was there or made them laugh their asses off.
THE MEMBERS OF NEWGROUNDS
STORIES
Your favorite thing on NG today?
@SantaSeize made a thread asking about what users favorite things on Newgrounds are. What have you come across on Newgrounds that you just love right now? Share it with everyone!
What's something practical you learned recently
@ngman7 was tired of pizza and decided to try a food delivery service. Between Grubhub and DoorDash he found that DoorDash has the better promos, no delivery fee, and is cheaper. It was something small, but reasonable. He asks what is something practical that you don't think about too much that you learned recently. Share your stories.
A LOOK BACK AT THREADS OF THE PAST
EVERYTHING, BY EVERYONE
I've been going down memory lane as of late and came across a time in Newgrounds where some important questions were asked. This part of the Forum History is going to get a little heavy, so this is your READER DISCRETION ADVISED part of the paper. I think it is important to talk about and reflect on.
First some context though. On April 16, 2007, a shooting occurred at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. It was labelled as a massacre with 33 fatalities. At the time it was one of the deadliest shootings in the United States of America. This was a tragic event and should not be taken lightly. Newgrounds member @PiGPEN made a game entitled V-tech Rampage recreating the event. This would cause a bit of a stir within the media and thus @Ross commented on it.
Ross brought up the game and its creator. How it circulated among the popular gaming websites and media outlets at the time. PiGPEN stated that if people donated enough money to his PayPal he would take it down. Ross asked the Newgrounds public what they thought about the game, did they think PiGPEN's actions were in poor taste, and should the game be taken down or left up?
Ross would follow up on this development with responses from the Newgrounds community. Ranging from remove it outright for its offensive content. It is in poor taste that PiGPEN is looking to profit off of it, remove it for that. It is freedom of speech so it must be kept up. There are far more offensive things on the site as it is, so just leave it up. Ross read all of these and thought about it more and more. His response was thus...
"I think this is a good time to reflect on what Newgrounds is all about. When Tom first started the site many years ago, it was a place for his personal creations, some of which were too "edgy" for the mainstream (such as Assassin, Club A Seal, and Telebubby Fun Land). Many of his productions pushed (and occasionally pole vaulted over) the limits of "good taste", but he published them nevertheless, and they found an audience. The number of NG visitors grew rapidly and soon other artists started sending Tom their Flash creations for him to post. It turned out that a lot of people didn't really have an outlet for their not-fit-for-the-mainstream creativity - and Newgrounds evolved from a showcase for Tom's work into a showcase for everyone's work, free of the usual moral judgement and censorship.
Newgrounds found its niche and flourished, and today, we have one of the most unique communities on the Internet. We're a place where you can find polished, professional-quality animations and games, as well as creations that are more coarse, more personal, more "anything goes" - and everybody's welcome. While we do have some loose content guidelines, the site is still a haven for artists that might not have anyplace else to gain exposure for their work.
Speaking only for myself, I think V-Tech Rampage is in poor taste. In terms of gameplay, it's decent, but tying it to this recent tragedy is a bad idea, in my opinion.
Still, it's not any one person's job to judge the Flash that people submit to The Portal. That's left up to the Newgrounds community at large, which judges submissions with its votes. As the saying goes, I may disagree with what PiGPEN's doing, but I'll forever defend his right to do it. Telling him that his game should not be allowed on Newgrounds goes against the principles upon which this site was founded. You're entitled to form any opinion you like about him and his work, but once we take away his right to put it here on NG, we lose track of what makes Newgrounds great."
-Ross
May 21, 2007
During this time the guidelines were strict. They have since been updated. This includes that if you are making light of or exploiting a tragedy Newgrounds may or may not stand by you. They have defended stuff in the past, but it is no longer a guarantee. This is indeed a wonderful thing about Newgrounds, and this was in 2007 when Newgrounds was about to hit this boom period on the Internet, when more and more people were not only getting access to the Internet, but it was becoming more user friendly, and content was strong. Newgrounds was one of few websites that escaped the dot com burst.
Around this time, Tom was getting married to his fiancée at the time @AprilFulp. He would return from his honeymoon with a message about the site.
Tom was feeling defeated. Every plan he had he was always a bit too late or there were always problems. This was around when the 2007 re-design was about to come out. It was being worked on for years. This was a huge deal for the site.
"Underneath the smiles and positive attitude, I'll admit I've been in a bad mood lately.
The honeymoon was the first time in a long while that I really decompressed from a life that revolves around Newgrounds, a life where every waking (and sleeping) hour feels dedicated to the vision of what Newgrounds is supposed to become. As a result, it stirred up a lot of intense feelings about where things are going wrong and how there aren't any clear solutions other than "work harder." (working smarter doesn't cut it for me) Rather than coming back refreshed and full of energy, I feel like I'm being crushed under the weight of failed expectations and lost opportunities.
Newgrounds will be celebrating its 12th anniversary on the web next month, so it's a crazy time to reflect on where Newgrounds has gone in the past 12 years and where it hasn't. The web wasn't ready for a lot of the things we tried to do in the early days. Back in 2000, we had an embedded NG player you could put on your own site. It included an integrated voting bar and even had an integrated ad, but no one was interested in embedding stuff back then; Myspace didn't exist yet. We built a universal high score system and used it for a bunch of games, but it kept getting hacked, so we gave up. Inspired by the launch of Friendster, we laid out user pages before they had REALLY caught fire, but even that plan just sort of sat on the curb as years passed by... Waiting for the next layout design, then the next."
I always feel like we missed our moment in the spotlight and the Internet passed us by, not quite ready for NG until it was too late and the whole "Web 2.0" hype stole their attention.
What's especially crushing is all the projects that remain yet unfinished. Newgrounds is like 10 years behind schedule from where it's supposed to be right now. It started off so fast and loose, making games and launching features in such rapid succession. Then the games got bigger and the features more complex, and nothing could be done quickly anymore. Good ideas can no longer just be tossed into the mix like they once were, they have to wait until the other good ideas are finished, even if it takes months... or years. Other console games can't happen until Castle Crashers is done. Other web games can't happen until Pixel Puncher is done. Nothing on the site can happen until the redesign is done. Meanwhile, new ideas keep bubbling up every day. I don't know what to do about it so I just get mad about it and loath myself.
But I'll say one thing: NG never stops moving. The redesign has been a part of our daily lives ever since the office opened at the end of 2005. It's VERY CLOSE. It will be the opening of a door that we've been knocking on for years now. When that door is opened, we're gonna step out into a new era of NG and lots of good stuff will start to happen around here. Or not... maybe it will just be the same old portal spam and eDrama. I can't make any promises, I'm just trying to be uplifting and get everyone excited. It's harder and harder for me to get excited about stuff because exciting stuff takes too much work. I need to vicariously live through your own excitement and smiling faces. Go team."
-Tom Fulp
June 14, 2007
This was when Newgrounds turned 12 years old. It is now 25 years old and growing. It wasn't long after this that Tom got an incredible response from the different creators and members of the site. This was when he announced the Tank Trophies. If there is one way to sum up Newgrounds entirely it is from the creator of the site himself.
"So many dreams, so little time. I really am proud of how far NG has come, just know that I will always be wanting it to go further. The goal of NG is to share your creativity with the largest audience possible, without becoming a homogenized mass-market blandfest."
-Tom Fulp
June 18, 2007
Thank you Thomas Charles Fulp for creating this site for the creators, the visionaries, the world makers, the storytellers, and the outcasts. I've said this before and I'll say it again. This is a wonderful place to grow up.
Do what you desire
With all that is yours, they say
But am I my own?
Everyday Newgrounds chooses a User of the Day at random! Here are the selected people of last week! Congratulations to all of you!
USERS OF THE DAY ON THIS DATE
2007: @Razorblade-Eve
2008: @BioLock
2010: @GLaDOSKitten
2019: @AsroyalSagittarius
The week can get people down sometimes. With all of the hustle and bustle and action packed drama that entails our lives, sometimes it's nice to just kickback and relax. Here are a few games to play to unwind on this Monday Morning. This week features Christmas and Hanukkah related games.
This is the second time I have written this paper. Sorry that I lost some of it along the way. Once I find a way to salvage what I lost it will be included in next week's issue. I am looking to format the P-Bot section at some point. With more collaborations going on, it is hard to feature everyone involved. I hope you all have a wonderful Monday Morning. It is 6AM EST where I'm at, it is time for this old dog to go to bed until the hours of the night reawaken me. Hopefully there will be pizza.
The Tank Tribune is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions
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olskoo
Glad you got through those issues.