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Newgrounds is an American entertainment website founded by Tom Fulp in 1995 and owned by Newgrounds.com, Inc. 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 Internet culture refers to culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet (also known as netizens) who primarily communicate with one another as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence ...
, and in Internet animation and independent video gaming in particular. It has been called a "distinct time in gaming history", a place "where many animators and developers cut their teeth and gained a following long before
social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...
was even a thing", and "a haven for fostering the greats of internet animation".


Content

User-generated content User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), emerged from the rise of web services which allow a system's User (computing), users to create Content (media), content, such as images, videos, audio, text, testi ...
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 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 Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is a discontinuedExcept in China, where it continues to be used, as well as Harman for enterprise users. computer program for viewing multimedia ...
was shut down on most browsers by late 2020, Newgrounds uses the Ruffle emulator, an Adobe Flash emulator written in
Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH) ...
and sponsored by Newgrounds along with other popular sites like Cool Math Games and
Armor Games Armor Games Inc. is an American video game publisher and free web gaming portal. The website hosts over a thousand HTML5 (and previously Flash) browser games. Based in Irvine, California, the site was founded in 2004 by Daniel McNeely. Armor ...
. In 2022, Ruffle supported most Flash content written in
ActionScript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (mean ...
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 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 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 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.


History

In 1991, at the age of 13, Tom Fulp launched a
Neo Geo The , stylized as NEO•GEO, is a video game platform released in 1990 by Japanese game company SNK Corporation. It was initially released in two ROM cartridge-based formats: an arcade system board (Multi Video System; MVS) and a home video gam ...
fanzine A fanzine (blend word, blend of ''fan (person), fan'' and ''magazine'' or ''zine'') is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleas ...
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 the summer of 1996 after Fulp created the BBS games ''Club a Seal'' and ''Assassin'' while a student at
Drexel University Drexel University is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony Joseph Drexel, Anthony J. Drexel, a financier ...
. 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 ''Pico's School'' is a 1999 point-and-click Flash game developed by Tom Fulp for his website Newgrounds. At the time of its release, it was "one of the most sophisticated" browser games, exhibiting "a complexity of design and polish in presenta ...
'', a Flash
browser game A browser game is a video game that is played on the internet using a web browser. They are sometimes referred to more specifically by their format, such as Flash games or HTML5 games. They are generally free-to-play and can be either single-pl ...
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 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 ewgroundss purpose". While
Macromedia Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is a discontinuedExcept in China, where it continues to be used, as well as Harman for enterprise users. computer program for viewing multimedia c ...
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 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 developer A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with em ...
s 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 the site moved to
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
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 Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' ranked 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 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...
format rather than Flash. In November and December, it experienced surges of new members originally from
Tumblr Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...
when that site began restricting adult content after illegal
child pornography Child pornography (also abbreviated as CP, also called child porn or kiddie porn, and child sexual abuse material, known by the acronym CSAM (underscoring that children can not be deemed willing participants under law)), is Eroticism, erotic ma ...
was found on it, resulting in the Tumblr
iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...
app being removed from the
App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...
. 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 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 The Game Developers Choice Awards are awards annually presented at the Game Developers Conference for outstanding video game developer, game developers and video game, games. Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by ...
Pioneer Award for his contributions to establishing Newgrounds and subsequent work in The Behemoth. In September 2023, an update to 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). On October 8, 2024, Takeover Tuesday was introduced, where every Tuesday, Newgrounds supporters could put a submission onto the front page for that day. On February 1, 2025, ''"normal" bird'' - a crude drawing of a
bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...
- became the most reacted submission of all Takeover Tuesdays, with over 350 reactions by Newgrounds users. On May 12, 2025, controller mapping for Flash games was introduced, allowing for controller support to be introduced to Flash games which originally lacked it.


See also

* Internet art *
History of the Internet The history of the Internet originated in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet protocol suite, Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devi ...
* List of video game websites * Independent animation


Notes


References


Citations


Sources

* * * {{Cheltenham 2000s in Internet culture 2010s in Internet culture American entertainment websites Browser-based game websites Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania Flash games Free music download websites Art websites Internet forums Internet properties established in 1995 Image-sharing websites Companies based in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Websites about animation