HeavenGames
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HeavenGames Logo
Founded in 1996, HeavenGames (abbreviated online as HG) is a network of websites covering various genres of games, (primarily strategy games and citybuilding games). It is operated by the company Heavengames, LLC, which is owned by Tom “SpineMan” Mescher, Ho Yin “Zen” Au, and Matthew “Reckless Rodent” Lowe. The company's main source of revenue is generally online advertising, and some of its wide user base, including forum users, in turn provide an audience for the advertisements.
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Site Administration
As a network, HeavenGames provides separate websites for each game that the company chooses to cover. Each website, to retain affinity to the network, is named with the suffix “Heaven,” as in “Age of Empires Heaven.” The features provided to each website include a well maintained forum community (running on a highly modified UBB system), newspro, and a content management system.
HeavenGames currently covers (or in other words, has a website otherwise called a "Heaven" dedicated to covering to):
- Age of Empires (AoEH)
- Age of Empires III (AoE3H)
- Age of Kings (AoKH)
- Age of Mythology (AoMH)
- Age of Wonders (AoWH)
- Age of Wonders II (AoW2H)
- Caesar III (C3H)
- Children of the Nile (CotNH)
- Cossacks (CH)
- Dungeon Siege (DSH)
- Emperor:RotMK
- Empire Earth (EEH)
- Empires:DotMW
- Pharaoh (PH)
- Rome: Total War (RTWH)
- Rise of Nations (RoNH)
- Stronghold (SH)
- Stronghold 2 (SH2H)
- Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds (SWGBH)
- Zeus (ZH)
Moderation & Employees
HeavenGames employs non-paid volunteers whom are chosen from the forum community or gaming community surrounding each game covered. The employees are divided into four distinct groupings: Halos, Seraphs, Angels, and Cherubs.
Halos, consisting of two employees, "GillB" and "Jayhawk", and co-owner "Angel Zen", control the administrative, financial and other responsibilities of the network. The Halos keep in close contact with Heavengames' owners with "Draco" serving as the official legal advisor. Seraphs are the webmasters of each website whom handle the administrative, moderation and changes of their website. There is usually only one Seraph per Heaven, however, there have been some cases where this is not always true. One of the Halos used to be "Soc the Corrupted", who resigned from Haloship because he entered Harvard and will be busy.
Angels and Cherubs are the volunteers selected by the Seraphs to work at each individual website. The work selected for both groups is usually constricted to website content or forum moderation, depending upon their skills. The main difference between an Angel and a Cherub is the amount of access to the website: Angels tend to have FTP access, while Cherubs do not. Each grouping, (excluding the Halos) is assigned a separate username color for the forum communities: green for Cherubs, red for Angels, and orange for Seraphs. Halos do not have a specific color. while GillB and Angel Zen go under "Angel" status, Jayhawk goes under Seraph status, because he is the webmaster of many Heavens.
The moderation of the forums is controlled by the Forum Moderation Team (FMT), which is made up of several active moderators. The FMT, while not directly involved in the IP banning of a forumer, upholds the code of conduct in complaints, moderator abuse, and requests for parole (a form of moderation where a banned forumer may be given a second chance).
Contributions to the gaming community
As of 2005, the original HeavenGames webmaster, Mike "Archangel" McCart, works full-time for Ensemble Studios. Other HG webmasters hired to the gaming industry include Lila Yee, working for Microsoft doing online game marketing and promotion, and Graham Somers, hired by Big Huge Games to become their Public Relations manager. Stainless Steel Studios also hired several members of HeavenGames' community to test and develop Empire Earth and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. Take Two Interactive also hired another Heavengames staff member to foster public relations and feedback.
HeavenGames has played host to two beta tests and has also provided tools for game developers to aid in the beta testing process. Furthermore, each Heaven usually has abundant information on its respective game, as well as active participation by the several game developers.
Forum Communities
The forum communities at HeavenGames have been known to be highly dynamic – consisting of just over 100,000 members. There is some exchange of forum members (otherwise known as forumers) between different Heavens, as forums for the main site itself were eventually added and linked to from the forums on each Heaven, in the hopes of promoting inter-Heaven relationships. Consequently, there are forums dedicated to intellectual discussions, history, troubleshooting problems with computers and games, and Outside Discussions (OD), where forumers can gather just to socialise in an atmosphere with less stringent rules than other Heaven forums.
The demography of the forums traditionally has been greatly divided between the citybuilding and strategy genres, with the citybuilding community consisting mostly of middle-aged people, and the strategy areas consisting of teens and young adults. While the forums have been around since 1998, newer forumers often replace older-visiting forumers (oldies) in radical outbursts around the release of each website's game; albeit a few oldies tend to remain with HG afterwards.
The subculture of the forum community changes with each Heaven. As of 2005, the majority of topics made tend to be on questions, complaints or on recommendations for the improvement of each game. While the websites have a community discussion forum for their community alone, a majority of topics tend to be reported as repeated debates or spam-filled topics, although there have been popularized forum games or topics focusing on gaming community issues.
Outside Discussions
OD stands out from the other off-topic discussion forums on HeavenGames as it is not attached to any particular Heaven, and has comparatively lax rules governing it compared to similar forums. It evolved from the old offtopic forum at Age of Kings Heaven, which opened in 1999, was closed for several months due to immaturity among many members, and was reopened as Outside Discussions in April 2000. Angel Chris was the first regular moderator; he was eventually replaced by MeatloafX and others. After a string of disagreements over what topics could be discussed and the powers of moderators (which eventually resulted in many of the forummers leaving), Angel Zen held a vote on whether he should split the forum into several different forums or keep it as is. The status quo prevailed. In late 2002 the forum was moved to HG main and renamed Knights of the Round Table, after the old General Discussions forum at AoKH. In early 2003, the forum was archived and a new Outside Discussions forum was created.
The archives date back to the forum's opening circa 1999; one of the most famous threads there is the historic "Party Thread" where nonsense was strictly the rule (it was first posted in KoRT, but was later moved to the first incarnation of OD). It began with a post by then-Cherub Dimitrios, musing what things would be like if KoRT was real life, and wondering how various forumers would behave. The thread was the first in HeavenGames history to reach over 10,000 replies, eventually making it problematic for HG's servers, which led to its locking.
OD's members come from a wide spectrum of the various Heavens, although most of them can trace their pasts back to the original KoRT or Outside Discussions on AoKH. Most of OD's members pride themselves on being weird and unusual, and will give newbies (new users) a hard time, more so if they behave in a n00bish manner.
OD's current moderators are "GillB", "Ultima Knight", "Berend", and "Angel Chris", although a plebeian group of selected forumers are in the officially-sanctioned Core Group (CG). The Core Group is a liaison between the forumers and the moderators, a sort of "middle ground". They get a custom title identifying them as people a new forummer can turn to for help. The Core Group has received some opposition from certain forumers, who feel that it does not serve a strong enough purpose to exist.
OD has become infamous in HeavenGames lore for being a place where users are permitted to run amok, this perception not being helped by the odd behavior of several OD members. OD is particularly intolerant of what they view as n00bish behavior such as posting as though one were in an America Online chatroom, and most senior members do not refrain from flaming users if they feel it is appropriate, leading to the harsh perception of OD by outsiders. Some offenses that would merit a ban on other Heavens usually result in a warning on OD; however, OD's moderators insist that the Forum Code of Conduct is applied in OD just as it is on other Heavens, but is interpreted more loosely to account for OD's unique culture.
The culture of OD has been subjected to fads over the four or five years of its existence; some of the more enduring jokes have included the kicking of Rasher's (a forumer) genitalia, the sexual orientation of a right-wing forummer under the screenname of F18Fett, and the forming of unusual religions which have deified things such as cutlery and Disney characters.
Another popular fad that later became an elaborate piece of collaborative fiction was Cannibal Island, the first incarnation of which was popular from June 7 to July 2, 2000. In various threads, forumers would roleplay or narrate, typically in script shorthand format, their fictional actions in a fantasy scenario where some had turned to cannibalism, with each entry into the ongoing scenario building upon the developments of the prior entry. Eventually, Cannibal Island would continue to be reincarnated until it eventually lost its popularity on another message board separate from (yet with relation to) HeavenGames.
A recurring topic in the forum has been forum politics, the high point of which was reached circa 2000 when a number of active forumers held an election and formed a congress, which seriously debated legislation relating to the management of the forum for a while. Eventually, certain forumers became upset by the direction in which the congress was heading, and the congress was disbanded.
However, the forum politics fad refused to die, and has cropped up on several occasions; a fixture in them after 2002 was legion, a Korean New Zealander, who led several parties including the Sheep Party and the KORT Soviet, as well as a Stalinist, Islamic micronation he called Kortica. There was a substantial minority, mostly consisting of the Dillo Party which had held the reins of power beforehand, that insisted elections held after 2001 were invalid, as they had not been sanctioned by the elected President, but these charges were, more often than not, ignored. There was also a brief rebellion against Kortica, initiated by a forummer by the screenname of "Underpants Man", but it has been subdued for the time being.
Many other fads have been started at OD, but the common trend is simply a group of people seeking entertainment. In that purpose, OD was, is, and will continue to be a prominent fixture within HeavenGames.
See also
External links
- HeavenGames (http://heavengames.com/)
- Outside Discussions (http://www.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=t&fn=1)