What is the Newgrounds Review?
It is a small independent review that I'll be making of the features of Newgrounds every time I "feel like it", or around once every 2 months, or maybe even once per month.
I've also included a list of favorite users below...
List of favorite users:
Asandir - Well....because he's a good user, but it's a shame he's crossed 6000 posts in this short duration of time. He's even ahead of POTaTOS by almost double...to think that POTaTOS posted a lot..tch tch.
Narcissy - Well....once upon a time, he was a famous user, along with the others below, but the limelight was stolen...by (guess who!) plus, he was almost a team member in the Game Jam 5
Bilalz - Because he's a nice user.
hongkongexpress - For blocking me from his PM delibrately
JohnnyDamon - You mad bro?
Dean - An overall nice user. Allegedly "knew me on newgrounds" before my username change.
MercatorMapV2 - Because he's JohnnyDamon's alt.
Gimmick's former account, Gimmick - Because he was the person who didn't contribute to newgrounds and so allowed Sanjeev98 to change to the user Gimmick.
Without further ado, let's start already, I've got a load of work on my hands so I'd finish it fast...
The flash portal
While the concept of "voting on flash" is good, it may be flawed as it can be abused -- people who hate a flash may communicate with others to create a network that mass-votes flash either zero or five, with the former being widespread before. Tom suggested that it may be removed in the new version of Newgrounds (after the redesign), but it will still be abusable as many accounts can be created and replaced every day. It is yet to be seen whether there's a leak-proof solution for this.
The audio portal
This is a good idea -- people can submit audio as part of their portfolio, thus increasing their chances of being seen, and also removes the monotony of Newgrounds as a flash portal only and gives more people a chance, if they don't have flash. However, it's yet to be known why voting on audio does not give you experience points, and why the audio goes through a vetting stage by a mod rather than by having a judgement stage like in the flash portal. This may be a temporary solution to the "abusable" voting in the flash portal, but I've noticed from experience that most audio takes weeks and when approved, would usually have a score that depends on the average amount of votes and the vote itself. So for example, if there are zero votes and one person (usually the author) votes five on it, then the overall score is 5. I still have some doubts on this matter as to why this system has been used. The judging by a mod does not allow for the "instant" submission to the audio portal.
The art portal
While this expands the choices and portfolios of users, it is much more than just strange as to why there has to be a "scouting" feature for the art portal before it can be voted upon -- why can't it "pass judgement" and then see if it passes? That way, more people can vote on art, and if it turns out that it is abused for more experience points, then it can be divided equally into 3 -- vote on 5 flash for 3.33 experience points, vote on 5 art submissions for 3.33 more experience points, and then finally vote on 5 audio submissions to get the grand total of 10 experience points. The "unscouting" feature isn't not notorious either -- I remember an event in which a group of hackers hacked Egoraptor's account and unscouted all his scouted artists. While the damage was reversable, it certainly brings into question what kind of system and users Newgrounds is dealing with.
The Collections, Games and Series
While they do have a good amount of flash and collections listed there, I've noticed some of them have not been updated in a long time, say 2 years minimum. There is one blammed flash in the "Gadgets" section of the "games" part, but the lack of it being removed just shows what kind of load (or laziness?) the staff has; Tom recently mentioned that it would be replaced with a new system with new tags, but since it's not to be released until after the redesign, and since the redesign itself isn't showing much progress (no due date, seriously?) and Tom wasn't giving many updates as of recently, the fact that there might even be a redesign may be brought into question.
The userpages
While I went to the Wayback! Archive recently, I went to the times of 2007, and saw that Tom announced that userpages were finally finished, and to be frank, it's quite a nice touch, seeing as userpages give more access to a person's personal portfolio, and it's the reason why you're reading this; however, the userpages are quite bland, and I do not understand why we can't have animated icons or profile pictures for users who joined 2009 or later (it might even be for users below or on 2008). I recently saw in the Wi/Ht? forum that they will be introducing it again in the redesign; however frequent references to the redesign make me doubt there is going to be one at all. Don't mind me; if you've seen a sneak peek you're good to follow that belief, as I'm a bit of a pessimist myself.
The forums
This is one such thing that brought me alive on Newgrounds. It's guaranteed to always (well, maybe not always) be alive and kicking full of topics; this accounts for 99% of the entertainment value that I obtain from Newgrounds as a website -- I tend to not play the flash unless it involves medals, really. The users on the forums may or may not be horrible, but it's really their problem, not ours; the mods do a good job of maintaining the forums, and if in case they do overlook something, then we're all more than glad to help...unless that user is the OP of the thread concerned.
The users
While some of the users are very nice, such as Asandir, Suprememessage and Chdonga (for example) there are other users who have two faces -- one on the forums and one for the rest of Newgrounds. Now, this might sound harsh, but I'm telling the plain truth when I say this: All users are retarded. There are no exceptions. I'm a retard, you're a retard, Tom's a retard, Wade's a retard, everyone on Newgrounds is. I'm not one who judges people, and just to prove that I don't like to call users retards, I put myself up on that list, possibly #1. I've also noticed they don't read long walls of text such as these.
The store
While I haven't been to the newgrounds store at all, I'm quite convinced it's a nice way to show that you're a true fan of newgrounds...and by what other way than buying items from keychains to shirts to video games! The box that shows how much you've spent is overkill though; you can brag about it and I, being a modest person myself, don't like that -- it's as if you're claiming you're better than X person because you bought Y amount more than him or her.
The ad API
Having been a user of the flash advertisement API myself, it is quite nice, however it would be nice if the rules were changed so that the amount earned was paid at the end of every month...regardless of whether it crosses $50 or not. I feel like I'm getting the part that's not the lion's, and that newgrounds is rather earning more than me in that, but I don't care about it much, it's good that it's there at all, but I don't see why they say that you "have a higher chance of reaching the front page" if you choose their API; it's quite biased really.
The Medal API
Approval takes a lot of time, and even though I understand that this is to confirm whether the medals are actually worth it (waiting 4 hours? seriously?), but since the admins don't have any if at all time on their hands, it may be weeks before any medals can be approved.
Thanks to MikeyS9607 for suggesting.
The dumping grounds
This was a feature that I truly loved. Rather than having to go to SWFcabin and upload my SWF files there, and risking them getting deleted at any time, I know my files are going to be permanent on the Newgrounds Dumping grounds unless I delete them manually. However, this raises the question: If hackers hack into your account and delete your precious files from the dump, then should there be a confirmation mail for it? Why? Why not? For one, it shows that your account was hacked, and for two, it showed that even though they breached your account, your files were saved, but it might be tedious to delete a file, go to your email, confirm, rinse and repeat; therefore there should be an option to choose whether you want that or not.
The News Posts
I've seen that many users' news posts are mostly about rants, or whatnot, but when there are some strikingly good ones -- such as Asandir's post and possibly this post, and there's one small thing that's either a mistake or something else, it tends to derail the post completely. There are over 100 comments on Asandir's userpage, but 42+ are by one user and only around 43 are about the topic in concern. The rest are just about batcat.
Possible features for the redesign?
I did mention that the redesign may be unlikely, but I've heard about some features that are going to be in Newgrounds after the redesign. I'll review the ones I've heard of:
1) [Unity] may overtake flash -- Now, 3D may be tougher than 2D and I have no idea of how Unity works, but the last thing I want is complete takeover of Unity and the thwarting of Flash from Newgrounds. The risks are low, but if thousands of 3D games are made in Unity, then they'd have a higher pass rate than Flash, because of the fact it's 3D. I may be wrong because it may be tough to make games in Unity; however, that's not up to me.
2) [Wide site layout] -- While this may benefit people who have huge monitors like I had, it certainly will NOT help people stuck with old 1024x768 screen resolutions, and certainly not people with small screens.
3) [Bluish theme] -- I don't know how this will be, but I do want a gray theme switch, because truth be told, I've grown up with this gray theme and goes easy on my eyes at night.
That's all the rumours I've heard for now.
The end....for now?
That's all for now; if you've read until this point, props to you, and stay tuned for Newgrounds Review 2! If you hate me after reading this, go on, do what you want, but I'll just continue posting my honest opinions. Disagree, agree, build upon or state whatever you want in the comments.
P.S And yes Lintire I do plan on completing Newgrounds Review 2 after the redesign.
