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<title>loonygames: five years and still going strong! Minus the updates, of course.1</title>
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<h2 align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">A few thoughts about</font></h2>
<p align="center"><a href="index_old.php" target="_self"><img src="content/images/logo_color_transparent.gif" width="442" height="177" border="0" alt="click here to jump to the archives"></a> 
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<h2 align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> on its fifth anniversary.</font></h2>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">(<a href="index_old.php">if 
  you don't care, click here to jump to the archives</a>)</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>August 25, 2003</b></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good lord, can you believe it's been <i>five years</i> since the start of loonygames? 
How about that, huh?</font></p>

<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Back in 1998, I had this really bizarre idea for a gaming site. It wouldn't be game-specific, and it wouldn't be news. It would be actual, real <i>content</i>, updated daily, with the kind of quirky reviews and articles I wanted to read, along with developers themselves talking directly to the fans of their games. I wanted to create the kind of site that didn't exist at the time, and I called in every contact I had throughout the industry to help create it. </font></p>

<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The result of course, was loonygames. Over the two and a half years that loonygames published (minus a short summer hiatus halfway through), the loonygames team (which was spread far and wide around the globe) generated some 1,400 pages of original, often completely unusual content. loonygames content has been reprinted in magazines, books and scholarly journals around the world, and I still get contacted from time to time from people just finding our little archive here on the web. Numerous people have told me about how loonygames helped them get into the gaming industry, and to this day there is nothing that makes me feel better than knowing I had some small affect on a person's career. </font></p>

<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">loonygames was very much a personal project for me, and I when I say that I don't mean to take credit for the very hard work of others, which was obviously the reason this site had content to run in the first place. What I mean is that some of my oldest and dearest friends worked on the site, not to mention my sister. Heck, I even married a loonygames contributor!</font></p>

<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The content contained on this site has grown increasingly outdated, but thanks to <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a> new people are finding it every day, and certain articles, like <a href="http:/home/loonygames/loonygames.com/content/1.2/feat/">Jeff Solomon's Sick of Games piece</a> or <a href="content/1.11/guest/index.html">Tricia Gray's Guest Editorial about Lara Croft</a>, have a timeless air to them and will no doubt continue to be referenced time and again, year after year. If you've never read through the archives here, you may find much of it too old to be relevant. But still, things like <a href="content/1.36/feat/index.html">my exhaustive history of Raven Software</a> or <a href="content/1.28/feat/index.html">our excellent piece on Roguelikes</a> have aged quite well (even if the Raven article stops short with the original Soldier of Fortune).  </font></p>

<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I frequently get asked if I'm going to bring back loonygames, and sadly, that's not going to happen any time soon, if ever. The economics of the web have changed so much in these five years that a project of this scope simply isn't feasible. I'd be lying if I said I don't get ideas for new and exciting loonygames-style content, but I don't have the time to devote to something like that anymore. Still, this stuff is in my blood, and things like <a href="http://www.shacknews.com/extras/lncex/lncex7.x">this article I wrote for Shacknews earlier this year</a> have a tendency to pop up from time to time. And who knows...maybe there is another issue or two of loonygames left in me. It may just take another five years. </font></p>

<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Until then, stay loony!</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">-Jason &quot;<a href="mailto:jason@loonygames.com">loonyboi</a>&quot; 
  Bergman</font></p>
<p align="left">&nbsp;</p>


<p align="left">&nbsp;</p>
<p align="left"><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Even though 
  it's not updated at the moment, loonygames is still (C) 2003 <a href="http://www.loonyboi.com/">loonyboi 
  productions</a>. All archived content is owned by its original author(s) and 
  unauthorized reproduction will not be tolerated. Grr! </font></i></p>

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