History of the Fraxy Community
From Fraxy Compendium Redux
Somewhat updated, though it could still use quite a bit of work to become "NPoV".
Contents |
The Beginning
In order to gain an appreciation of the community, one must go back to the beginning of Fraxy.
It all began on May 27, 2006 when an obscure, Japanese freeware game called Fraxy was released upon the internet, created by someone called "Mon" on his site. Fraxy is a rare and unique game not only in the shmup genre but for all games in general. A short description of Fraxy is it's an arena shooter where almost every aspect of the game can be customized. The main draw is the Boss editor, though a "Try" scenario editor also exists. This extremely flexible program lets you create almost any boss you want, using various plates, weapons, cores and joints. Over time, Fraxy is constantly upgraded with new versions which have included more plates and tips, more exact turning joints, cores, weapons, and the like. Also added is an event system which just further increases the flexibility and possibilities.
Fraxy was very popular when it was released and gained notoriety on several forums, most notably Somewhere Awful where there were several large threads with people posting their creations. It was also well reviewed by several Freeware Game sites including Shoot The Core, Independent Gaming, and The Independent Gaming Source. One site even rated Fraxy as Best Freeware Game of 2007 due to it's rare style and great potential.
It didn't take long before people started posting their creations on YouTube, although this stayed relatively moderate until late 2007 where videos became more fancy. There were some pioneers on YouTube, such as JPteeto, DrunkenGoomba, and AT0M1C who laid the groundwork for future YouTube posters.
Eventually, it came to a point where Fraxy deserved a site dedicated to showcasing others' creations.
The Early Community
A few months after Fraxy became known, a PBWiki was created by some members of Something Awful as a central place on the internet that would showcase Fraxy creations. Although it didn't gain a lot of notoriety, it was the first site of it's kind and would eventually be followed by another PBWiki that had much more success, The Fraxy Compendium.
The Fraxy Compendium was created by JPteeto and was created with the idea of being a dedication to Fraxy where others could add their content and post their creations for others to download and play. JPteeto managed to gather members from YouTube viewers and others discovered it by searching or word of mouth.
The Compendium gained some popularity and members began to suggest things for the Wiki and also began to create special pages showcasing other features for the community. Prime examples of these are the Parts Information and What IS Fraxy? pages which were designed to be assistant references for onlookers. This was also important because even though Fraxy was available in English by this point, there were many features of Fraxy that took some observation in order to understand, which may dissuade others from playing it. Also, Zeta stated communications with Mon, the creator of Fraxy which resulted in him becoming the unofficial ambassador for the community. These pages made things much easier for others. Many would call this the Golden Age of the community.
Expansions
There were several projects that dealt with enhancing the Fraxy experience, the most notable of these being FraxyForever, metaFraxy, and azFraxy. Although none of the projects were fully completed, it was still an important show of dedication to Fraxy and the community. Even outside of the community, projects were worked on. One notable one is Gradius Legends, by a member of Gradius Homeworld who had created a massive graphic edit of the player and parts files and made many different Gradius related skins for the player ship.
At around the middle of 2007, three things were established that attempted to expand the potential of the community. One was the creation of the Fraxy Forums by epicfraxy and the creation of the Fraxy Academy by ultimatepower22. While the forum was good it didn't stand the test of time as well as the Academy, which will be talked about later. Also established was the Fraxy Expansion Pack by gemstonehelix which was designed for the purpose of helping with the space constraints and download and upload times of the Compendium due to how large it had grown.
There was one limitation in the initial PBWiki setup, that being unregistered Wikis were limited to 100 MB of space. At first this wasn't an issue, but as the number of members bloomed and the creations came on, space was quickly becoming an issue. In an effort to help dissuade this from occurring, Bukkarooo set up his own free site dedicated solely to showcasing his bosses and take that much load off of the Compendium.
It would be around mid 2008 though when things changed and became quite... interesting.
The Dark Age
It is an unfortunate trend in the history of civilizations that there are two major periods that seem to happen relatively close to one another, their Golden Age and their Dark Age. The Compendium was no exception to this rule.
As time went on, it was nearing the 100 MB size limit for the Wiki and it was decided by JPteeto that the Compendium needed to expand. So in late 2007, he spent approximately $90 and upgraded the Wiki, resulting in a huge size increase of 1 GB in addition to advanced features. This added capability allowed the community to add additional things to the Wiki, including the Theme of The Month and, of course, more members. All was well with the community, that is until mid 2008.
People began to notice that JPteeto was not as active in the community as before, in fact it was almost sudden as several months after the upgrade he seemed to have disappeared. Normally this was not a major problem but for the community it was. JPteeto was the sole admin for the Wiki, meaning that he alone had the ability to do major changes to the Wiki that no one else would be able to carry out. This including restoring deleted pages, which just about anyone could do at will. Understandably, this became a major issue for the Wiki. To this day, there is no explanation for JPteeto's absence, with the assumption that real life issues took precedence and he had no time to explain what happened. As one noted: "No notices or anything, just vanished. We were left to our own devices, like a god had created a world of sentient beings, helped it get started, and backed off, leaving only fond memories." To whatever endeavors he went through, we wish him well.
Since this was a potential major problem (which thankfully was never realized as of this date), long time community member NightKev, with the assistance of Nutman217, Screature, Bukkarooo, Kironide, and CrossTheRubicon, began to campaign for a new Wiki that was originally designed to be a backup source that would have more user control, site admins, and sufficient security that the Compendium lacked. This Wiki is the Fraxy Compendium Redux, where you're currently reading this article at.
With that, movement preparations began.
The Short Move
The Redux was the conception of two people, NightKev who was a long time Compendium member, and Arbe whom NightKev had met on board2 (or some time before) who had also dabbled with Fraxy. They had decided that they would bring on the community and give us an additional bonus, a veritable base of operations in GenericBoard, a board that was created by Arbe and was similar to board2. Arbe and NightKev had created a dedicated Fraxy section and also set up an IRC channel dedicated solely to Fraxy.
GenericBoard was a good place where we had established ourselves and began to rebuild and help out. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the point of view), the movement was much more slower than originally expected, being stretched out for some time. The community was also damaged, becoming stagnant with only a few members coming over and even fewer joining. Still the emphasis was in conversion instead of member gathering. Even so, Zeta continued to converse with Mon and his feedback was noted, giving hope for continued cooperation and stability.
It was around this time that the YouTube Fraxy roleplayers came into prevalence, having created a number of scenarios and stories surrounding the various creations. This is the general purpose of the Fraxy Academy, being a central resource for Fraxy roleplaying. The Academy was also created out of members from the Compendium and as noted was most active on the YouTube scene.
Some time after being established on GenericBoard, it was hacked several times but unknown sources which resulted in the rollout of a new iteration of GenericBoard, aptly called GenericBoard v2, which was built upon the original GenericBoard but boosted security measures. Parts of the board were beyond repair but was replaced all the same and the Wiki gained additional functionality with NightKev and Arbe's help. However, something occurred that once again shook the foundations.
The Present
About three months afterward during a disagreement over major issues, GenericBoard v2 was slated for destruction and the Wiki and community was relegated to board2, GenericBaord's de facto rival. All information and the Wiki were transferred to board2 and lucky for the remaining members, were welcomed and encouraged to help board2 flourish. Once again, the Wiki was eventually reconnected and a section for Fraxy was established. It turned out that a good number of board2 people had been playing Fraxy for some time and were former Compendium members themselves so they followed the activities of the community and also understood the rapid decay of the situation.
Unfortunately, this sudden move had critically damaged whatever stability was left and a number of members disappeared, most notably Zeta who has still not returned, and AT0M1C and Screature, who had other issues to deal with. Reconstructing the Wiki and the community was set as top priority and was very slow at first. Massive campaigns were set up in an attempt to regather old members and also to get the attention of new ones. This was not progressing too well until about two months ago, when several key people came back, one being AT0M1C.
Gladly, the community is mostly back and it is flourishing again with, as of 04/15/09, with 40+ members and expecting more. In addition to this, the Fraxy Academy was rediscovered with the discovery of another forum called the Unofficial Fraxy Forum, established by The2Banned2One. It is the hope of all that the three sections combine to form one complete community that will expand the potential of the community to great heights.
Noted Redux Personnel
NightKev and Kironide are the community heads, with CrossTheRubicon being the "PR" person, so-to-speak. Bukkarooo is still a moderator, and Screature is MIA.
Other Information
- What is Fraxy? - A more through explanation of Fraxy located here.
- Shoot Em Up on Fraxy - Shoot Em Up's description of Fraxy.
