I once had a site known as Cinema du Comical Cartoon Calamities that had stick figure deaths in both animated GIF and Flash format. For a while now I’ve wanted to re-upload my old Flash movies just for old time’s sake but due to security restrictions, I’m unable to upload them to WordPress. So I’ve had to look for other ways to get my movies back online.
I’ve had an account at Newgrounds since 2001 and hadn’t used it much in recent years. I gave some thought to using it again to share my classic Flash movies, so I started by re-uploading The Scooter Ride of Doom, an early effort back when I was really into making Flash movies.
The thing about Newgrounds is that its users are very picky about what user-submitted content stays on the site and what goes. I was confident that Scooter Ride was silly and original enough to get a high enough score to stay online indefinitely. Sure enough, after I submitted the movie, it started out by getting a 2-star rating before going up to 3 stars. So far, so good.
Feeling confident that Scooter Ride was getting well-received, I uploaded a second movie, Interactive Stick Death, in which you’re presented with a menu for controlling the action. This was my first attempt at creating an interactive Flash movie and I thought it worked well enough to share with the world.
Shortly after I submitted the movie, it got a 2-star rating, and it too rose up to 3 stars as more people watched it.
Finally, this morning I uploaded a third movie called Winter Wonderland that starts by showing a tranquil winter scene before it’s suddenly taken over by evil tomatoes dancing to the theme song from “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”. I thought it was a very lighthearted and funny movie that the Newgrounds community would enjoy.
This evening, when I came home from work, I checked my e-mail and was notified that Interactive Stick Death was removed due to low user ratings. When I checked on how my other two movies were doing, I saw that they were both getting very low scores, sure signs that they too would be removed. So I went ahead and removed the movies myself. As of right now, I have no movies on Newgrounds and unfortunately, it’s going to stay that way.
Ultimately, my decision to use Newgrounds to share my old movies for old time’s sake was a mistake. I just wanted to share my movies, period, and not compete with other animators or accumulate an insane number of points. Now I remember why I stopped using Newgrounds in the first place.
Newgrounds, you’ve been blammed.
MJBDiver.com 