TheConsoler:About
From TheConsoler
Contents |
Our Purpose
To become the most comprehensive Non-Profit Video Game Specific Encyclopedia ever created. Focusing not only on the cold hard facts regarding our subjects, but delving into the passion, culture, and community of video games. Including details, media, and fun facts we feel other sites may deem 'unimportant' but we feel the enthusiast cares about. Whether it be a complete archiving of NES games, or a detailed description of every issue of Nintendo Power, we hope to have you covered.
What Sets Us Apart
The Passion and dedication to become the most comprehensive resource for video game enthusiast to turn to without restrictions. Everything on this site is meant to be shared, used, spread, and hopefully added to. We will never watermark an image, we will never demand link backs, we will never advertise to you or let others. This is your site.
We're not the first, we don't claim to be original, our simple goal is to gather any and all information and formulate it into one location, without the censorship, without the restrictions, without the advertisements, without the rules and regulations of other sites, all in one destination.
How We Got Started
The Start
The Console[r] was started by myself, Robert Bowling in Jan. 2007 as a personal online database of information on video games which I could access anywhere. I work for a video game developer (Infinity Ward / Activision) as well as do quite a bit of blogging on the side (My Blog) where I would find myself constantly referencing and researching video games past and present. I was tired of searching through hundreds of enthusiast sites, forums, blogs, and often abandoned freeweb fansites for random video games and franchises to gather information and wanted one location that I could access all that information with no hassle.
Every time I would research a game I would often create a folder on my desktop for it, and save all the information, videos, images, and other media I would find on them in that folder for future reference just in case. I eventually decided it would be great to have all that information online for me to link to, or reference anytime from anywhere. So I started uploading them all to my server and found my self referencing it all quite a bit more in my personal blog and figured other video game bloggers, journalist, or straight up video game fanatics like myself would really appreciate it; hence the start of The Console[r].
Crafting The Concept
One thing was for sure, I didn't want to just be a copy of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia has a lot of great information, much of which can and will be found here, it's lacking in the overall feel of the enthusiast. The Wikipedia philosophy of censorship on it's articles by it's editors made it a less than ideal place to celebrate the culture of video games.
The Console[r] was to be a place where you could get the straight up facts on a game, as well as the fun tid bits of information that may not be as important as facts, but is still fun to learn about. As well as find media, images, videos of gameplay, and other things us of the video game nerdcore find enjoyable.
The Creation
Once I committed to the idea to take it public was around Jan. 2007. Regretfully my personal schedule stepped in the way with the development of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare took first priority at work leaving me very little time to work on the site. Over the next 7 months I slowly but surely uploaded cover art, screen shots, magazine scans, videos, and more to the database. I eventually scanned in every issue of Nintendo Power from the first issue in 1988 to Present, with the ultimate goal of breaking every issue down by its Table of Contents and summarizing the big games of every issue, with mini-versions of all the in-magazine posters and fold outs. I wanted to make sure any community of contributors who might be interested in helping build on The Console[r]'s meek beginnings would have a solid foundation to build from.
Meanwhile, I've been working on hand inputting in templates for games on every system and uploading cover art for as many games as I could in my free time. Eventually it was time to go public. I had set up a nice foundation, and got a nice system in place to allow more people to help take the reins and make this into a full fledge gaming community, which is where we are now.
Lets Grow!
Contact Us
Email: editor at theconsoler.com
