PlanetCrap is a Web discussion forum created by Hendrik Mans, known as Morn. It is ostensibly concerned with discussing computer games, although its content varies almost as much as the Internet itself. Growing out of the Unreal community, it has always remained slightly less reputable than its peers. It has mostly stable group of regular contributors, some of whom have remained there since the site's inception in 1998.

History

Its origins can be traced back to unreal.org, one of the early Web forums to spring up for the PC game Unreal

Unreal

Unreal is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive in May 1998...

. Unreal.org's principals were Morn, Max (who now runs Massivebraincase), Jeet (later to become UncleJeet), Sumbry, Darkblade and SteveD. Editorial content was handled mostly by Max and Jeet, with Morn providing Webmastering and other technical expertise, while the other three were involved in a related online radio show entitled UnrealAudio. Unreal.org was shut down on July 19, 1998, and not coincidentally PlanetCrap started in 1998 with most of unreal.org's users switching over.

Given that it was not part of any other larger network and was not being operated for profit, unlike GameSpy or many other competing sites, PlanetCrap was able to develop an outsider's perspective. This came to a head during the time Andy Smith was producing many topics. The subjects of Smith's topics were increasingly regarded as inflammatory, culminating in a thread in which George Broussard

George Broussard

George Broussard is a game producer and designer known in the PC game community as one of the creators of the Duke Nukem series ....

 made a statement concerning screenshots This cemented PlanetCrap's reputation for vitriol and anarchy. Smith left the site shortly after.

Notable contributors

PlanetCrap's content has traditionally centered around computer games. In its early years, it hosted lively discussions between many noted developers, journalists, mod creators and regular users. Among the regular developer posters were: Warren Marshall, Tim Sweeney

Tim Sweeney (game developer)

Tim Sweeney, born in 1970, is a computer game programmer and the founder of Epic Games, being best known for his work on ZZT and the Unreal Engine....

 and Brandon Reinhardt of Epic Games

Epic Games

Epic Games, Inc., also known as Epic and formerly Epic MegaGames, is an American video game development company based in Cary, North Carolina. Its most recent success has been the Gears of War series of games, although it is also known for its Unreal Engine technology. It is the parent company of...

; George Broussard

George Broussard

George Broussard is a game producer and designer known in the PC game community as one of the creators of the Duke Nukem series ....

 and Scott Miller

Scott Miller (programmer)

Scott Miller is an American entrepreneur best known for founding Apogee Software, Ltd. in 1987.- Personal life :...

 of 3D Realms

3D Realms

3D Realms is a current video game publisher and former video game developer based in Garland, Texas, United States, established in 1987...

; Petri Jarvilehto of Remedy; Derek Smart

Derek Smart

Derek K. Smart is the president and lead developer of 3000AD, Inc., a video game developer based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In addition he is president of Quest Online involved in the MMO Alganon. He is an independent video game designer and software developer, and the creator of the...

; JeanPaul LeBreton of Human Head Studios

Human Head Studios

Human Head Studios is a computer game development company located in Madison, Wisconsin.It was founded in October 1997 by a group of six developers formerly from Raven Software: Chris Rhinehart, Paul MacArthur, Shane Gurno, Ben Gokey, James Sumwalt, and Ted Halsted—later joined by game producer Tim...

 and Irrational Games

Irrational Games

Irrational Games is a video game developer founded in 1997 by three former employees of Looking Glass Studios: Ken Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier as Irrational Games...

; Aubrey "Bezzy" Hesselgren of Ludopathic/Amorphous Games (now Splash Damage

Splash Damage

Splash Damage is an independently-owned British game development company that specializes in multiplayer first-person shooter games. The studio is best known as the creator of the Enemy Territory franchise for id Software.-History:...

); Caryn "Hellchick" Law of Raven Software

Raven Software

Raven Software is an American video game developer. The company was founded in 1990 by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel. In 1997, Raven made an exclusive publishing deal with Activision and was subsequently acquired by them...

 and Katherine Anna Kang

Katherine Anna Kang

Katherine Anna Kang is a video game industry figure, machinima film producer, designer, entrepreneur and business woman. In 2000, as founder and CEO of Fountainhead Entertainment she championed machinima and became known as one of machinima’s biggest supporters...

 of id Software

Id Software

Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...

.

Controversy and content

• PlanetCrap has traditionally had several hot-button issues. Anything to do with Unreal was, given its roots, guaranteed to be interesting to readers. Due to the high amount of game industry posters, threads on technical issues were usually well-informed.
• A strong theme of attack of gaming Web sites developed early, with many topics criticizing the gradual commercialization of GameSpy
  GameSpy
  GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
  
  . Many operators of fan sites which had been brought into the GameSpy network used PC to air their grievances. As time went on, however, this antagonism has softened and a good many current and former Game Industry "journalists" have populated the site. A related stream of threads have decried the so-called "Ctrl-C-Ctrl-V" (copy and paste) journalism practiced by sites such as Blues News, Voodoo Extreme and Shacknews
  Shacknews
  Shacknews, commonly referred to as "The Shack", is a website offering news, features, editorial content, and forums relating to computer games and console games. Shacknews and its sister site, FileShack, are currently owned by GameFly...
  
  .
• Over the past two or three years PlanetCrap's core community has dwindled to just a handful of regular posters, with some semi-regular posters and occasionally a very few random posters. This apparent cliquishness combined with PlanetCrap's traditional tendency towards the snide and sarcastic to give the forum an air of impenetrability to newcomers, and means that very few new posters join the ranks of regulars.

Site design

The software Hendrik Mans wrote to run PC is now at version 6.0 and is named "blah". While Mans has fiddled with some format changes over the years, the basic design has mostly stayed the same: 10 topics on the front page submitted either by users or mods which link to discussion threads which are notorious for diverging early and often from the subject matter of the original thread starter. For most of the site's life thread-starting articles had to be approved by mods, but version 6.0 included a voting feature whereby topics could be voted in by getting the majority of an undisclosed number of votes by users.

Offshoot projects

Mans has developed several other sites which at one point were tied into his own network, such as an online radio station called CrapRadio which has since been discontinued. There is also an IRC channel connected to the site, of which only half of the usual idlers are also regular posters at PC - the channel #planetcrap can be found at irc.mandog.com. The two current moderators of the site, Morn and Gabe Kruger, also partner in a game development venture called Refracted Mandog with several other PlanetCrap denizens. Gabe developed a reader for PC called OpenCrap, following on from an earlier standalone reader called CrapSpy. Jibble has started an indexing service for PC called CrapSifter.