There are a bunch of thoughts floating around in my brainpan about what to put here, so this will be a mix of history, credits, some liability discussion and FAQ. So without further ado…

So what does the name “gamepants” mean?

This was originally a Penny Arcade comic, which you can find here. Originally posted back in July, 2000. Yes, over twenty years ago. I’m old. I registered the domain in December of that year, which was when the original site concept was worked on.

So give us the history, captain.

The original site concept was a game review site, and spent some months accumulating reviews and a few people to help out with it. It never really gained any traction, but I loved the domain, and didn’t let it expire even after that. Some years later, around the time facebook was getting popular, I re-used the domain for its second life. I was playing many of the facebook/webgames like FarmVille and its ilk. All these games used timers to manage crops and spoilage and such, and I made a tool for tracking those timers and reminding you when to go deal with those events in game. It also never really reached critical mass, but I used it actively for months while playing those games. At some point, the site was hacked by script kiddies and I took it down again. Now it gets a third life.

Where does the phrase “We ask you gentlemen, consider the humble crate” come from?

In its game review site iteration, we had a number of “ratings” that each game would be considered on. One of them was the “crate” rating. Many games of the time were “cratey”, meaning that they were crates, boxes and such littering the environments, either as platforms to jump on, boxes to break open for loot/ammo/health, or whatever. Creative use of those crates contributed to this score. The quote itself is from a friend, Sen, who was on one of the MUDs I was admin of at the time, and she was helping with game reviewing, and the quote just stuck with me. Used with her permission. I still think its a great line.

Any other attributions/credits to mention?

Yeah, sure. I spent a bit of time looking for a nice background image. Everything I found was burdened with costs or what have you. I eventually found a series of images I liked on rawpixel. Many of the images there are unhindered by cost or copyright. I used about 6 of them, and made a layered, heavily filtered aggregate of all of them to make the background. I’m still not perfectly happy with it, but its a decent starting point, at any rate.

The wordpress theme is using the “Gamepad” theme, found here. I did purchase the theme, so there aren’t any restrictions on its use. I don’t have any particular association with Flexithemes. I’m sure there are plenty of other theme sites out there.

I use hostmonster.com for my site hosting, and I’ve been a steady customer of theirs for… I don’t even know how long anymore. At least 15 years. I don’t have any particular affiliate relationship with them, and don’t get any benefit from mentioning them, but I’ve been very happy with their support over the years, so I don’t hesitate to recommend them for hosting needs.

What about the content?

So … yeah. This is a public site, hosting content created by its users, meaning you. These are people’s OPINIONS. This is not a how-to-guide on how to make a game. This should not be considered a bible or set in stone. Potentially, there are things that worked for one person in their evolution as a game developer that won’t work for you. Or in fact, might just be flat out wrong given some changing technology or market condition. Neither this site, myself, or the original content creator are liable for what you do with this information, or what success or failure you may encounter as a result of taking (or ignoring) that advice. This should all be obvious. But I guess its worth just stating it to be clear.