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			Fan sites. As a computer gamer where would you be without these trusted friends of the online community? If there ever was a time where you found yourself desperately searching the Web for cheat codes, strategies, or pre-release game news, then you know how important they are. Fan sites give a voice to the folks that are in the trenches, actually playing the game. Folks that have honed their skills to razor sharp intensity with countless hours of gameplay. And while you wouldn't want to meet most of them in some unknown game lobby for a late night deathmatch, they are indispensable for providing something that the polished, marketing constrained "official" sites simply cannot deliver - unbiased opinion and a fresh-faced enthusiasm for gaming in general. The Web Team recently had the opportunity to talk with one such individual. Jeff, Webmaster to the Outwars Fan Site - Drop Ship Icarus, was gracious enough to take time out of his schedule and answer a few questions. This is what he had to say. Gamesweb: So, the basics first. How old are you, where did you go to school, what's your "daytime" job. Jeff: I'm 39, went to Niskayuna High School in Schenectady, NY and twiddled around in five years of college at three universities with about nine different majors without ever managing to graduate. I did manage to fail one computer class and squeaked by with a D in the only other one I took. This of course qualifies me to be a network administrator for the City of Naples, Florida, where I watch over about 180 workstations and 11 servers on a Windows NT network with odd attachments to an AS/400, Sun Unix box, and of course, the Internet. Gamesweb: How long have you been playing computer games? What was the game that started it all for you? Favorite games to date? Jeff: I've been playing computer games since the late 1970's and before that wargames from Avalon Hill and SPI, as well as Napoleonic and Naval miniatures, plus a start-up fantasy-type game called Dungeons and Dragons. Our gaming club chipped in and got Gary Gygax and David(?) Blume to ride a bus out from Wisconsin to play Dungeons and Dragons and Empire of the Petal Throne (A D&D-type game) over a long weekend with us. That weekend, somebody had brought a terminal which we hooked to the pay phone via an acoustic modem and dialed in to the computers at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, to play Adventure, the first real computer game I'd played. Later on I bought a Bally Arcade system and learned Bally Basic to program my own adventure game, graduated to a Vic-20 and then Commodore 64, and eventually homebuilt an IBM-XT clone so I could play Empire. So computer gaming got me into my current career. Games that have stuck with me over the years have been the original Zork series, Mule on the C64, the Ultima series, Empire, Civilization (I, II, Net and all...), the Jack Nicklaus Golf series, a shareware game called Scorched Earth, and the Doom/Quake series and a number of its clones. Currently, I'm playing Age of Empires, Jack Nicklaus 5, Quake 2, Civilization II and of course Outwars. Gamesweb: Have you put together other fan type Web sites? Jeff: I had a Jack Nicklaus 4 web site that was really popular, but had to let it go because of real-life commitments. I also had a small Quake editing site, and had a big hand in running Age of Empires Heaven on Gamestats before taking on Drop Ship Icarus and Outwars. As Drop Ship Icarus took more of my time I left AOE Heaven, which was a bit of an emotional move, since I really love AOE and had a ball at Heaven, it just wasn't fair to take up space when I didn't have time to attend to my duties. In the future I'd love to run other gaming sites, and have toyed with both a Quake II editing site and a Jack Nicklaus 5 site. Possibly even a fan site for a few of the upcoming Microsoft games. Gamesweb: What was it about Outwars that motivated you to create a fan site? I got started with the beta version as an offshoot of contacts from AOE Heaven and Microsoft, and the first time I loaded it up I sat and played until 3 a.m. That's the same feeling I had with all those other games I remember, and I lost "considerable otherwise productive hours" (a quote from the Interplay guys about Empire...) with all of them. It looked like the same would be true of Outwars. I contacted some of the press people at Microsoft and told them I'd like to do a site, and asked if I could get some information to post. They've been wonderful in supporting not just myself but all the fan sites. Gamesweb: How much time a day/week do you spend on the site? Jeff: It's slowing down lately since Outwars has gotten out in the stores, for a while there were news items and rumors popping up every day. Now it's mostly attending to e-mail, tech support information and requests for players. I'd say initially I spent an hour or two a day with some 8-10 hour bursts to get pages set up, but now it's probably a couple hours every few days and four or five on weekends. It means I get to play Outwars more. :) Gamesweb: How has this experience been, enjoyable, overwhelming? Jeff: Very enjoyable, at times overwhelming but it never feels like work. There's always something new to learn, from simple stuff like another game cheat or a tactic to save the drop ship, to more involved stuff like setting up a Perl-based chat forum on the site. I do a fair amount of web work both for my employer and for outside companies, so running a fan site is a good place to try new techniques and hone my web skills. Gamesweb: Have you OD'd on Outwars yet? Where do you get the majority of your information from? Jeff: I haven't OD'd yet, but I have slowed down some. It's the nature of Arcade/Action games like Outwars, there's a mission to complete and once it's completed you're done. What's left with Outwars is multi-player deathmatch and Capture-the-Flag play, which while it's fun, Outwars has some flaws in multi-player gaming mode. I wish Outwars had a mission editor, or at least add-on mission packs available, those are the things that have kept Doom/Quake and clones alive and popular for so long. Excellent graphics and a phenomenal sound track are great, but when you run out of missions to play they fade pretty quick. As for information, most, if not all, comes from the players themselves. I get e-mails constantly, giving a cheat or hint, or maybe asking a question that starts me on a hunt for information. I get regular news from Microsoft, which is also great, and I go out and cruise the net for Outwars info. I hit the newsgroups, as well as other fan sites, and I look for general gaming references as well. One great thing that has helped with Drop Ship Icarus is being hosted by Gamestats. Being an Affiliate there gets me access to a whole range of gaming information, not just about Outwars, and a group of other fan site webmasters that are very supportive. I recognize that a lot of the viewers of Drop Ship Icarus are also interested in other games, and I try to provide some of the juicer tidbits about the rest of the gaming industry as well. To talk to Jeff in person, check out his Web site and post a message. Say the Web Team sent ya. © 1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use.