Jump to content

Planet Half-Life

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 124.189.144.44 (talk) at 05:38, 16 June 2009 (→‎Senior Staff). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Planet Half-Life
Type of site
Gaming
Available inEnglish
OwnerIGN / GameSpy
Created byKevin "Fragmaster" Bowen
URLhttp://planethalflife.gamespy.com/
RegistrationOptional

Planet Half-Life (often abbreviated to PHL) is a gaming website owned by IGN and its subsidiary GameSpy. Maintained by a voluntary team of contributors, the site is dedicated to providing news and information concerning the games Half-Life and Half-Life 2, as well as related modifications and other Valve Software titles. It was originally founded by Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen and is now one of the largest of an array of GameSpy-run gaming websites known as the Planet Network.

Content

Planet Half-Life's content consists mainly of a news wire on its front page. Stories on updates, patches, press releases and events related to Half-Life and just about anything else concerning Valve Software are posted on an almost daily basis. These stories are also mirrored in the site's forum for reader comments.

In addition to the news, Planet Half-Life hosts extensive, in-depth collections of information regarding Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (along with Portal), Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Day of Defeat. These sections cover overviews of each game as well as any official expansion packs related to them, as well as going over their storylines, important characters, enemies, weapons, cheats, walkthroughs, and, in the case of the multiplayer games, map overviews and strategies. The information found on these pages is original work drafted by the staff writers and senior editors collectively (although without any individual credits given, unlike other articles found on the site).

Planet Half-Life also supplies other original and community-generated content in the form of:

  • Featured Pic, originally Pic of the Day or POTD, a near-daily, often comical picture related to games covered on the site.
  • Articles, various writings that don't neatly fit into any of the other feature subcategories.
  • Comics, an archive of old HL-related Flash animations by Kevin Bowen.
  • Editorials, often-controversial opinion pieces by the site's editors.
  • Featured Level, showcases the best user-created levels for HL/HL2 and their modifications.
  • Featured Mod, showcases quality, popular or otherwise excellent HL/HL2 modifications.
  • Featured Skin, a dead feature that showcased the best new skins for Half-Life models.
  • Fiction, an archive of Kevin Bowen's comedic "Walter's World" articles (written from the point of view of a Black Mesa scientist) and dramatic work by Dave "zozart" Clark.
  • Hosted Focus, a dead feature that showcased the best sites hosted by PHL.
  • Interviews, a feature in which PHL staff writers interview various mod developers, prominent competitive players and Valve employees.
  • Mailbag, a reader-sustained feature in which the editorial staff responds to site e-mail.
  • Old Polls, a dead feature that archived the results of old reader polls, including commentary on the results by the staff.
  • PHL Film Festival, embedded YouTube videos of the results of a special contest that ran from December 2006 to April 2007.
  • Previews, a look at upcoming, unreleased modifications that look highly promising.
  • Reviews, much more objective and critical (and occasionally controversial) looks at recently released modifications.
  • Tech Corner, a reader-sustained feature in which the staff answer technical questions, as well as articles ranging from hardware reviews to guides for building gaming computers.

Other services

Forum

A major feature of Planet Half-Life, and all other planet sites, is its public forum. These forums include boards ranging from general discussion to technical help.

In August 2007, the forums changed format to comply with GameSpy's ForumPlanet standard (the IGN SnowBoards system), removing some outdated features and adding many new ones, such as a dynamic news box that streams in late-breaking news from not only PHL, but all other planet sites as well. This also changed the registration process for the forum, from a per-planet account basis to a network-wide, global account basis. At this time Planet Half-Life's sister sites Planet Fortress and CS.net were officially unsupported and their forums were to be merged into PHL's, although this process lasted over a year before it was complete.

Game servers

Planet Half-Life has been running public game servers since 2006, hosting 24/7 map rotations for Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Half-Life: Deathmatch, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Team Fortress 2.[1] However, currently only the Half-life 2: Deathmatch and Day of Defeat: Source servers are consistently online and even they rarely see much use. The PHL servers are maintained by WOLFServers.com.

Steam Community

In addition to public servers, Planet Half-Life also has a Steam Community group.[2] Currently, Steam Communities are still only in their early stages of development. The PHL Community can only host a chat room and specialized news updates for now, but more features will be added in the future based on suggestions from readers.[3]

PHLWiki

In June 2006, Planet Half-Life began its own wiki project.[4] To date, the PHLWiki contains over a hundred articles dealing with fictional Half-Life characters, creatures and locations in a realistic, encyclopedic form as well as real life articles on mods, player terminology and strategy guides. The fictional and real life articles are kept separately, although they can be linked to each other. Before being announced publicly, most of the existing pages, particularly articles making up the fictional encyclopedia, were written by PHL staff writers. The PHLWiki is open to public viewing and editing, however its location is buried in the main site's navigation bar and it has received very little promotion since its launch. Only a small handful of actual readers (not spambots, site staff or administrators) have registered contributions.

Unfortunately the PHLWiki is currently plagued by a large amount of spam which would require extensive work to clean up. For the time being it has been all but abandoned by the community and PHL staff.

Site hosting

Planet Half-Life also offers free web hosting for Half-Life themed websites. The web hosting is regulated through GameSpy, though the address of hosted sites is a subset of the Planet Half-Life domain. This was a major attraction of the site in its early days and many original Half-Life mod teams took advantage of the offer. However this feature has not been utilized nearly as much since the release of Half-Life 2. A directory of the old sites still exists, although most have been abandoned by their creators.[5]

Current staff

Planet Half-Life is run by a staff of international, unpaid volunteers. New applicants must undergo a detailed application process and a subsequent trial period. While most PHL staffers only stay on for a few months at a time, some remain active on the site for years. Many staff members choose to volunteer for personal benefit, such as writing practice or a stepping stone to larger projects.

The staff list as of May, 2009:

Senior Staff

  • Alex "ACPaco" Capriole, Staff Writer, Forum Moderator
  • John "Chief" Phillips, Site Director, News Editor, Staff Writer, Forum Moderator

Junior Staff

  • Daniel "Ackart" Glenn, Staff Writer, News Editor
  • Stephen "Aratos" Whitehead, Forum Moderator
  • Thomas "Editor321" Rogers, Staff Writer
  • Ian "eulogy" Norton, Staff Writer
  • Dennis "Golgotha" Goldsmith, Staff Writer

History

Planet Half-Life has been running since April 27, 1999. Since then, it has undergone numerous format changes, both in content and aesthetic. The following is a timeline of major changes[6] and other events.

  • April 27, 1999, PHL first opens, covering Half-Life and editing resources. It looks nothing like it does today.
  • November 16, 1999, Major changes to layout and color scheme, plus new sections covering Half-Life: Opposing Force and the announcement of Half-Life 2.
  • December 3, 2000, New sections covering Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic, these and other game overview sections consolidated into buttons at the top of left-side navigation bar as well as large buttons on the top of the front page, Half-Life 2 section is buried.
  • June 19, 2001, New section covering Half-Life: Blue Shift.
  • September 14, 2002, New section covering Day of Defeat.
  • May 24, 2003, Half-Life 2 section re-opens amid rumors of a September 2003 launch and early media releases.
  • July 17, 2003, Major changes to color scheme and graphics in anticipation of Half-Life 2 launch.
  • June 11, 2006, PHLWiki is launched, with bulk of content made up by staff writers prior to public unveiling.
  • September 13, 2006, Complete site format change to accommodate new PNAP article submission system, as well as new color scheme and graphics that are still in use today.
  • September 13, 2007, PHL Steam Community officially announced to the public.

Games covered

As of September 2007, the following games are covered by Planet Half-Life:

Prior to its release, there was conjecture that Left 4 Dead would be included in these titles in 2008. Although co-developed by Valve Software, L4D has nothing to do with the Half-Life series, although it could arguably be equated to Counter-Strike or Team Fortress, which both started as community mods and were bought by Valve, much like Left 4 Dead. However, under direct orders from IGN managers, a new section was not opened and L4D is only covered in small news updates. New sections for Garry's Mod and The Ship were also being considered, but it is highly doubtful either will be added. These games are already covered regularly in the news, which has lead some readers to half-jokingly refer to the site as "Planet Valve," "Planet Steam" or even "Planet Source" in the public forum.

References

  1. ^ PHL Public Game Servers page.
  2. ^ PHL on Steam Communities
  3. ^ PHL Forum Topic, The Planet Half-Life Steam Group Suggestions Box Retrieved 2007-09-26.
  4. ^ PHLWiki
  5. ^ Directory of PHL-Hosted Sites.
  6. ^ Internet Wayback Machine, Planet Half-Life Archives
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Planet_Half-Life&oldid=296697637"