Joe Blancato has done an article for the Escapist in which he takes a look at Gaming's Fringe Cults. He interviewed NMA admins Sander, Silencer and Brother None for the purpose (note: interviews conducted before the GI article was out, obviously). And under the nomer of "Internet Curmudgeons with Hearts of Radioactive Gold: No Mutants Allowed" he takes a look at our community and site:<blockquote>Started on Geocities nearly a decade ago by a Serbian named "Miroslav" (who only left the site due to the Bosnian War), NMA has built a reputation as the definitive, and most vocal (read: kinda mean), Fallout community on the web. And to Thomas "Brother None" ßеекers, Sebastian "Silencer" Lenartowicz and Sander Philipse - NMA's administrators - tell it, they're not going away any time soon. "With the times, our goals have changed," ßеекers says. "Originally, we were formed to be as supportive as we could be of Fallout, and this was great between Fallout 1 and 2, before Tactics' release dashed our hopes of a good spin-off and no new release was forthcoming (there were two Fallout 3 start-ups that were cancelled before Van Buren [Black Isle's Fallout 3 tech demo, hosted on NMA]).
"Now, we're mostly evangelists of recreating the original Fallout experience. We try to convince the media and publishers that there is a viable niche market for Fallout-like games that has been under-serviced for years."
Acting as a non-profit, grass-roots PR and marketing campaign for the better part of a decade speaks to a zeal not often observed outside of holy crusades and message board flame wars. What is it about Fallout that inspires people to continually sing its praises?
(...)
In terms of the future, all three share reservations about Bethesda picking up Interplay's ball. "Part of me is happy that the franchise didn't die with Black Isle Studios," says ßеекers, "but for the most part I realize Fallout is only a name, and the fact that Bethesda's Fallout 3 is called Fallout 3 doesn't mean anything unless they make it a Fallout game. If they don't, I'm guessing I and other fans will be about as upset as we were with the release of Fallout: BoS [Brotherhood of Steel]."
However, regardless of what the future holds, ßеекers remains optimistic for NMA: "Considering we're still that active on a set of decade-old games that were never enormous hits, I don't think we're going anywhere, anytime soon."</blockquote>Link: Gaming's Fringe Cults on the Escapist (page 2)
"Now, we're mostly evangelists of recreating the original Fallout experience. We try to convince the media and publishers that there is a viable niche market for Fallout-like games that has been under-serviced for years."
Acting as a non-profit, grass-roots PR and marketing campaign for the better part of a decade speaks to a zeal not often observed outside of holy crusades and message board flame wars. What is it about Fallout that inspires people to continually sing its praises?
(...)
In terms of the future, all three share reservations about Bethesda picking up Interplay's ball. "Part of me is happy that the franchise didn't die with Black Isle Studios," says ßеекers, "but for the most part I realize Fallout is only a name, and the fact that Bethesda's Fallout 3 is called Fallout 3 doesn't mean anything unless they make it a Fallout game. If they don't, I'm guessing I and other fans will be about as upset as we were with the release of Fallout: BoS [Brotherhood of Steel]."
However, regardless of what the future holds, ßеекers remains optimistic for NMA: "Considering we're still that active on a set of decade-old games that were never enormous hits, I don't think we're going anywhere, anytime soon."</blockquote>Link: Gaming's Fringe Cults on the Escapist (page 2)