HomeCreatures


 * Address: www.homecreatures.com (archive)
 * Webmaster: Miff / Tim / Dan
 * Contributors/Staff: Lis Morris, Helen, fuzzie, Dan, Julianne, LummoxJR, Jcarrcwalk
 * Ran from/to: 1999 - 2002

Summary of Content
Probably HomeCreatures' most popular feature was a daily news feed, reporting updates from around the community. There was also a series of interviews with Creature Labs and Cyberlife employees, as well as a number of features written by prominent community members about the game, the community and developing. HomeCreatures had a popular forum, and new versions of The Official Creatures Webring and the AlbiaVista Creatures search engine, originally a part of Rob S' Creatures Information Exchange.

Interesting Facts

 * HomeCreatures was just a "coming soon" splash page for about a year before it finally opened. However, the anticipation caused by the splash page gained it many hits and made HomeCreatures quite possibly the most eagerly anticipated website in CC history.
 * Before the launch of HomeCreatures the pages were constructed online at a secret location. fuzzie, the development manager at the time, accidentally revealed the location of these pages to a packed JRChat, causing the webmaster Miff to do some serious renaming of the page files (the homepage was at www.homecreatures.com/index2.phtml for some time before this!).
 * HomeCreatures went through two public redesigns during its lifetime; however, the site got a major reworking days before it officially opened to the public. Before this, HomeCreatures consisted of a fixed width design based around the jungle theme. This design was the one shown to the public in the promo shots. When it launched, HomeCreatures instead made use of its familiar title across the top and two nav bars layout.
 * HomeCreatures, although a community site, was not actually owned by a single community member but instead a corporation known as MGON (the Media and Games Online Network). MGON were a company who produced gaming websites for communities and then made money from the advertising on the website. Miff was the webmaster at the launch of the site, but was actually an employee of MGON. MGON apparently went down sometime around April 2003.
 * HomeCreatures had several sections which were never actually launched. Helen's original Downloads section remained incomplete and unlaunched for several months before Helen quit the team, and Dan and Miff created a whole new downloads area. Similarly, Jcarrwalk's Science section was never completed.
 * HomeCreatures also lost a few sections over the years, including fuzzie's development section, which fuzzie deleted before leaving the project. The development section never returned, despite many attempts to bring it back to life.
 * HomeCreatures was intended to merge with Matthew Holmes' Uncovered Projects after the original development section was closed. Uncovered Projects, which focused mainly on development and producing products such as the Borg Norns, would have made an excellent compliment to HomeCreatures' main content of discussion articles and community features. However, shortly into the merger, it was revealed to the community that Uncovered Projects had stolen its design from another popular gaming website, and Matt's reputation was severely damaged. Following the scandal, it was decided that the merger should not go ahead, and HomeCreatures remained a standalone site.
 * Uncovered Projects was not the only website to unsuccessfully merge with HC. As HC's popularity began to wane, Miff decided to step down as webmaster. It was then decided that, to save HC, a merger would have to take place with another popular community website that could bring something new to the table. Tim's popular Creature Creations was considered a possible choice, due to its large repository of unique downloads which HC could not offer, and fun features such as its cartoons and JRChat logs. Tim was instated as webmaster, but under a secret disguise as "Anonymous". It was planned that Tim would run the site whilst working with Miff on the merger under a pseudonym so that no one would be able to guess what was about to happen, then the site would relaunch as HomeCreatures/Creature Creations and all would be revealed. However, Tim found it hard to work with MGON in a corporate environment and left the project, taking Creature Creations with him.