To be lost; I was once a fresh no0b at the RPG Arena. A nice place that's a sister site to RPG Palace... you might remember it. It was basically what Devscape is now. I posted my game there and recieved near and immediate comments on how good it seemed to be turning out.
At the time, I had not really known of any other rm2k site beside the Palace and GGZ, both of which sufficed to give me resources that I needed and an overabundance of no0bish joy. I sometimes stopped by Don's scattered site of links and forums and regretted it almost every time, however. I stuck to the Arena.
Then I discovered Sky Tower Games... ah... what a wonderful site. Through the Affiliates package at GGZ, I was confronted by about 30+ games that all at least had a demo available, unlike the Arena which had mostly unfinished projects... (including mine, which was yet to release an alpha.) I played some games, but eventually mosied back to the good ol' site RPG Palace.
Then a friend referred me to Gaming World. I tried it out, and found even MORE games and things to download. And I began to think: "If there's a site like THIS to rival GGZ... there MUST be more!"
I searched around in GGZ affiliates. I found the Brotherhood of Britannia.
At first I was skepticle. Then I saw that some guy with a goofy looking hero-esquie avatar updated nearly every day. That was cool, since Palace only updated every month or so and GGZ only updated every week... around. I checked the articles, and found that this guy called Vince401 was undoubtedly hilarious. Not ONLY did he not like rap... but he was a sly cooper of a writer.
So I contacted him on AIM, and asked him about the site. Friendly as he was, he agreed to look at my project page on the Arena for possible hosting. He agreed to play it. Then I opened by big fat mouth and told him that NHS had no gameplay. Great freakin idea, Tri... Great freakin idea. Vince refused to "play" the non-playable "game".
I begged and begged and ALAS, he gave into my constant barrage of pleas and "You don't know what you're missing." I actually sent him some of my comments saying how good it was on the Arena to convince him.
I have no idea what Mafia group tortured him and forced him to play the game... but he seemed to like it. Except for the horrid "non-playableness" of it.
A couple weeks later, as I was slowly drifting from both B*B and Arena for hang-out spots, I realized I wanted to be part of a site. Around that time, Vince agreed to host NHS... but ONLY if there was gameplay in the sequel. :-P Go figure.
I was offered by a friend to join Dead Lizard Studios. I waited months and months... but it never got off the ground. Constantly our webmaster would begin but would trash the site and then rinse, wash, repeat. It frustrated the rest of the staff as well as me.
I told him I called it quits as SOON as Vince offered me a spot on the B*B roster. I was so hyped I couldn't even wait a day to make it look like I "wasn't desperate".
And flash-forward to today:
I look at other sites, much bigger than our present day B*B... and nod. Yes, they've made it. They've gotten to the point when they're popular beyond belief. I try contacting the bigger sites from time to time... and with the exclusion of Palace, I'm treated with little to no respect. And I think Vince knows this. And so does everyone else at B*B. And that's why we update every damned day practically. We're here for the bored guy sitting at his comp all day. We're here for the guy who can't find a tall red haired character set. We're here for the guy who kisses ass to Vince and doesn't even play his game.
Because we care about strangers?
Hell no.
We care about ourselves, mostly. But in that desire to be great, we try to do the best damned work on B*B we can. Me included.
And that's what seperates us from sites that steal crap and post other people's work as mainstream because they are too lazy to do original resources. 90% of our stuff is our own.
And it shows through.

[Tri-tail]