An open message for the staff here

[AdrenalinDragon]

Long ago, in the bygone days of the Chip's Challenge community, one member had a simple vision: an all-in-one Chip's Challenge website. Just over a decade ago now, and after a lengthy period of planning, the site was launched. At first offering a hub for uploading levelsets, it was envisioned that eventually said sets would be integrated with scorekeeping, a discussion forum, and more. Unfortunately, the dream was not to be. Scores never made it to the site at all, and an organic forum turned out to be well beyond the sole developer's capabilities. Eventually, after over a year of existence, the original CC Zone forum moved under that domain, but in hindsight that would be the peak of that relatively brief website. Two years in, CC Zone: The Next Level was relaunched completely separately - now with levelsets and other files being under the forum instead - and the all-in-one site shut down.

For many years, that was it. The all-in-one dream was no more. Then, almost a decade later, there was a sudden burst of activity in this direction. Out of nowhere, two things happened simultaneously: within months of each other, CC site after CC site shut down, and a single website originally created simply as a new wiki host for the game collected the data from these. After the wiki (which ironically is the only one of these that did not shut down) came scores, links and levelset listings, actual levelsets, and finally this very forum. Most stunning of all, this happened within the span of a year or so.

Well, that's the history. Speaking personally now: you guys have done an absolutely incredible job. You did what I could never have achieved (as is clear now, in hindsight). At the same time, in most if not all of the cases listed above the shutdowns were obviously unplanned-for, happy coincidences that allowed this site to grow into what it is now.

Moral of the story: expect the unexpected.

Hi Andrew R,
Yes we had some rough times back in the early days of the Chip's Challenge community with you briefly taking over CC Zone and turning it into Chip's Portal. The reason I started CC Zone: The Next Level in the first place was due to some disagreements with the community on how you were running things back then. At the time I was still a young person at University and it was a huge gamble paying it out of my own pocket with no job and regular income to a website that I had no idea would pick up any traffic or grow at all. Sure enough, it did and like you said it was holding its ground as the older Chip's Challenge websites started shutting down one by one over the last few years. The sudden closure of the former CC Zone website was because I got sick of spending money on something that I had zero interest in using anymore and in my eyes it became money not being used for more important things. I decided to give the new site owner whatever backup I had of the forums and it is now in the hands of people who care about Chip's Challenge more than me. It feels like a very long time I have kept CC Zone going and I can now finally move on with my life and leave the bad things I have done in this community behind. See you later!