Something to do with fat babies, I imagine…
— Alan
You know, the Dr.TwisTer Network was the first big step for me back in the day. Dr. TwisTer himself took a liking to a fansite I had created on my ISP hosting space for a game called Allegiance. He asked me to join him, which I did, and I spent about 6 months under his guidance. Unfortunately not too long after GameSpy got in touch with me, and stole me away from him. This was all in 1999, crazy how different things were back then.
I’d like to think that we still had a so called figurehead or two at VE. Jube had been contributing to VE for years, and was always extremely popular for her crazy humor alone. She was essentially the Billy of the 2007-2012 era. We all had our voice though, I think I made a good (and slightly less kooky) wingman to her craziness, Apache 2.0 if you will. Our contributing editors also got their own spot to shoot the shit in the “Blah” type morning post once a week each.
I don’t ever remember Blues and the others NOT being basically ctl-c ctl-v sites. Blue would write a sentence or two to introduce each news item, and the rest was either copied text or a link.
It was great for what it was – a lean, 100% text fast-loading site with all of the day’s gaming news, previews, and reviews.
Not that I like to fill the shoes of a thread necromancer all that much, but I think now is a more appropriate time to suggest that VE is done. I’ve stuck around since the January cuts, as did one of my editors (Phil aka Socketboy), mostly because IGN implied we might be able to work something out budget wise. So we kept updating the site while waiting things out, but nothing has come through. As a result, front page news updates will end next week.
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/63923/Blah-They-Look-Like-Big-Good-Strong-Hands-Dont-They
The very last “Blah” post will be a special acknowledgement / farewell from Billy Wilson’s younger brother Christopher. Billy used to mention him from time to time, for those of you who remember his old updates. Christopher’s post will give some insight as to how things have been with the family, and Billy’s son Dax. It also shares how appreciative the family has been of the support and well wishes from Billy’s fans over the years. Keep an eye out for that next Tuesday or so.
Anyways, thanks to all of you who stuck with VE during the many ups and downs. Sorry that there’s not better news to give.
Man, that really sucks. I’ve been following the site for what must be over a decade now. Hope you and your gang find another gig real soon.
This is a super old post. But occasional I will go through and read old forum posts about this topic. Especially since it has such personal ties to me… Man I wish I could have been old enough to read VE back then. I’ve seen screenshots from wayback machine and heard so many stories about what my father was like on there though. That’s cool you emailed with him a few times. He was a hilarious guy.
Way to make everybody feel old, Dax!
Fair to say that everybody who knew your dad even in passing, even over the internet, loved him. He was a super fun weirdo.
It’s weird but it feels just like last year.
Bad day at work, came home and read this post. Told the wife this made my day.
Something about your dad’s sense of humor just clicked with my own, I would hit VE and chuckle or on occasion burst out laughing reading Billy’s posts. I think he was the only webmaster I bothered writing to.
Welcome to Qt3, Dax, I hope you stick around.
Yeah and he wasn’t putting on a character or anything, that’s how he always talked!
VE3D was my go to back then. And Shacknews. Billy and Steve had some good banter. I remember when they did the staying up the longest contest, quality content.
I’m still on they Shacknews chatty actually.
360 degree, polygon-dunkin goodness :) Hi Dax - you’re all growed up :/
Anyone remember a smaller site called Hyperthermia.GamersHardware.com? Enthusiastic bearded bro dude that was friends with Billy and Jason Hall of Monolith.
Wasn’t it hypothermia? Or am I remembering that wrong?
The late 90s was a huge Cambrian explosion of PC gaming and hardware sites.