ARE CIV2 SITES MATURING?
By Markos Giannopoulos
September 26, 1998
note: This is The Column, a part of Apolyton where Markos and Dan write whatever
we want :). Well, not just Dan and me. The Column is open to everyone. If you feel like writing submit your article to
markg@gamestats.com
INTRO
I am a visitor of civ2 sites for about 2.5 years, so I can say that I've seen a lot of them :)
The 99% of civ2 sites, were and are personal sites, created and maintained by one person, located in the
personal web space of the creator. Some things though are starting to change.
THE MERGER PHENOMENON
The first of course, was this very site, Apolyton CS, the result of the The First Greek Civilization 2 Site
and the Ultimate Civilization II Site. A couple of weeks later, Allard Höfelt and Andrew Hoekzema(I hope I'm
spelling your surname right Andrew) merged their sites. Now, in a move very rare if not unique for fan sites in general,
Manifest Destiny is merging with eight(!) other sites to create a new mega-site. These are Civman's Civilization,
The Civ II Universe, Nathan's Civilization Page, The Garage Mahal Online, Civ Checkpoint,
Javier Guajardo's CivII Units, CivII Man's Home Page and Sun Tzu's War Academy. Of course, as Kunal Shah(one of the
two people behind Manifest Destiny) explained to me, not all of the people responsible for these sites
will be constantly working on the new site. The exact details remain to be seen.
THE .COM PHENOMENON
Probably the first site that had it's own .com address was the dead now civ2.com. There was also Mike McCart's
Civ2 Heaven on his own heavenweb.com server, and of course UCIIVS was moving around :) until settling down on
Gamestats. A couple of months ago, Addicted to Civ2 moved to cyberaddiction.com, and this summer Kwang opened
his kwang.org to host CivLeague. Now, Thomas Christensen is moving his European Civilization II Site to
samohT.net and the new site resulting from the Manifest Destiny's merger is going to be on
sidgames.com(and will be named sidgames.com :)) Also, the Civilization Colective is now in
civworld.com. A step before .com, the now-dead Everything Civ was on civ2.simplenet.com
and Stewart Spink hosts his site on spink.force9.co.uk
IN CONCLUSION
What I make from all this, is that civ2 webmasters are getting more serious about their sites.
They want to do something better and they put more effort(and money as it seems) to them.
And they seem to understand the benefits of cooperation. If we are lucky, we might be
able to see some great sites in the future. Beyond Apolyton CS of course :)
The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily express Apolyton CS or GameStats.
It is just the personal opinions of the writer.
