On June 15, 1999 - 18 years ago today - our band of developers and "webmasters" launched GameDev.net.

Here's the story:[quote]

GameDev.net has a rather interesting history. Starting from a conversation between Dave Astle of Sweet.Oblivion and Mike Tanczos of Game Programming 99, the idea to join forces of the largest game development sites in the world was forged. At first we thought small, deciding to create a simple resource page which would merely link to each other's prime material.

But after contacting John Munsch of DevGames, the possibilities were blown into the stratosphere. Not wanting to create a mere portal page, Munsch insisted that our sites join forces to create one large site. Discussion between the people behind the sites began, quickly leading to an agreement to launch a game development site which would come to make even so-called 'mega-sites' look small.

Realizing the potential of an existing Affiliate group created by Michael Tanczos, which consisted of the three previous sites and the Game Development Search Engine, Wotsit's Format, and Demonews, discussion further escalated to include those sites. This resulted in an agreement on varying levels between all the sites to assist each other in the creation of the new site, which we dubbed "GameDev.net".

The domain was snatched up, and design and layout discussions began in early April. By the beginning of May, development on the site would begin at a feverish pace. Slating our original launch at June 1st, we realized that an effort of this magnitude would be impossible to achieve in that short of a time.

GameDev.net would undergo many changes over the next few years. We soon added several major sites to our family as hostees, including NeHe Productions and Wotsit's File Formats. As the years have progressed, GameDev.net has continued to grow and evolve into the site you see today.[/quote]

You can see what we looked like at the Web Archive, but here's a screenshot of an early version of the site:

What you may not know is that none of us met each other in person until several years later. We have always been and remain a virtual team - although at the moment it's just myself and the Moderators. Team meetings were held over Internet Relay Chat, or "IRC" for the kids, and we'd communicate over ICQ, which amazingly still exists (although I've had comments saying the same to me about GameDev.net.. 18 is old in Internet years).

To give some perspective, 18 years ago Unreal was starting to form the concept of a game engine and entering a battle with Quake. Unity was a dream. The GPU as we now know it did not exist commercially (we broke NVIDIA's GeForce news). And shortly after our launch a particularly large search engine contacted us to see if they could be our search engine, as I'll share in this team meeting chat log from July 18, 1999 - a month after we launched.[quote]

[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] I have another thing to mention[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] [/font][/color]Google.com[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] wants to do our search[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] ?!?[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] They contacted us?[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] who's google[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] They want to be our search engine for the site[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] k - a search engine, like AltaVista, but nicer in some ways[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] mike - how do you feel about it?[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] Well.. their results are unique[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] They are a very impressive search engine (more a technology than anything else). They are going to IPO or just did, I can't remember.[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] wow, i've never heard of them [/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] We'd have a search page at [/font][/color]www.google.com/gamedev
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] will they go down/work slow, etc?[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] No idea.[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] I can speak to the last one, they are expected to get a sh*tload of money, so their servers will likely be fast.[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] you think itd be better than our own deal?[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] didnt you do a kick ass search engine mike?[/font][/color]
[color=rgb(29,33,41)][font=Helvetica] Yeah, it works pretty fast.[/font][/color][/quote]

I can proudly say that I learned more than I need to know about Google.

GameDev.net started as a labor of love, and 18 years later it continues to be a labor of love. While I remain as the only founding member, I know that the founders who are no longer with the site hope it continues to provide value for the game development community to learn, share, and connect with others for many years to come.

But the amazing thing to all of us continues to be the community. I may be biased, but for 18 years I have not come across a better community than the GameDev.net Community. We are a passionate, knowledgeable bunch, and we love discussing, sharing, and learning from others about the problems, technologies, and challenges of game development and the games industry.

Throughout GameDev.net's history we've watched so many of you grow into the games industry, often starting as hobbyist or student developers with a thirst and desire to achieve your dreams. It's been our greatest pleasure to provide the platform that has helped so many, and we love to learn about your own journeys in the industry.

In the meantime I want to thank the amazing GameDev.net community, again, for these 18 years. On to the 19th!

p.s. The site upgrade is happening this weekend, finally! Stay tuned.