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| About Us The Making Of Rarewhere Running a Rare site is a lot easier in some ways to making a Nintendo site, and a lot harder in other ways. It's not everyday that Rare releases news, in fact, it's usually months between significant news updates. This means editor's are always typing up new editorials, special and the like to keep readers interested between the major news stories. Despite this, running a Rare site has its advantages. Not much on the news front leaves a heap of time to get the site working, while working to provide lots of in-depth info for the readers, and writing up articles on situations on Rare. Let's face it, although they hardly release any details on their games or their company, Rare is one of the most interesting developers in the industry. If you have delved deep into the inner workings of Rare, an automatic urge to visit their HQ in Twycross, or even work there, sweeps over you. And that was just the inspiration I needed to create Rarewhere. I dreamt of meeting Chris Stamper, playing a round of Goldeneye with Duncan Botwood, or even helping Leigh Loveday sift through the countless mail Rare gets each month. And straight away, I thought, why not share my love of Rare with other hardcore Rare fans, while providing them with the most in-depth coverage of every single game by Rare. And the number one best way to do this is to make a website. Different? Rarewhere is different from other sites. It filters the crap, and aims to provide a unique perspective of all the industry rumours and major news stories that involve Rare. And boy are there alot.� I can promise you no other site has the amount of info that Rarewhere does. Not Rarenet, not Rareware, not even....well, ok, maybe not as much as Rareops. And this is the tale of how Rarewhere started, how it nearly ended, and how it was resurrected. Once upon a time.... This story all began early in 2001. When my best mate showed me a website he had designed, a few ideas started twirling around in my head. With the help of that mate, I learnt a basic knowledge of Geocities. My first site, DK64 Kings, was a fansite dedicated to the one and only Donkey Kong 64. It was the usual deplorable design with bloated renders and text everywhere. At the time, I thought my site was the best. I planned on writing out a whole guide to DK64. I ended up halfway through Jungle Japes, gave up and linked it to someone else's guide.� I never thought it would be so tedious. Throughout the sites 3 months online, I gained about 50 hits overall, 90% of them me checking to see if the site worked. It was that good: ) When I completed Donkey Kong 64 the game, I picked up Banjo Tooie at release. In no time, I felt the urge, so I trashed DK64 Kings, and went to work on Banjo Tooie Home. Once again, I thought this was the best site ever, even though it had about 2 pages worth of info. Although slightly better than DK64 King's, I again got bored when I had to write the walkthroughs. At the same time, I came across Rarenet, a fantastic Rare site. This gave me inspiration, and I immediately went away working my arse off on a site dedicated to Rare. I came up with the name, being a smartarse one day to my best mate. I asked him where Rare's HQ were, and he couldn't answer. I called out "Rarewhere?" as a joke, and it stuck. Rarewhere started out slow, but got better quickly.� It went well (for me), getting about 100 hits a day, and with a wealth of copyrighted material that I stole from other sites. Downward Spiral When Summer holidays hit Australia in December last year, I knew the site needed a new layout. I went to work, and came up with this. I thought it was good, and got positive feedback on the site. During this time, I got accepted as head writer at the now defunct GCFreak, Australia's then best Gamecube site. I had a fantastic time there, and got on really well with the editor. Unfortunately, at the same time, I noticed that Australia's only Nintendo Magazine didn't have a website. I foolishly planned a site on that. At first it was looking great content wise. I had heaps of writers (that in the end I neglected) and was getting easily 200 hits a day, which is good for an Aussie only site. Then the workload became too much. School restarted, and Rarewhere started to suffer. I was now concentrating on Ngamer, after being contacted by the editor, who praised me for the site. It all went downhill from there. One day I made the decision to close Ngamer, and close Rarewhere. I continued working for GcFreak, writing weekly editorials and previews. I planned to let Rarewhere be taken over, and sure enough, on the day after the site was closed, I received an offer. I liked the guy's style, so I let him take it over. Unfortunately, I� decided that I had to leave GcFreak due to my desire to one day work full time at Rareops. It was a very hard decision. Weirdly enough, just a week after that, GcFreak announced it was closing. Due to the webmasters studies, she couldn't afford the time or money spent on the site, so GcFreak was ultimately closed. The Passion Lives... Several days later, I received a reply to my application for a writing position at Rareops. They accepted me, and I became a good mate with their talented designer and creator. I sent him my editorial, but he had so much work on his hands that he never got round to posting it. I was disappointed, but that gave me another source of inspiration to again start up Rarewhere. I wanted to make sure that all my work was shown to the readers, and hopefully, all going well, I could get some recognition for it, hopefully landing a job at Nintendo Gamer magazine. I emailed the guy who had taken Rarewhere over. Ironically, he emailed me about the same time saying that he would have to leave the site, due to his parent's wishes. This suited me fine, and straight away I began placing original content on the site. When I had pretty much completed the content, I came up with the layout that Rarewhere now has. I was pleased, and immediately got really positive feedback from people who I let see it. I was encouraged, and worked feverishly, staying up until 4 o'clock 3 mornings in a row getting everything linked and working. I was dedicated, and I loved it. And that brings us right to what's happening today. I plan on making Rarewhere as good as any other site out there, whether it's on Geocities or not. If I promote this site enough, one day I may even get it linked by Rareware.com, the official Rare website. I'm aiming to make this the best site content wise, and with a little hard work and dedication, that's very possible. Tim Schaefer |
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| - Tim Schaefer |