Wozza Works Wonders at Rare-Extreme
Fansites serve an important role in the building of community among gamers. Rare has the extreme honor of having a large number of fansites dedicated to its games. Upon that illustrious list is a fansite known as Rare-Extreme. The webmaster and founder is Jeremy Nunn, more commonly known online as Wozza. He’s a 23-year-old IT Manager who lives in Perth, Western Australia and celebrates his birthday in February (so drop him a Happy Birthday email when the time comes!).
We cornered him and made him put down his mouse so he could answer some questions for us about fansite-building and the Rare-Extreme site in specific. He begins by telling us, “I thoroughly enjoy playing Rare’s games and running Rare-Extreme.”
When did you first get the idea to start the Rare-Extreme fansite?
I'd been a long time fan of Rare and I had always passionately participated in the online following of Rare. In 1999 I was quite keen to start my own website on the very games I loved playing.
Was it your first fansite?
My very first website was actually a Banjo-Tooie fan site (the sequel to Banjo Kazooie on Nintendo 64). But with the announcement of other hot new titles to be released by Rare, I wanted to cover these games as well. So, finally on June 6th 2000 I created Rare-Extreme which would cover all the games made by Rare. The name Rare-Extreme is basically Rare to the extreme.
How did you learn HTML and web design?
HTML? What does that stand for? Just kidding, I studied in Computer Science at Murdoch University in Western Australia, so after many years of study to earn a degree, a number of programming languages and development tools became second nature to me and with persistence and practice I produced the current Rare-Extreme web design in 2002. It has won a number of awards.
What do you feel is the most time-consuming part of running a fansite?
I would have to say it’s a combination between managing the forums and keeping the content up to date. The forums alone require countless hours to monitor and participate in since message boards are an entire culture unto themselves. It’s literally as if the forums were a completely different website unto itself to run. All sorts of mess can happen if you don’t keep an eye on things — particularly around the launch of a new Rare game.
After a few years, the content on Rare-Extreme grows to such a point that you lose track of entire sections of the site. So while keeping a keen eye out for news you also have to sift through the website’s existing content and make sure it’s correct and up to date. To top it all off, we try and make interactive content for our readers which requires programming in various web programming languages. That can chew up a whole weekend if you’re not careful!
What is the most rewarding part of running a fansite?
The realization that you've created a central location online that people visit to receive the latest updates on whatever your fansite is devoted to. It makes the slower times, apparent especially early on, that much more worthwhile when things begin to take shape. People start to trust the coverage you offer over time, and begin to look to your site as a key location for their news and commentary.
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