Origins & History of the WSGF

Have a sit, and I'll tell you the tale of how the WSGF came to be...

Back in September 2003 I was looking to buy a new laptop. I wanted to do some gaming, and knew that I wanted to go widescreen. I was torn between the 15.4" Presario x1000 and the 17" Pavilion zd7000, both from the newly merged Compaq/HP. In my research I found two forums (both now defunct), x1000forums.com and zd7000forums.com. I ended up buying the x1000, but then returned in and exchanged it for the zd7000. Ah, the early days of a 9+ pound 1440x900 17" notebook with a full keypad....

Believe it or not, many games at the time didn't support widescreen. It was common for widescreen resolutions (listed in your desktop properties) to be completely missing from game options. And, even when you could get the game to load, there were often issues. In scouring the x1000 and zd7000 forums, I saw that members were working diligently to find solutions to the popular games of the day - but those two groups weren't talking together. If two communities that were closely aligned (many members were users on both forums) weren't sharing information, what about all the people with Dell, Sony and Toshiba laptops? Or, people who owned or built desktops.

So, I decided to found the Widescreen Gaming Forum in an effort to provide a central location for gamers to share ideas and solutions. On October 13, 2003, I installed an un-themed copy of phpBB2 and posted announcements on the x1000 and zd7000 forums. Paradigm Shifter (whom I knew from the x1000 forums) signed up on the 14th, and I soon asked him to help me Moderate the site.

I still remember my first two solutions: Warcraft III and Dungeon Keeper 2. I remember being so excited to find those, and we didn't realize until much later that Warcraft III was actually stretched. There was much debate on that fact, with screenshots posted showing how the huts and farms were indeed stretched.

Since that time we grew to add comparison screenshots, develop our own taxonomy and terminology (Vert-, Hor+, Native, .ini, etc.), roll out the Detailed Reports (overhaul them a few times), and put together a grading system that is always being debated. Over the years we've also had a few technology shifts. From the original phpBB2, we've had a umber of static php/html portions of the site, and we added a MediaWiki component in 2006. Some time after that we made the upgrade to phpBB3 in 2009, and in 2011 we overhauled everything into a unified Drupal install.

We're coming up on our eight year anniversary. I wonder if that's like four years in "net years". I'm looking forward to our next years with our new architecture and the great community that we have to support it and build our knowledge base. Just about every time I wonder if the WSGF is still relevant (widescreen is now default, and multi-monitor is getting better support), something new always comes along (Stereoscopic 3D and Ultrawidescreen).

So, here's a thanks to everyone who has supported and contributed to the community. Let me know what we can do better to serve you as we set out to write our future.