Bombcenter.com - The Bomberman Community from 2007 until 2010

Timeline

In 2005 I started playing a game, Bomberman by Jippii. It was a simple, small and fun game with an easy gameplay. Lot's of people enjoyed playing it. After playing it for a while I missed the possibility to have discussions, start clans and create friends. As an true addicted 13 year old, I contacted Jippii to create community options, they didn't value the idea and told me they didn't had any interest at all. A few months later, in 2006, I released a beta community platform. Within weeks Google found us, we had 100 visitors a day and the conclusion was simple: there was room for a community.

In 2007 I came up with a name, registered Bombcenter.com and launched the first version. This version had some simple forum functionality and an in-browser chat. We grew to 300 visitors a day and started building more and more.

In 2008 we started with 500+ visitors a day and 500+ active members. This took a lot of of my time, and it didn't allow me to actually play the game I liked. So the forums went down, and a better version of the chat went up. Later that year I kind of 'hacked' the game a little. I found a way to avoid the language based gameplay, so people from Spain were able to play with people from Germany and likewise. Although, at the end of the year the average visitors went down to 400 a day. People wanted the actual community back.

In 2009, under the pressure of our (old) visitors, we launched our newest version of Bombcenter. Within a month we had 500+ active registered members again. I build our own version of the game and was able to create private rooms, just for us. To be able to pay for the newer webservers, Bombcenter also started to show some advertising the same year. The community was booming. At the end of the year we had an average of 1.000+ visitors a day.

In 2010 we reached our peak. It's also the year we stopped. Bus as they say, it's always best to go out when you're on top. The community became too much to handle and I've learned that most moderators can't be trusted. Instead of letting the community go down the drain slowly, I've decided to pull the plug at the end of the year.

Statistics of 2010

Statistics 2007-2010

Personal note

So, this is the end... After 4 years of lots of fun and pleasure the site is down. I've always tried to keep the community comfortable for everybody. I even learned how to develop to make all of your wishes and desires come true.

I want to thank everyone who made this community possible! Everyone who visited the site, posted at the forums, joined the chat and played the game. It was awesome! I want to thank two persons in particular: OneWish and Sian. OneWish was the best moderator there was and spend lots and lots of hours at the forums. Sian always was there helping me build the community, creating new features and come up with innovative ideas.

PS: A trip down memory lane.

You can follow my work at Soccorso.

Yours sincerely,
Alexander van der Graaf