June if 1994 was the first time Genso Suikoden's name was heard in Japanese magazines when they released preliminary information on one of Playstation's first RPGs. Ten years is about to pass since Genso Suikoden’s name has been known--so the history of this series will be spanning for a decade. Aside from the accomplishment, this fact shows that Suikoden is indeed a popular series. Unpopular games can be literally forgotten the day it is released, and even successful ones rarely reach beyond having more than one sequel. Thos shows how the series has gripped the heart and soul of players, keeping them coming back for more. This obviously shows the existence of a strong fan-base, which leads us to the topic of this editorial--Suikoden fan sites.

First of all, I am no expert in Suikoden fan sites, since I only became involved with online fandom since 1999. However, when I looked for the existence of such communities back in 1997, all I found were Usenet newsgroups. Thus, it would be safe to say that the first Suikoden sites emerged between late 1997 and late 1999.

The first Suikoden "site" I started visiting was actually a message board called "Flik's Suikoden 2 Message Board." The board was very active with people craving gameplay answers and plot discussion. This was back when Suikoden 2 has just been released, so things were very lively.

Unfortunately the board suddenly ceased to exist one day, and most people emigrated to IcyBrian's site's Suikoden board, which back then used a message board that required a certain number of clicks on ad banners to continue its existence. Some people went over to the GameFAQs boards which opened in late 1999, which quickly gained an active Suikoden 2 board (it remains active to this day).

The Rebel Hideout was considered to be the best Suikoden site back in the year 2000.

The first purely Suikoden dedicated site that I know of was the Rebel Hideout. It was started in early 2000 and ran by Erika Buenaventura aka Odessa. The site featured exquisite design, gameplay information, icon archives, an interactive quiz, and an integrated message board based on Ultimate Bulletin Board (which was pretty much the best stuff you can get back then). The Rebel Hideout, in many ways, raised the bar of Suikoden site quality by more than a few notches. To this day many fans from back then speak about how wonderful a site the Rebel Hideout was, and many s-called "Suikoden veterans" today came into existence back then and formed the "core leaders" of Suikoden fandom who end up creating bunch of sites later on.

Although the Rebel Hideout was tremendously successful, its leader suddenly vanished without a word. The site eventually fell into disrepair although the forum continued to exist for more than a year. Eventually, the site fell into the hands of the domain owner--who after a lukewarm attempt to revive the site, simply pulled the plug, flushing a legacy down the tube at a whim. Pity.

By the time the Rebel Hideout was wiped away from the face of this earth, a number of other Suikoden sites have popped up (thank god).

The most notable being the Suikoden Information Source created by Kuromimi. Suikoden Information Source contained the most detailed data content that far surpassed all other sites. The Castle of Kain was the first Suikoden Role-playing Community to be created (as far as I am aware) in early 2000. It came into existence through the effort of regulars at GameFAQs, and remained highly active until the end of the year. A number of other Suikoden fan fiction communities sprung up, Nedokius being most notable for quality among them (they still exist, too).

As for sites geared towards gameplay/community, "Questions for Blue Moon" came into existence in September of 2000, which later turned into Suikosource.com after the site joined hands with Kuromimi's Suikoden Information Source and with the help of darkannex. Suikosource remains to this day as the most widely known Suikoden fan site, featured in publications including the recently published Suikoden 3 manga. While many other fan sites came and went, Suikosource has remained reliable for three solid years. They will probably continue to be the pillar and foundation of Suikoden fandom in the English-speaking world.

Suikoworld.com was one of the most prominent Suikoden communities for years, but they closed in mid-2003.

As for other sites that came and went, Genso Suikoworld, Crystal Valley, New Leaf Academy, Genso-Online, and Suikocastle are all sites that once had a decent amount of activity but ultimately disappeared. Typically when they disappear, they went with the huge amount of information, typically informative posts by the members. It's always sad when sites get shut down due to all the information and thoughts that get lost, disappearing into the digital void.

After that phase of creation and destruction of new sites, we currently have relatively few Suikoden specific community sites. Suikosource has already been mentioned, Suikonline, and Suikoden Assumptions & Rumors Shelter which is without doubt your favorite site! Of course there are other fledgling Suikoden sites who have not yet quite become mainstream--there are NUMEROUS small Suikoden sites; one only needs to input "Suikoden" in a search engine to find them. Hopefully these sites will grow bigger and spread the good word of Suikoden.

With that said, what holds for the future of Suikoden fandom? Many fans say that the communities are dying out, and by in large that assessment is true. Maintaining interest is difficult in between the release of each sequel--this is a struggle for any Suikoden site, especially those that lack original, dynamic content.

So, here is valuable advice to site owners thinking, "How could I make a site that can be half as popular as suikox.com?" The answer is-- interactive contents, dude. Suikoden fan sites are markedly devoid of interactive contents beyond a message board (which is usually ready-made). The Rebel Hideout had an interactive quiz back in 2001, and to this day suikox.com is the only other site in English-speaking Suikoden fandom history to have an interactive quiz!

Japanese people are often called "dull and unoriginal" by pompous westerners, but look at their fan sites! It's actually hard to find sites that have dry data content--most Japanese fan sites have something interactive, or have fan art drawn by the site owner themselves. Compared to that, sites elsewhere usually use Konami's official art, sometimes HOTLINKED (bandwidth theft!) from other sites! When visitors come to such sites, they'd surely think, "Gee golly, this suiko-site No. 329 has the exact same info and graphics as Suiko-site No. 256! This is great! I'm gonna visit here every day!! \(^_^)/"

Yeah, right.

Just like how inbreeding limits the gene pool and makes a species susceptible to sudden extinctions, having a number of sites with similar content would also stagnate the fandom. The challenge for fan sites in the future is to find out ways to diversify and develop original content. Such "mutations" will be necessary for survival, and more importantly, to increase interest in the series among non-fans.

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