SiSSYFiGHT 2000: Возрождение онлайн-стратегии

Sissyfight 2000 (stylised as SiSSYFiGHT 2000) is a turn based strategy online game developed by the Word online magazine staff, including executive producer Marisa Bowe, producer Naomi Clark, lead programmer Ranjit Bhatnagar, and art director Yoshi Sodeoka, with game designer Eric Zimmerman. The original Shockwave version launched in 2000 but went offline in early 2009. A successful crowdfunding campaign was launched in early 2013 on Kickstarter by some members of the original development team, who announced the re release of the game as open source in HTML5. The original date for the game's relaunch was September 2013, but was delayed. An open beta test, started on 30 July 2014, is currently underway. The gameplay is simple on its surface, but requires solid strategy to win consistently. The graphics are also simple, and were inspired by the work of "outsider artist" Henry Darger, illustrator Edward Gorey, Japanese anime, and early, 8 bit video games of the 1980s. The game, which was inspired in part by Lucasfilm's pioneering online role playing game, Habitat, was designed to ignite community building through chat both in the game and on its associate message boards. In a departure from the androcentric norm in video games, all of the players in Sissyfight were rendered female and nonsexual. Sissyfight is often cited as an early example of a web based MMOG in gaming development and academic circles. Although each game session only contained three to six players at a time, the mechanics of "brownie points" and the robust community surrounding Sissyfight created a much more "massive" experience than most small scale web games.

Players found several ways to cheat in the game. Most often, two players resort to using a third party instant messaging service in order to coordinate their moves outside of the in game chat interface. Other players developed more sophisticated methods, including running multiple sessions of the game and creating secondary or unregistered accounts ("sock puppets" or "socks") to tilt a game's outcome in their favor. The Honor Code, Sissyfight's terms of service, strictly forbids these behaviors. With the 2014 revival of the game, multisessioning has become more difficult; guest accounts are no longer allowed, and the game can now detect multiple sessions within the same browser.

Players invented their own game variations, with unique rules. For example, "Tease Tag" required everyone to tease, while "Tease The Slow" required everyone to tease the last person to make a move. Other variations included a "no cower" rule, which was faster paced and concentrated more on offense. Since these variants were not hard coded into the original game, some players did not follow the special rules. As a result, the other players themselves often enforced the rules themselves by teasing out the rulebreakers. The $25,000 "stretch goal" set by the development team for the 2013 Kickstarter campaign would have hard coded some of these custom variations into the game. The funding ultimately fell short of meeting the stretch goal. However, in November 2013, the developers announced they would include custom game variations to compensate for missing their September 2013 deadline. The open beta test, running since 30 July 2014, includes settings for these custom game variations. The 2014 revival features these hard coded variations which are specifically created through the "special" option. Players may create their own game with a definitive title and identifier, which will have certain rules and challenges the normal game mode doesn't use. Some modes will disable certain defensive moves like lolly licking and cowering, others will prevent tattling to slightly increase difficulty, and others will make the timer speed up. These can be combined to make rounds even more challenging.

Sissyfight was a surprise hit when it was launched in 2000. In 2001, it was a nominee for the Webby Awards in the Games category. However, Sissyfight suffered from a lack of promotion and development after Zapata Corporation, its parent company, closed down Word late 2000. Nonetheless, the community proved strong enough to sustain itself, with unpaid administrator RamonaQ and a handful of volunteer moderators managing the game and message boards. Gamelab, a game development company founded by Zimmerman with other members of the original Sissyfight team on staff including programmer Ranjit Bhatnagar and designer Naomi Clark, maintained and ran the Sissyfight servers through April 2009. Since its release, Sissyfight was consistently named a top internet game by online magazines and continued to remain popular among its regular players, even after the site became unavailable late April 2009.

On April 24, 2009, Sissyfight became unavailable. On April 28, 2009, long time volunteer administrator RamonaQ announced on an unofficial message board that the site would not be returning anytime soon, as it was no longer being hosted.