History of DAC

[TheKingofVault14]

Hey everybody, I just realized that there isn't a single thread(at least to my knowledge) that talks about this particular subject matter, so in that case why don't we start one right now!

Basically share what you know about the website's history, plus describe any favorite memories that you have of DAC throughout the years. And to take this a step further, for all you veteran DAC users, how much has changed since you first joined?

Also as a newcomer of the website, I've got certain questions about DAC'S past, like for example whatever happened to the founder of the website Paul "Jay" Gallo?






Oh and here's a cool blast from the past, DAC back in December 1998 when it first changed its domain to IPlayGames from Turngray:

https://web.archive.org/web/19981212013 ... games.com/

[Amis]

As far as I can tell there are quite a few threads talking about the history of DAC and the podcasts and the Discord and the interviews made by Gimpmask esq.

[TheKingofVault14]

Hmmm I guess i didn't look hard enough for those threads, WHOOPS!

Also the reason why I made this thread to begin with, it's to compile all the info about the site's history, you know instead of the hassle of looking around for those specific threads.

Pretty much links? Links for those particular threads that you've mentioned Amis?

[Jeff]

like many members of the old dac, jay was a military man and i'm pretty sure he was k.i.a. in afghanistan, there was a thread about it with his obituary and all. rip paulie anyway i don't think the site has changed one bit, but here are some of my favourite memories:

• there was the whole kotaku scandal where dac members shared false rumors about an upcoming fallout game set in miami on twitter and kotaku wrote a lengthy article about it, this went largely unnoticed until gaming journalist ian "miles" cheong's dramatic exposé. i believe they have deleted the article since

• during the gamergate nearly half of the active members got banned for defending women's rights and it's been p quiet after that

• also a certain member turned out to be a sex criminal and some dac members doxxed him to the police so he's in prison now, think he was called "smiley", not sure don't quote me on that #plausibledeniability

edit: managed to find this memorial pic:

[Amis]

[TheKingofVault14]

like many members of the old dac, jay was a military man and i'm pretty sure he was k.i.a. in afghanistan, there was a thread about it with his obituary and all. rip paulie anyway i don't think the site has changed one bit, but here are some of my favourite memories:

• there was the whole kotaku scandal where dac members shared false rumors about an upcoming fallout game set in miami on twitter and kotaku wrote a lengthy article about it, this went largely unnoticed until gaming journalist ian "miles" cheong's dramatic exposé. i believe they have deleted the article since

• during the gamergate nearly half of the active members got banned for defending women's rights and it's been p quiet after that

• also a certain member turned out to be a sex criminal and some dac members doxxed him to the police so he's in prison now, think he was called "smiley", not sure don't quote me on that #plausibledeniability

edit: managed to find this memorial pic:

Okay, three things that I've got to say about this...

1. Dang, I did not expect to hear that. Rest In Peace Paul "Jay" Gallo!

2. You know, it seems that a lot of the old guard of the Fallout Fandom were military guys! People like Jay, Roshambo, Miroslav ETC. I don't know, I just find that really intriguing. There seems to be a pattern, which I've noticed while exploring both this Website & NMA.

3. Whoa, those are some wild stories you got there Gimp! Especially the Sex Offender one, also that Kotaku story is straight up 4Chan levels of trolling. GOOD ONE!

Overall thanks Gimp Mask for sharing!!! Again, that really sucks to hear about what happened to Paul. If he were here today, I would've asked him about a lot of things! Like when did he first hear about Fallout? What inspired him to create DAC in the first place? And looking back, what are his favorite memories of the website & what does he think of the current status of the website? You know, stuff like that.


Also, if anybody else has any memories, stories, or interesting tidbits of DAC'S History, feel free to share on here!

[Hyacinth]

Never forget Space cat

[Jeff]

2. You know, it seems that a lot of the old guard of the Fallout Fandom were military guys! People like Jay, Roshambo, Miroslav ETC. I don't know, I just find that really intriguing. There seems to be a pattern, which I've noticed while exploring both this Website & NMA.

Yeah it created an interesting dynamic especially here on DAC I believe, feels like half the members were military and the other half artsy leftist druggies (I'm a draft dodger myself)

Anyway you've been Punk'd, I made all of that earlier stuff up. I just feel doing the work and digging up the weird stuff is half the fun, but no reason to impose my preferences on you and also sometimes I'm just a dick so I feel a bit bad about it now, sorry. It was just to humor the old-timers who realized I was talking nonsense. I'm sure Jay's alive and well, not much is known about him as probably all members (except for maybe Stainless) joined after he'd already left. However sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction; here's some DAC lore for you that actually did happen. Just off the top of my head:

- A hoax Stalker fansite built by dackers and hosted by DAC just to piss off Stalker fanboys before the game's release. There was a fake fansite for New Vegas too, but it gained much less traction, although a gaming "journalist" or two actually took it at face value and posted news about it

- An admin giving a few mischievous members admin privileges for shits and giggles, who then pretty much broke the forum and used it to mass email goatse.jpg (NSFW) to every single registered member. And this was when the site was actually semi popular. They also banned Kreegle, the owner of the site at the time, from DAC; all of this this was the catalyst for him fucking off for good. He even tried to hand the site to NMA

- A member interviewing Chris Avellone and calling him a "faggot" because he didn't reply in a timely manner ("swell guy" is a DAC word filter for the aforementioned slur)

- RPGCodex / DAC wars during which the admin of Codex (who had DAC admin privileges as well) changed the DAC front page so that animated flying cocks (SFW) were flying across the screen. Also broke the forum again I think, wasn't really around much then

- Someone outing a self-proclaimed "turbo-feminist" game journalist / ex-Dacker as a lowkey nazi with some old #fallout IRC channel chat logs, he's done a 180 and become a right-wing propagandhist since. There was even a wiki about him. It would be well within reason to call it cyber-bullying and I'd feel bad about the whole thing if he wasn't getting retweeted by Elon Musk these days (I'm not kidding)

- One member's amateur taxidermy project turning a roadside cat corpse into a spacecat (the non-balloon picture is an actual picture of said cat) and taking it to school art class

- A member with a feeding fetish making a thread about how he was spending lots of money to watch webcam girls eat loads of pizza and ice cream and stuff. At least one of those girls later became a pretty famous porn actress

- A killer DAC rap song

(Unfortunately a lot of the text formatting in the old threads is all messed up thanks to several forum upgrades so they're a bit of a pain to read. Anyway I'm sure there's loads more but it's been 20 years and my memory is pretty much fucked)

---

I interviewed a bunch of old-timers a few years back, they're easy to find if you go to the forum search page and search for interview +with and select search within: topic titles only and display results as: topics. The interviews with DarkUnderlord, Saint Proverbius, Taluntain and Kreegle might be of special interest to you since those were the people running the site at one point or another. Also if you head here POOPERSCOOPER also interviewed some prominent figures back in the day, such as Ausir, Killzig, DarkUnderlord, Rosh, Briosafreak and Mr. Teatime. There's also this wiki article but you've probably read it already. Hope I've been helpful this time around

[TheKingofVault14]

Dang, you did me dirty there dude! Well I'm glad you were joking about what happened Paul, I hope he is doing alright these days.

Anyways huh, well that's some interesting DAC Lore right there! I'll definitely have a look at the links that you provided. Thanks Gimp!




Also yeah, I've known about that Fallout rap for quite some time now, I'm so happy it still exists!!!

[Jeff]

a lil caveat: just don't take the interviews as gospel if you end up reading them. it's been 20 years and people forget and misremember, and DU for example is something of a jokester. certain things absolutely did not go down the way some of the interviewees claim they did. but that's just heisenberg's uncertainty principle in action, quantum physics and shit u know, what can you do. i think the mystery is part of the fun, but overall the interviews do paint a pretty accurate picture of the turn of the century era dac

[Amis]

You can still find Paul in NMA, although I'm not sure it's is the guy and if he's still active, was around two years ago since his last post though. Same username.

[Jeff]

[SenisterDenister]

Those were always a mistake.

[Hyacinth]

Yes those are the visible scars that time can't heal