Last month, the Chrono Compendium turned three years old. Where has it been, and where is it going? Last year, I did a retrospective, but perhaps this time I can actually put some heart into something like an editorial and state of the union address. The Chrono Compendium is unique among the milieu of RPG fan sites out there, and it's interesting to explore why. If you want to pause for the anniversary, here is the place to do so.
Rough BeginningsFrom the get-go, the Compendium was unlike other sites. We started as a repository for theories running on PHPNuke. We had no idea what we were getting into. Coming from OCR's forums, we only numbered five; Ybrik Metaknight and I were the vanguards, while Ingonyama, Radical_Dreamer, and Aitrus tagged along. Writing articles early was easy; we had broad topics like the identity of the Entity to cover, and could reach rapid consensus on something due to the small size of contributors. We did some work for a character encyclopedia, but articles remained the focus. Over time, we dawdled; the site changed while I mostly added news and encouraged discussion. Old standards like GrayLensman, Lord J Esq, and others joined, but the site mostly decayed. We'd occasionally get a good article, but this occurrence was rare. This dragged on for nearly two years until 2005, when the site was revamped and I began interviewing fan project creators. I pumped some life into it, but the Compendium remained largely unfinished. The rest of the Chrono community had become terminally ill at this point, but I did not capitalize. Then, earlier this year, I finally decided to work like crazy for two months and not care about anything else. Aside from college and other matters, I'd wake up in the morning to the Compendium and go to bed with the latest entry I had done fresh in my mind. Analysis was another story. Over the last year, posts had exploded while relevant content had dwindled. I outright refused to read two 20+ page topics with nothing interesting in them. When the dust cleared, the Compendium was finished. Chrono Cross Resolutions and Fates of the Chrono Trigger Team were miraculous articles and the massive drive ended on the highest note possible. My biggest mistake in my leadership is not having finished the site earlier. It took courage to finally say "the hell with everything else" and get it done.
...And Where Do We Go Now?The outlook for the Chrono series is better than it was in recent years. Chrono Trigger will probably be on the Wii, and Masato Kato (series director) is back with Square Enix. Mitsuda has also pledged to score a new game if one is made. We also know that Kato wanted to make a new game. This leaves us with the option to wait or write a
letter to Square Enix. And the community? It is growing, but the release of a new game will be the true test of the site. Analysis is mostly complete; there is more ground to cover, but again, the real test will be revising our theories and whatnot to include a new entry in the series. We can look forward to fan projects, but cautiously - hardly
any have been released in the Compendium's history. There is an abysmal failure rate in the Chrono series modding community. Either people give up or simply take on impossible tasks which are later abandoned. The future of fan projects lie in accomplishing what can be done in the here and now. It's about having less active projects and subsequently more workers per project. 10 people can either work on their own projects at the same time 5 years from now, or they can work together to release a project every half-year for 5 years. The latter is the best choice. I hope that the growing crop of ROM hackers will unite to concentrate on things one at a time. Crimson Echoes is coming, after all.
Chrono fans have inherited an unfortunate lot. Square Enix now sells titles with the intent to ship millions of copies. Chrono Trigger only sold around 2 million, and Cross sold 1.5 million. This disqualifies reviving the Chrono series as a most profitable course of action. Nonetheless, the potential for a new game is very alive and real. All Square Enix must do is outsource development of the game to another company -- probably Monolith Soft, where most Chrono series alumni now work. This would allow Square Enix to continue developing blockbusters in-house while taking a cut of less popular games' sales. Square Enix already does this with other companies; perhaps they can build a working relationship with Monolith Soft. Time will tell; just be optimistic. Optimism is a faith that leads to success. Thank you for visiting the site. The Compendium is unique in that except for ripping off old fanfiction / fanart sites, it attempts to feature everything. We will continue to do this. Though Gamespy sites and other franchised gaming sites will probably feature interviews and previews on a new Chrono game, you can expect us to pick up and connect all the peices for eternal archival. Long live the Chrono series.
