While sitting in one of his classes at the beginning of the year, Richard Christley, freshman, observed many of his peers habitually searching through pages of the Internet, desperate to find an online game so they would not have to install certain programs onto the school computers.
During third quarter, an inspection was made by administrators to check for games and other downloaded programs on students’ accounts. If only a few games were found, the student received a warning, but if the account had several programs, the student was given Out-of-School Suspension (OSS).
“Games in school are frowned upon by administration,” said Chad Crowley, freshman. “It takes up memory, but that’s a debatable reason. It makes sense, but some think it’s just because they don’t want us to play games, and they are just using it as a loophole.”
According to Crowley, the administration states that each account on the school server is given a specific amount of room for files, and when the space is used, it can cause the computers to process slowly.
“Most people in the gaming community believe that is very untrue, and that the amount of space given per people is the maximum amount of space that you get before the computers will start running slowly,” said Crowley.
However, teachers also say that students should not be playing games at school because it may cause viruses and harm the computers.
“From all the types of games I’ve seen, I haven’t found any education value. I’ve also had several instances where some of the games downloaded from the web have infected the computers with viruses,” said Tony Pluchino, teacher. “The equipment doesn’t belong to the children but belongs to the taxpayers of Wake County.”
Still, Christley wanted to provide students with a way to easily access games without having to bypass the filters set up by administration by downloading unwanted programs onto the school computers.
“I was tired of seeing people frantic on Google,” said Christley. “I realized we needed a better system.”
Creating the Athens Games (AG) website, athensgames.110mb.com, or simply athensgames.tk, took much time, but there were no expenses. It cost money to upgrade to place better games on AG, so Christley used 110mb, a free webhosting site that only allowed him a certain amount of space and bandwidth. However, to upload games, Christley used a server at his home that has a much larger upload size than even the upgrades found on 110mb.
“He was asking for donations, so he could expand the site. Since the site is growing in popularity, hopefully he might earn some money from advertisements,” said Luke Crouch, freshman. “Richard deserves it for looking out for the Athens gaming community.”
Christley believes that Athens will not take the time to delete his game page. Because constructing the website is legal, and there is nothing against the school rules about creating the website, he believes he will not be punished.
“If it gets shut down, I’ll simply move it,” said Christley. “The .tk address won’t change at all, and students will still have access to games.”
There are over 50 items, including Bejeweled, Fishy, Helicopter, Pac Man and Tetris, listed alphabetically under the “GAMES” link. The website is only updated when a user requests for another game to be added, but it is still frequently visited by many students. To promote the website, Christley created a Facebook page and spread word to his friends.
“I haven’t kept track of how many views I get since I got rid of the hit counter, but I used to get around 200 hits per day,” said Christley. “My user base has more than doubled since then… I have to thank my dad, Ernest Christley, for hosting the bigger files because he pays for the home server.”
Christley would also like to thank Natalie Malek and Rodney Beckner for giving him countless game suggestions. His supporters have helped him produce an easily accessible game site for the students of Athens.