Me and @sponge have been working together for the last few days to collect 3835 .plan file updates from a handful of online archives and the Wayback Machine. These .plan file updates come from the likes of id Software, 3D Realms, Raven Software, GodGames, Ritual Entertainment, and dozens of other game development companies in that "scene".
These text files constitute an entire oral history of the games industry from about 1997 to 2004, told through the proto-blogging platform known as the Finger protocol.
For context, the Finger protocol was invented in 1971 as an extremely simple way to query information and updates about a user on a particular remote server. I have no idea how popular it was in its time, but during the late mid-late 90s and early 2000s, the crusty old thing was used by these developers as a way to trickle out small rants, posts, and development updates from their company computers.
If you have any old .plan files sitting around, feel free to submit them to me or sponge!
EDIT: we're now up to 8058 individual .plan updates thanks to the generous folks at Blue's News!
