Word.com closed AI-researched
Dependency: Word.com web magazine and interactive art platform Wikipedia
Word.com, a pioneering web-native magazine that published interactive fiction, experimental web design, and browser-based art including SiSSYFiGHT 2000, closed in August 2000.
Word.com launched in 1995 as one of the first web-native publications, treating the browser as a creative medium rather than just a text delivery system. Under editor Marisa Bowe, it published interactive fiction, experimental web design, multimedia essays, and browser-based games. Its most famous creation, SiSSYFiGHT 2000 (designed by Eric Zimmerman), was an influential multiplayer web game.
What changed
Word.com’s parent company, Word Inc. (backed by Icon CMT), ran out of funding during the dot-com collapse and closed the site in August 2000. After a brief revival attempt in 2001-2003 under new ownership, the site went dark permanently. The interactive works, Flash pieces, and DHTML experiments that were native to Word’s platform became inaccessible. Some content survives in the Wayback Machine, but interactive and server-dependent pieces do not function.
Notes
Word.com was part of a cluster of ambitious late-1990s web publications — alongside Feed, Suck, and Salon — that treated the web as a native medium. Its closure removed not just a publication but an active commissioning platform for experimental web work. SiSSYFiGHT 2000 was briefly revived via Kickstarter in 2015 but the original server-based version is gone.