About

Create-A-Wrestler is a form of of custom character creation available in many professional wrestling video games, notably those based off of the WWE franchise. This feature of these games has inspired players to create online communities to share their creations, as well as entire wrestling federations based off of characters made with it.

History

Although it was not the first video game to feature character creation, the 1998 game WWF War Zone for the Nintendo 64 and Sony Playstation is often considered the first game with a true create-a-wrestler mode.^[1] The game was later followed by WWF No Mercy, which featured an even more extensive customization mode that is still used to this day. Later installments have built on the mode and have made it even more extensive, allowing players to customize movesets, strengths, entrance music, and personalities.^[2]

In 2004, one of the first CAW federations was created with the debut of the wrestling news website NoDQ.com's NoDQ CAW series, which used the video game Wrestlemania XIX to pit famous fictional characters against each other.^[3] In 2006, the Story Mode Federation series made its online debut after years of private use by its creator, thegreatdingoes.^[4]

In 2010, a joint venture between several CAW federations, such as RAWR, NAW, and New-WWE, resulted in a shared continuity called the Vivianverse. This venture proved to be successful, and has inspired the inception of similar collaborations.^[5] In 2012, the Video Game Championship Wrestling league was started by a man known as "Bazzz McMahon"; the league, which mainly features characters from other video games, has proven to be successful, with nearly 2.5 million views on its Twitch channel since its inception.^[6][7]

Fandom

The CAW fandom is spread between several websites; some of the most popular sites include Something CAWful, home of the Vivianverse continuity, and CAW Mainsteam.^[8][9] Both of these websites were founded in 2010. Other sites exist where fans can post their CAW fighters for others to use. One of the most popular websites for them, CAWs.ws, was founded in 2005 and has over 86,000 members.^[10] There is also a CAW Wrestling Wikia, which hosts over 2,700 articles on various aspects of CAW Wrestling such as leagues, tournaments, and creators.^[11]

Search Interest

References