About
Hey guys! I'm Tyler Frisbee, the creator of the Sly Cooper Fan Network. By day I'm a professional graphic & web designer, by night I'm a hacker and avid Sly Cooper fan. I've been a fan of the Sly Cooper series since 2005, and after first hearing about how Sanzaru Games was developing Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, I decided to make a fan website. The Sly Cooper Fan Network, launched in November 2011, certainly wasn't the first Sly site to be published on the web. However, most of my predecessors had stopped maintaining their sites after a few months, and that's what would set my website apart - I wouldn't quit. I never thought that the site would ever become as successful as it has over the years, and I could have never done it without everyone's amazing support. The site has given me, and all its visitors, the opportunity to connect with amazing Sly Cooper fans across the world, and the experience has been amazing. Over one-thousand posts on the discussion page, over 100 members, 2,000 visitors on average per-week, and a growing Facebook community - things have just gotten out of control, and hopefully the madness never ends. Its been a wild ride - so good, its almost criminal. If you ever want to chat, you can email me at SlyCooperNet@gmail.com
The History of the Sly Cooper Fan Network
2005 to Present. History Last Updated: 5/21/2017
My earliest memory of the Sly Cooper series is pretty hazy as I was very young at the time. I had only recently acquired my first game console, the PlayStation 2, and my step-dad’s co-worker’s son offered to lend me some games. One of the titles he offered was Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. I remember getting stuck on one of the missions in Raleigh’s episode, getting frustrated, and returning the game. Despite my frustration, I somehow ended up with my own copy of the second game, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, a year or so later. This was probably around 2005 I was eight years old. I struggled at first with the game, and occasionally had to call in assistance from my step-dad, or Cheezyy, my best friend at the time. After completing Sly 2, I went on to complete Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves before returning to the first game and finally completing that title as well. I remember I used to wake up super early in the morning just to squeeze in extra game time, and talked about how one day I’d land a job at Sucker Punch Productions working on new Sly games.
For a while I guess I had forgotten about the Sly Cooper games since Sucker Punch had abandoned the series to work on inFamous. On Christmas 2010, I was given a PlayStation 3, along with the remastered Sly Collection, and I fell in love with the world of Sly Cooper all over again. A rumor online stated that, upon beating all three games on the collection, a teaser trailer for Sly 4 would be unlocked, and I had made it my mission to find out for sure. After beating the games again and confirming the rumor, I spent hours scouring the internet for leaks, articles and clues that a fourth game was in the making. I mostly came up empty handed, but I did discover a vast world of Sly Cooper fan websites. To my dismay many of them were abandoned, even though they had great potential. Sly Cooper World, The Cooper Vault, Verona: Online, and Cooper Capers were some great sites, but had not been edited or updated in years. It was great to find Sly fan sites like Thief Net and The Sly Cooper Wiki that were still frequently updated and surviving. These sites gave me hope, and inspired me in ways I couldn’t begin to explain.
In the midst of the growing hype for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I was stunned to hear of the official announcement confirming Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. I began replaying the original games, collecting all the PSN trophies, and continued to search for leaks and news. During the dreary morning of November 20th, 2011, I got bored and started messing around with my favorite web editor, Weebly. I had been amassing quite a bit of Sly Cooper media, downloads, information, etc., and suddenly had the revelation that I should gather everything up and publish it online. Creating my own fan site seemed like a daunting task at the time, but a lot of my favorite sites were dying and disappearing, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a shot. The first version of the site...well, it wasn’t much. The original release consisted of a home page, blog, photo gallery, videos, and a news page. Not to mention the ugly design and ghastly Comic Sans font...yeah I, I know, I actually used Comic Sans!
For a while I guess I had forgotten about the Sly Cooper games since Sucker Punch had abandoned the series to work on inFamous. On Christmas 2010, I was given a PlayStation 3, along with the remastered Sly Collection, and I fell in love with the world of Sly Cooper all over again. A rumor online stated that, upon beating all three games on the collection, a teaser trailer for Sly 4 would be unlocked, and I had made it my mission to find out for sure. After beating the games again and confirming the rumor, I spent hours scouring the internet for leaks, articles and clues that a fourth game was in the making. I mostly came up empty handed, but I did discover a vast world of Sly Cooper fan websites. To my dismay many of them were abandoned, even though they had great potential. Sly Cooper World, The Cooper Vault, Verona: Online, and Cooper Capers were some great sites, but had not been edited or updated in years. It was great to find Sly fan sites like Thief Net and The Sly Cooper Wiki that were still frequently updated and surviving. These sites gave me hope, and inspired me in ways I couldn’t begin to explain.
In the midst of the growing hype for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I was stunned to hear of the official announcement confirming Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. I began replaying the original games, collecting all the PSN trophies, and continued to search for leaks and news. During the dreary morning of November 20th, 2011, I got bored and started messing around with my favorite web editor, Weebly. I had been amassing quite a bit of Sly Cooper media, downloads, information, etc., and suddenly had the revelation that I should gather everything up and publish it online. Creating my own fan site seemed like a daunting task at the time, but a lot of my favorite sites were dying and disappearing, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a shot. The first version of the site...well, it wasn’t much. The original release consisted of a home page, blog, photo gallery, videos, and a news page. Not to mention the ugly design and ghastly Comic Sans font...yeah I, I know, I actually used Comic Sans!
Making the site was easy, but getting people to visit was a different story. I really struggled with promotion, and I tried anything imaginable to get fans to come visit the site. I made ads and Sly 4 conspiracy videos on YouTube (I removed them all along a time ago, but I uploaded one I recently found on an old hard drive here) spread the word on abandoned Sly fan sites, posted on Sony, Sucker Punch, and Sly Cooper forums, and I think I even sent emails to Sucker Punch and Sanzaru!
Just six days after hitting the web, our first member and long-time contributor, Tabreez, joined the site. Tabreez has been missing since May of 2013, but in the early days he really helped found our community here. After weeks of promotion, the site started to explode. In March of 2012, the Sly Cooper Fan Network partnered with another site, the Sly Cooper Club, and an actual Sanzaru beta tester named Jeff joined the site. Jeff frequently posted in the blog about his experiences testing the game at Sanzaru and really drummed up excitement. Unfortunately, he disappeared shortly after the release of Thieves in Time.
Just six days after hitting the web, our first member and long-time contributor, Tabreez, joined the site. Tabreez has been missing since May of 2013, but in the early days he really helped found our community here. After weeks of promotion, the site started to explode. In March of 2012, the Sly Cooper Fan Network partnered with another site, the Sly Cooper Club, and an actual Sanzaru beta tester named Jeff joined the site. Jeff frequently posted in the blog about his experiences testing the game at Sanzaru and really drummed up excitement. Unfortunately, he disappeared shortly after the release of Thieves in Time.
As business continued to grow, I became more experienced in graphic and web design, and I tirelessly worked to make the site more professional. By 2013 the Fan Network became much more than just a hobby to me, and I decided to upgrade its domain name from SlyCooperNet.weebly.com to SlyCooperNet.com, where we’ve remained ever since. Site traffic reached a record high around the release of Thieves in Time, and we averaged around 8,000 visitors per week. It was crazy, and the blog/discussion exploded around the time of our countdown/release party to usher in the game.
Unfortunately, things have been going downhill a little bit ever since. After the release of Thieves in Time, site regulars such as Tabreez, Jeff, Orfe Lutolli, Sam and Thomas began to disappear, and I became frequently inactive in maintaining the site. I did just enough to keep the Fan Network semi-active and relevant, but business slowed down and things were never really the same for a while. In the, I graduated high school and decided to pursue an education in graphic and web design in college. I can’t say for sure, but I think all the time I spent working on this site pushed me in that direction. As my first semester was winding down during the fall of 2015, I flirted with the idea of formally laying the site to rest. However, after browsing around… I was hit with a blast of nostalgia, and I just couldn't do it. Instead, it was time to save the site.
I logged back into my editor and realized I had nearly 100 member applications! The site never had a legitimate members system, so upon a form entry by a fan, I had to manually upload each and every member by hand! So, my first step was to implement an automated, legitimate members system. My web host, Weebly, doesn’t have a decent members API, so I found that my best option was to set up a members system using Free Webs. Basically, I created a second site and embedded it in the members page on this site...it was a weird solution, and maybe not the best, but it works. I tried uploading old member’s profiles by hand with the new system, but the site lost a lot of people with the switch.
I was thrilled about getting back into working on the site again, but then I noticed that a lot of the older abandoned sites that had been my inspiration for years were dropping like flies. It seems as if most Sly Cooper sites created between 2006-2010 used Free Webs, and the company decided to start freezing and subsequently shutting down abandoned sites if the creator doesn’t intervene within a specified time window. I scrambled to salvage what I could, and Free Webs’s war on Sly Cooper fans meant I was back for good this time. Getting back into the Sly Cooper scene would be difficult, and to do it I’d need fresh branding and promotion. I accomplished the branding dilemma by releasing a brand new, custom web design and accompanying logo. I tried visiting my usual haunts to spread the word, but nothing seemed to work very well.
I logged back into my editor and realized I had nearly 100 member applications! The site never had a legitimate members system, so upon a form entry by a fan, I had to manually upload each and every member by hand! So, my first step was to implement an automated, legitimate members system. My web host, Weebly, doesn’t have a decent members API, so I found that my best option was to set up a members system using Free Webs. Basically, I created a second site and embedded it in the members page on this site...it was a weird solution, and maybe not the best, but it works. I tried uploading old member’s profiles by hand with the new system, but the site lost a lot of people with the switch.
I was thrilled about getting back into working on the site again, but then I noticed that a lot of the older abandoned sites that had been my inspiration for years were dropping like flies. It seems as if most Sly Cooper sites created between 2006-2010 used Free Webs, and the company decided to start freezing and subsequently shutting down abandoned sites if the creator doesn’t intervene within a specified time window. I scrambled to salvage what I could, and Free Webs’s war on Sly Cooper fans meant I was back for good this time. Getting back into the Sly Cooper scene would be difficult, and to do it I’d need fresh branding and promotion. I accomplished the branding dilemma by releasing a brand new, custom web design and accompanying logo. I tried visiting my usual haunts to spread the word, but nothing seemed to work very well.
Then, in the fall of 2015, I met Invenzyme. After signing up on the new member’s page, he sent me a message giving me his input on the site and its future. We soon became friends, and he has been integral to the rebirth of the Sly Cooper Fan Network. Invenzyme’s “Save Sly” movement became a force to be reckoned with when it came to promoting and spreading the word about the site, and his advice has been invaluable. For years I alone had been the man behind the curtain, with the occasional contributions by Tabreez and Jeff, but Invenzyme has really helped out a lot.
The holiday season came and went, and my second semester a college began. 2016 was a slow year for news, and I was so busy with school that updates became scarce. However, in May that year, there was some hope that maybe Sly Cooper 5 was coming. Based on the content of Sucker Punch Production's Twitter posts and recent inactivity, it seemed possible that maybe they were working on Sly 5. There was even official confirmation that the movie was still in development!
The rest of the year was fraught with more endings than beginnings. I began to see a vast amount of the Sly Cooper fan websites and other assorted entities simply disappearing from the community. Websites like the infamous Thief.net were shut down and removed by Freewebs, and Sly Cooper community icons like YouTuber SlyCooperRocks101 decided to call it quits.
Not much happened that summer, and with my third semester starting at college, it wasn't likely I'd be adding much to the site any time soon. However, that fall I managed to land an interview with Fiendish Kitten. Fiendish kitten launched the wildly successful Sly Cooper World forum in 2006 and then an accompanying website in 2007. I had discovered that she predicted the name of Sly 4 all the way back in 2007 before Sanzaru Games even existed! After posting about that, she contacted me and we conducted an hour long interview over Skype. Her real name is Gemma, and she really is a great person. Currently she produces audio plays on YouTube which can be found here.
After that things were pretty quiet. Apparently, famous Sly Cooper YouTuber VTNVIVI gave my website a shoutout that December, but I didn't realize it until Spring 2017. While website traffic spiked, I was super busy with college. As usual. The fall semester ended, the holidays came and went, and then my fourth semester began. I graduated college with honors and an associate's degree in Digital Media, and I'm transferring to another university to pursue a bachelor's degree in Graphic Design.
With some new-found free time in May that year, I got curious about what was up with Sly Cooper. After doing some digging, I discovered even further evidence supporting the idea that Sucker Punch Productions might be working on Sly 5. (I later found out that VTNVIVI had already reported on the majority of what my article covered months ago... oops). Suddenly things began to kick into overdrive again. I launched a ton of new updates (you can see them detailed in the changeling at the bottom of the site) including a brand new web design with mobile compatibility, new downloads, new information, new layouts, new photos, and so much more to do. And I don't plan on slowing down.
The future for the world of Sly Cooper is uncertain but hopeful. Leaks and rumors and speculation all support that the movie is happening... and that the movie is not happening. Absolutely nothing is certain about Sly Cooper 5, aside from some speculation that MAYBE Sucker Punch has a hand in it. However, there's been enough to news to support the fact that SOMETHING is coming. All we have to do is wait. We did that four eight years before we finally got Sly 4, so just a few months shouldn't be too difficult.
It has been an amazing five years. As we rapidly approach our sixth anniversary, I can't believe just how far this site has come since I, then fourteen years old, first hit the "publish" button. Whether you're a veteran member or a brand new visitor, you are the reason this site has been possible. Without your incredible support, the Sly Cooper Fan Network would have never escaped the confines of some random teenager's imagination. I can't wait to see what the future has in store for Sly and the gang!
The holiday season came and went, and my second semester a college began. 2016 was a slow year for news, and I was so busy with school that updates became scarce. However, in May that year, there was some hope that maybe Sly Cooper 5 was coming. Based on the content of Sucker Punch Production's Twitter posts and recent inactivity, it seemed possible that maybe they were working on Sly 5. There was even official confirmation that the movie was still in development!
The rest of the year was fraught with more endings than beginnings. I began to see a vast amount of the Sly Cooper fan websites and other assorted entities simply disappearing from the community. Websites like the infamous Thief.net were shut down and removed by Freewebs, and Sly Cooper community icons like YouTuber SlyCooperRocks101 decided to call it quits.
Not much happened that summer, and with my third semester starting at college, it wasn't likely I'd be adding much to the site any time soon. However, that fall I managed to land an interview with Fiendish Kitten. Fiendish kitten launched the wildly successful Sly Cooper World forum in 2006 and then an accompanying website in 2007. I had discovered that she predicted the name of Sly 4 all the way back in 2007 before Sanzaru Games even existed! After posting about that, she contacted me and we conducted an hour long interview over Skype. Her real name is Gemma, and she really is a great person. Currently she produces audio plays on YouTube which can be found here.
After that things were pretty quiet. Apparently, famous Sly Cooper YouTuber VTNVIVI gave my website a shoutout that December, but I didn't realize it until Spring 2017. While website traffic spiked, I was super busy with college. As usual. The fall semester ended, the holidays came and went, and then my fourth semester began. I graduated college with honors and an associate's degree in Digital Media, and I'm transferring to another university to pursue a bachelor's degree in Graphic Design.
With some new-found free time in May that year, I got curious about what was up with Sly Cooper. After doing some digging, I discovered even further evidence supporting the idea that Sucker Punch Productions might be working on Sly 5. (I later found out that VTNVIVI had already reported on the majority of what my article covered months ago... oops). Suddenly things began to kick into overdrive again. I launched a ton of new updates (you can see them detailed in the changeling at the bottom of the site) including a brand new web design with mobile compatibility, new downloads, new information, new layouts, new photos, and so much more to do. And I don't plan on slowing down.
The future for the world of Sly Cooper is uncertain but hopeful. Leaks and rumors and speculation all support that the movie is happening... and that the movie is not happening. Absolutely nothing is certain about Sly Cooper 5, aside from some speculation that MAYBE Sucker Punch has a hand in it. However, there's been enough to news to support the fact that SOMETHING is coming. All we have to do is wait. We did that four eight years before we finally got Sly 4, so just a few months shouldn't be too difficult.
It has been an amazing five years. As we rapidly approach our sixth anniversary, I can't believe just how far this site has come since I, then fourteen years old, first hit the "publish" button. Whether you're a veteran member or a brand new visitor, you are the reason this site has been possible. Without your incredible support, the Sly Cooper Fan Network would have never escaped the confines of some random teenager's imagination. I can't wait to see what the future has in store for Sly and the gang!