Bad Online Designs.
I don’t get these gaming sites anymore. The gaming magazine is slowly dying out, and one day, it may be gone altogether. While Egon Spengler once said “print is dead”, it’s not hard to find potential accuracy in that statement in the ease of finding information in the digital age.
I have my own personal favorite gaming sites. I read IGN from the Nintendo 64 days of the min 1990′s to just a few years ago. I loved the site, and visited it daily.
Until that last style change.
The site has become much harder to navigate, and archived news and reviews seem to be pure luck, or direct online searches in finding past news or something that I want to reference. From easy to navigate and quick bouncing back and forth from platform specific sites to one giant unorganized mess, I eventually stopped going unless some other site directly referenced an article that I access from a link.
In short: I loved IGN, but their horrid new site layout of the last few years has caused me to quit visiting. That new site designer seriously ripped the company off.
Imagine my disappointment when Kotaku has recently done the same. The new format is apparently designed by a madman who has no idea of how to make good use of visual space, or wants to decrease its readership to save internet bandwidth space.
Fortunately, the Canadian version of Kotaku has not delved into the same bad taste of us in the States. But for how long? When you make a site unreadable due to poor content navigation and site layout, there’s a problem.
Currently, I still read Joystiq and GoNintendo (and Canadian Kotaku), but I feel like I’m starting to run out of “good” sites. Does any of my readership have some good general gaming news sites that they find entertaining and User/community friendly? I would appreciate any suggestions, from current news to vintage gaming.
Open your discussions in the feedback sections. Maybe we will all get a few good sites out of this.
Filed under: gaming news
The Dread Pirate Guy
I find it most sites now seem to talk a good talk about "community", but in the end, little matters and little is actually done with the community.
NintendoLife.com has a pretty active forum community, and the guys are always talking about what games they're playing, and looking for others to play with…I have several of them on my GoldenEye friend list…though I think a majority of their readers are in Europe…so timing is an issue when playing online.
Gamespot's (http://www.gamespot.com) overall design hasn't changed too much, but they aren't really what I would call a trust-worthy site, what with the BS they pulled over the GTA 4 score, raising it at the last second as an editorial decision.
Review scores are as tangible as abstract art, anyway.
That said, the news features are still acceptable, and the user soapbox is always interesting. Unfortunately, the community is only slightly better than its sister site, Gamefaqs which seems to populated with gibbering morons.
Raptr (http://www.raptr.com) is an excellent site built on user content. I like it very much, although user reviews are usually severely lacking, but the community's great.
I think if people really cared, they would make their own; there's plenty on facebook, and the navigation is nice and clean, although the communities are kind of dead.
@Coffee: I'll have to check your recommendation out, though I am leaning more towards general gaming news. Kotaku WAS one of my favorites, and as long as they don't ruin the Canadian site, I'll still read it, but it's tough losing good game sites, especially since the physical media scene is on the endangered species list.
@Nate: Gamespot has definitely had some credibility issues in the past, with some things turning me off their site. But at least their site is still relatively unchanged and still easy to navigate.
Flashiness over practicability, style over substance. It’s the same with everything lately – IMDB being one of the worst offenders.
Gamespot is just as credible as IGN, which is to say, not at all. Both site’s ratings are influenced by advertisers and the promise of exclusive interviews/previews. IGN gave the Night at the Museum Wii game a 7.5 when its 3 hours long, looks like it was made ten years ago, and is basically a series of unsatisfying puzzles. I’m sure the fact that both IGN and the movie are owned by FOX had nothing to do with it. Alpha Protocol got a lower score, its 25 hours long and arguably the best stealth game since Metal Gear Solid.
Drake, you ever played Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow? You should, it shows Metal Gear Solid how to be stealthy. Mind you, it's a hell of a lot harder, but unlike the first overrated piece of crap that was the first Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow actually nails it.
Reviewing has kind of gone downhill since the SNES days, but that's the way of things when they become conglomerated. Isn't (or at least wasn't) the CEO of C-Net (Gamespot parent) a former CEO of Maxim? It goes to show you how much integrity they have.
Gamepro is no better (not that they actually gave good reviews anyway, but they had a pretty magazine), and the console magazines are not worth the effort to read. Game Informer only AAA's the games with the most ad money behind them and 1-Up is a bunch of hooligans with biases.
A friend and I had an idea when I was in college to create a free game site where the reviews were purely fact (technical) and opinion but the games would never be scored. Obviously that didn't take off. He had some personal stuff and I got into making another Doom mod and it all fell by the wayside.
@Drake: I don't think game length is a necessarily negative influence. It's what the devs do with the time they have to convey their ideas. And some games unfortunately do go on far too long.
Game Informer being owned by Gamestop is about as biased as one can be, unfortunately. I find some interest in it with exclusives, but considering the source, it's all just a paid ad.
People put so much stock in reviews. If it's not a 9-10 rated game, then obviously, it's not good. 7-8 are perfectly acceptable scores, and some of my favorite games fall into that rating range. I would like people to actually READ reviews as opposed to jumping straight to the bottom line. My own review don't have scores on here. I actually try to convey some of the enjoyment/disgust I found in a particular title.