Lara and Chris... I hate to say it, but I agree with the nay sayers.

[Richard Hobbes]

Lara and Chris,

I hate to say it, but I agree with the nay sayers. The new layout for the VideoGameReview.com site stinks. For starters, half my monitor is now just white space on the right hand side of my screen! Why do we have to look at the site through such a narrow column? The second thing I noticed was that as soon as I clicked the link to the new site, a popup add appeared. (Yuck!) The rest of my comments are similar to others as follows:

Where did the alphabetical list of games go? The list by publisher is useless and makes it very hard to find a game. Yes, you can use the search box, but this means you have to know the exact title of the game (or close to it). It also means that you can't click on "F" (for example) and see all the titles beginning with F. I'm surprised that such a fundamental navigation feature was removed. The alphabetical list is the key way that most users navigate the site. For cars, toasters, and stereos listing by manufacture may make sense, but not for video games.

--- We can only ask for your patience.

Yes, this is true, but too many changes too quickly can spoil the soup and send your loyal users away. I've been a user of the site for about two years now. By changing the bulletin board and the web site simultaneously you've given me a pretty hard pill to swallow.

Honestly, I really dislike the new look and navigation of VideoGameReview.com. I can't find game reviews easily anymore and I have to look at the site on half of my screen. I'm sorry to come out strongly with complaints like this twice in one week, but you folks definitely needed to get more involvement from your users before making the kinds of changes that you are.

I sure hope you can bring back the alphabetical list of game links from A to Z. Without this, browsing the new VideoGameReview.com is an exercise in frustration.

Thanks for taking all the flak from us ungrateful sons of biatches, but you had to know it was coming. Try using the new VideoGameReview.com site yourself. It really is a pain to get around now.

[Chris]

Let me answer this as best I can....

The new layout was designed by a third party company and is used across 11 of our 12 websites. It uses a different backend technology which required that the whole site be transitioned over within a short period of time (we couldn't switch over the forums, wait 3 months, then do the rest). Personally, I don't really like the huge gutter on the right side of the page, but it's not my call. I just run the site. I'm trying to get management to allow us to at least center the design so that it's not stuck to one side. The popup ads - well those are not a product of the new design, they were coming anyway. We need to generate money to stay in business. They're a necessary evil.

I can totally understand the frustration with the alpha sorting feature missing. As I said before, we've moved 11 of our 12 sites over to this new architecture, and this feature was not setup or used by our other sites. It was unique to the gaming sites. We'll have to get it implemented after the fact. Hopefully it won't be too far off.

When you say that we needed to get involved with our users before we made these changes, all I can say is that we did. We gathered feedback from users of all of our sites and even used a third party who specialized in user interface and community layout. Of course, no matter what we changed the site to look like, we were going to see some backlash, gauranteed. It will take some getting used to - I know, I run two other ConsumerReview sites that made the change (CarReview and AudioReview), and it took some getting used to for those communities too.

I wish there was more I could do to make the transition less painless, but as I said, I can only do so much. This design is not my own - it's the new "corporate" design used by all of our sites. I agree that it could stand some work, but all I can do is suggest it to management. I just work here guys ;) I'll do my best to make finding reviews easier at the very least.

[Darwin]

<div class=\"smallfont\"> it's the new "corporate" design used by all of our sites.</div>

That's exactly the word that came to mind when I looked at the new review pages. A lot of the simplicity, openess, and raw look that the old site had has now been replaced by something very "corporate" thinking. And, some of the uniqueness of VGR has been swallowed up by having VGR conform to the new corporate standard.

And, I'm really trying to reserve judgement here. Personally, I liked the more raw look and atmosphere of the old VGR. I think the old VGR's look really embodied what this site stood for: freedom of speech. It is one of the only sites out there that gives gamers freedom to express what they really feel about games. VGR is really one of the only things that stands up to those professional review sites (whose reviewers are being payed by advertising money from the VERY games they are reviewing) and says: "NO, I'm not gonna give your ****ty DOA Volleyball Game a 9/10 score because IGN's review said so !! The game sucks and the only reason IGN gave it this score is because someone at Techmo is really good at giving ****-jobs!"

But, I also understand that there are setbacks to the old VGR review site and that it didn't necessarily pay the bills. It's not like we have our gamers sending contributions, like PBS does. And it would certainly be horrible to start charging a monthly fee for the site like IGN and gamespot do. So, unless some benevolent individual is willing to support this site, there is no choice but to go corporate.

My hope is that VGR can walk that fine line between having corporate sponsorship, while at the same time embodying the spirit of free speech. To me, corporate sponsorship and freedom of speech are almost mutually exclusive. But I suppose they will have to coexhist on VGR. There are far too many gaming sites out there that have sold out to these gaming companies ... meaning that reviews and previews of games are being "filtered" so as to please their sponsors. I think as long as VGR focuses on gamer-written reviews and the message boards, VGR will not sell out.

VGR is the Zion of the gaming world. The corporate machines are digging ... and I pray they do not reach us.

"Do not conform to the things of this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind".

[Richard Hobbes]

Chris,

Thanks for the timely reply once more. I noticed the change to ASPX technology for the new site. This didn't seem sensible based on the fact that you are using Open Source tools (PHP, MySQL, and I'm assuming Linux) for the bulletin board. Of course, if all your other sites are running on Microsoft tools then I could see the sense why you would do this.

Once thing I've really noticed is that the new VGR site is quite slow when compared to the old site. I'm not sure if this is because it is sharing a server with other sites or because of some other problem. Is ASPX the new dot Net format for Active Server Pages or is it just the compiled version of Active Server Pages? (I've forgotten.) Perhaps the dot Net infrastructure (being new and untested) is not as well optimized as Microsoft may believe.

I replied to a post by Suicides-by-Steve in which I thought some of the issues raised were pretty important. I'm going to post this in a separate thread so that you are sure to see it.

Good luck with the continuing struggles.

RH.

[Chris]

In response to Darwin:

The reviews showing up (or not showing up) on our site will not be affected by advertisers. The reason our site looks more corporate now, is because it has moved to the same architecture as our other 11 sites, making maintenance much more efficient. The old VGR ran on a technology that was supported less and less here in our company, making it difficult to maintain. The fact that we finally moved it over to the new system doesn't mean our mission statement will change - just the look and in some cases the functionality will differ a bit.

To Richard:

The forums and the rest of the site are run on separate servers, using different technology, yet we have those technologies talking to eachother (through user registration). When you say the site is slow, you'll have to tell me what section you're noticing the slow down, so we can look into the problem. We are aware of the slowness of the "non-forums" pages and are working hard to correct the problem. It's affecting the speed of our other 11 sites as well.

[Aku]

I agree with others' comments. The new site has a sterile, corporate look to it that doesn't fit the personality of a gaming site, and many of the things I enjoyed about the old site are missing. But these things can be fixed over time. Even with third party software, things can be done to modify the look of the site to give it a more 'gaming' feel. And I'm sure that things like recent reviews and contest winners by platform can be inserted into the format. On the plus side, the new forums are great!

Aku
Shapeshifting Master of Dobian

[Lara]

As requested by Chris, please post any new questions/comments to this thread about the site change.

Official Site Change Thread - feedback and complaints here please

Post all feedback here in this thread!!!!!

http://forums.videogamereview.com/showthread.php?threadid=393