New design is rubbish, Kotakus articles are rubbish and are approaching Destructoid levels of terrible.
Rock Paper Shotgun is a good alternative, if you avoid the comment field like the plague. The only thing worse than ignorant people is pretentious holier-than-thou basement dwelling pessimists who have ludicrously retarded agendas against certain devs *cough* CliffyB *cough* and blast everything uttered by that person or people in the company, for no reason other than to hate.
Haters gotta hate though.
Other than that I go to Giantbomb for my stuff, or Gametrailers when I want to get angry.
I was also getting tired of their outright lying in headlines to drum up flamewars.
Kotaku Headline: DEVELOPER SAYS PS3 IS UTTER SHIT
A developer spoke out on the topic of the PlayStation 3 today, citing concerns over the difficulty of developing for it. Filler filler filler filler filler filler. We were just kidding in the headline, he actually says Sony has been great to work with and the studio is getting over the development hurdles just fine. Filler filler filler filler filler filler. Snarky ending comment based on random, uninformed, and entirely unreasonable opinion.
This. The headlines for Warhammer Online back when it was first being released used to get me in an UPROAR. It would be like, "Warhammer Online tries more and more to be WoW" and in the article it would cite not a SINGLE instance where that was the case. It made me so angry because I know how many shits out there take what they read on the internet for certain fact and don't look back.
Article layout is now better, but at the cost of proper navigation. It's too tedious to get to stuff from the first page. The previous layout was a mess, but you could navigate more easily.
I really hate the new design, I have a pretty high resolution and everytime they post some images or a youtube video it is just way too small to see anything. I already used to hate their gallery system, but with this new design it's even worse (why did they take out the next/prev buttons when youre viewing fullsized images?)!
Also, the content seems to have gotten worse and less interesting over the past half year or so...
incredible landslide in the number of visitors - but is that really supposed to have been caused by the layout change? looks like the sites either have been down during the last days or there's an error in visitor tracking.
I think the number of hits has probably dropped off quite a bit, I know I've pretty much stopped going, only checking in occasionally to see if they put in a fix or scrapped the new layout. The split panel nav just hurts, classic view doesn't even really help. I thought I would get used to it, but I'm not.
But that looks like it stopped tracking? Maybe the new layout conflicts with their tracking. Or word got around about the CA site and people are going there instead?
I was getting pretty fed up with their sensationalist slant on so many articles as well (Brian Ashcraft and Luke Plunkett are by far the worst offenders here) and this redesign pushed me over the edge. I used to be a very active Kotaku commenter, to the point of being a part of their commenter "community", but that community has just gotten less and less intelligent and insightful over time. It wasn't hard to take it out of my bookmarks.
Plus I just don't get the impression that (outside of Totilo) their editors are really all that into games anymore. Crecente seems to care much more about "the industry" and blog community than the games themselves at this point. Most of the videos I've seen them record of game playthroughs have me shaking my head at how bad they are at games. It's like for most of them the original reason they got into games journalism has died out and what they have left is just have an unusual and interesting day job to keep up with.
It only takes a few lines of Javascript to detect whether you are using an iPad or mobile device. Redirect those users to the new layout and desktop users to the old. Idiots.
Why even bother with Kotaku? They're about as far as you can get from a legitimate gaming news source. All the sensationalist BS on that site, its not even worth reading. Not to mention most of the stuff on there is a day or so later than other sites.
What site do you think is better Slum? I have always thought kotaku was one of the better news sites as it always seemed to have info on there first and I never cared to look around for another news sites to read.
But with this new layout, the fact that in the last year there is more video game related deviant art posts then news stories and ads filling most of the page I am defiantly down to find a new site to read for industry news.
rps and cvg are good, destructoid would be better if they got rid of jim sterling, he's a third rate yahtzee wannabe who can't take the same shit he dishes out
It only takes a few lines of Javascript to detect whether you are using an iPad or mobile device. Redirect those users to the new layout and desktop users to the old. Idiots.
The new layout doesn't even work on the iPad. You can't scroll, and nothing is positioned correctly. A Big mess.
I use the old lay out by putting ca. infront (ca.gizmodo.com)
I can't stand Destructoid anymore, Jim Sterlings headlines are as bad if not worse than those found on Kotaku. Echoing Marine on him, he may have some points now and then but usually it's inane bs spewed to attract clicks or like-minded dregs to defend him.
Since the update, every Kotaku link posted on PC - and elsewhere - seems to take me to an index page, and not to a specific article.
So it looks bad, the UX is rubbish and it's basically broke to external linking.
I get this too. try clicking the link a second time after that. Seems to work for me. You can also manually remove the !# from the link as well to get the proper article being linked. Links that do not work properly is not something that should be happening in 2011. It could have perhaps been okay back in 1996.
My personal solution has been to say fuck you to gawker media links and skip over them. Instead I get my news through shacknews and sometimes joystiq.
well, instead of traditional blog layout that you can scroll through and read a little bit of the article, you just get a main article and small thumbnails on the right side with a headline and for some reason a good number of the articles don't have a picture.
their drop in site traffic shows how popular the redesign is.
I don't have a problem with the design, but there are several problems that currently plague the site.
1. No comment reply alerts.
2. My iPad flips between the mobile, old and new sites with every link I click.
3. Performance in Firefox 3 is poor (the Firefox 4 beta works really well though.)
4. Some links to the old site are now broken.
5. Just today they started using lightbox again instead of the broken slideshow that only showed the top left of the image. (So I guess that's fixed...)
6. There are many weird once sentence articles now, that you can't comment on. Like This Keep that shit on Twitter.
BTW, I still visit these sites everyday IN SPITE of these problems.
sometimes i get a weird thing where if i click a link, it takes me to the article but there is a 50% opacity grey over the whole thing. i have to refresh to show correctly.
I thought it would be appropriate to bring this back, anyone tried navigating the new comment-system on gawker sites yet?
You have power over your discussion. Look for an X icon on the replies to your post. Don't like them? Dismiss them with a click of the X. Abuse the X and you'll probably not see your own posts bubble up to the top anymore. Use the X well and you'll help steer discussions that may outshine the Kotaku-written posts above them.
I've been coming around to the Verge's layout more and more.
They're landing page is a very clustered layout and hard to navigate, but their blog post and forum post layouts are fantastic in the way they're cohesive. Their comment design is to be desired and wouldn't fit for something like our community, though.
In the future I'd love to see Polycount adopt something similar where forum posts and blog posts have a similar format, so its all one cohesive 'editorial' design. I think it makes for better discussions but we'd have to maintain a design that supports image posting and viewing.
Replies
Rock Paper Shotgun is a good alternative, if you avoid the comment field like the plague. The only thing worse than ignorant people is pretentious holier-than-thou basement dwelling pessimists who have ludicrously retarded agendas against certain devs *cough* CliffyB *cough* and blast everything uttered by that person or people in the company, for no reason other than to hate.
Haters gotta hate though.
Other than that I go to Giantbomb for my stuff, or Gametrailers when I want to get angry.
This. The headlines for Warhammer Online back when it was first being released used to get me in an UPROAR. It would be like, "Warhammer Online tries more and more to be WoW" and in the article it would cite not a SINGLE instance where that was the case. It made me so angry because I know how many shits out there take what they read on the internet for certain fact and don't look back.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/2/11/
ca.kotaku.com
Also, the content seems to have gotten worse and less interesting over the past half year or so...
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=sm5gawker&r=35
But that looks like it stopped tracking? Maybe the new layout conflicts with their tracking. Or word got around about the CA site and people are going there instead?
Plus I just don't get the impression that (outside of Totilo) their editors are really all that into games anymore. Crecente seems to care much more about "the industry" and blog community than the games themselves at this point. Most of the videos I've seen them record of game playthroughs have me shaking my head at how bad they are at games. It's like for most of them the original reason they got into games journalism has died out and what they have left is just have an unusual and interesting day job to keep up with.
Ho-ly crap...
I thought the site would suffer, but that's just incredible. They might have just taken the record for biggest site update fail in history.
But with this new layout, the fact that in the last year there is more video game related deviant art posts then news stories and ads filling most of the page I am defiantly down to find a new site to read for industry news.
I use the old lay out by putting ca. infront (ca.gizmodo.com)
i tried RPS & joystick as substitutes but they don't quite cut it for me.
RPS(carefully) and Gamer.no for me :P
So it looks bad, the UX is rubbish and it's basically broke to external linking.
I get this too. try clicking the link a second time after that. Seems to work for me. You can also manually remove the !# from the link as well to get the proper article being linked. Links that do not work properly is not something that should be happening in 2011. It could have perhaps been okay back in 1996.
My personal solution has been to say fuck you to gawker media links and skip over them. Instead I get my news through shacknews and sometimes joystiq.
http://kotaku.com/#!5771329/kotaku-shop-contest-few-winners-one-loser
well, instead of traditional blog layout that you can scroll through and read a little bit of the article, you just get a main article and small thumbnails on the right side with a headline and for some reason a good number of the articles don't have a picture.
their drop in site traffic shows how popular the redesign is.
I don't have a problem with the design, but there are several problems that currently plague the site.
1. No comment reply alerts.
2. My iPad flips between the mobile, old and new sites with every link I click.
3. Performance in Firefox 3 is poor (the Firefox 4 beta works really well though.)
4. Some links to the old site are now broken.
5. Just today they started using lightbox again instead of the broken slideshow that only showed the top left of the image. (So I guess that's fixed...)
6. There are many weird once sentence articles now, that you can't comment on. Like This Keep that shit on Twitter.
BTW, I still visit these sites everyday IN SPITE of these problems.
I don't like that they hide replies, so you now have to click on them to read them? Why not just a flyout as you mouse over?
Most of the time those comments are where the golden nuggets are and being able to quickly browse the comments and replies are what foster community.
They're landing page is a very clustered layout and hard to navigate, but their blog post and forum post layouts are fantastic in the way they're cohesive. Their comment design is to be desired and wouldn't fit for something like our community, though.
In the future I'd love to see Polycount adopt something similar where forum posts and blog posts have a similar format, so its all one cohesive 'editorial' design. I think it makes for better discussions but we'd have to maintain a design that supports image posting and viewing.
Blog post: http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/6/27/3122270/the-subtle-ways-medal-of-honor-warfighter-will-win-over-shooter-fans
Forum post: http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/28/3123173/swinging-in-spider-man-and-design-by-focus-group
Thread view: http://www.theverge.com/forums/gaming
Previously I could (and would always have to) click blog and then click ALL, as I love to read through every post in there.