Well, I went onto Kotaku yesterday to check my daily gaming news and was greeted with a completely bizzarre new layout. It seems like Gawker media, the company behind a bunch of blogs rolled out a new design without testing it with a core group.
What does this new layout say? Time to put profits ahead of the users! Ads. Giant ads everywhere, inescapable. Ads embedded into the actual content. It just hurts to look at this insanely commercialized look that overshadows, distracts and overwhelms the viewers. Granted, every person is out there to make a buck..But to go this drastic immediately? It kind of left me speechless, and I'm feeling kind of alienated.
It takes me back to how I felt when Digg did their version 4 launch, which stressed profitability and took away key features that empowered users. A massive backlash occurred followed by mass exodus. I'm not saying that what happened with Kotaku is as drastic, but its kind of a slap to the face to be bombarded by ads on such a well established blog. It just feels cheap and not well thought out. I'm not going to be clicking on your Eharmony and Slurpee ads, Kotaku.
People are upset, and rightfully so. It begs the question, why fix something when its not broken? The classic website was easy to read, simple and straight to the point. I have yet to see a drastic website redesign for established websites work. It nearly seems as if the redesign was done with iPad users in mind.
Anyways, just as I ended up moving on from Digg to Reddit, it might be time to get a fresh perspective for videogame news. For all I know people might get used to it, but its just too much for me to handle. At the end of the day this is all my opinion, but I can't help but feel disappointed when websites I love seem to lose sight of their users and let the almighty dollar almost exclusively dictate their direction.
I'm not a fan of the Gawker network, but this really annoyed me. It's so glitchy! I guess it shows you what they really are about.
ReplyDeletei hate the new website and just stick with giant bomb and the escapist now
ReplyDeleteI left Joystiq years ago, but I find myself heading back for now. I'm really not feeling the new layout. Maybe they should enable a 'classic' mode.
ReplyDeletehmm when I go onto kotaku it just keeps sending me to the gizmondo site lol
ReplyDeleteThe new layout is broken and just sucks. Its overwhelming to look at and littered with ads that distract from the content. Seriously, time to head elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteHope gawker media gets the balls to fess up to the flop.
Not trying to be that guy, but the whole blow up of people trashing Gawker/Kotaku for this layout is getting old. This layout is old news, and your statement, "It seems like Gawker media, the company behind a bunch of blogs rolled out a new design without testing it with a core group." is false. There has been an option to view the beta for the sites, in particular Kotaku, for weeks. The beta was just like the current layout, ugly and unusable, but no one spoke up or talked about it on the web and I doubt enough feedback was given.
ReplyDeleteFirst they get get hacked and my email address and password get pubished online, and now this?
ReplyDeleteDone with Kotaku, i didn't care hugely for the commenting system, starred users crap, or some of the writers, but it was a good source of breaking news. Need to find another new site... eurogamers great, but it only updates in working hours.