If I’m the Devil, Than You’re in Hell
Think about that!
Okay, as much as I disagree with Danny’s comment he did point out that perhaps, as I mentioned, I was a bit harsh. So, I’d like to clarify a few points here.
First, the magazine’s content is typical for any publication, news, reviews, previews, interviews and possibly some other ‘views that I missed. That’s fine, I’ve got no problems with what was actually written in the magazine.
My complaints are about how things are set up. Maybe it’s because I have always enjoyed doing web design/development work on the side. The site breaks cardinal rules of design. Usability, readability, etc. it spits on the very ideals, and I’m sorry, but I’d rather see a site that was easily read with simple fonts than one that looks really great, but has some bad choices for me to read. There is a fairly well known saying that “Content is King” and it is absolutely true. The content of the site should speak for itself. A flashy design doesn’t make up for poor content just as great content alone doesn’t mean you can have a bad design.
In my local paper sometime in the past month I read an article where someone had asked about etiquette as it relates to thank you cards and that sort of thing. Basically it had to do with handwriting versus typing, what is acceptable. Now, obviously, a handwritten message tends to convey a greater feeling of closeness, and just typing something up may give the impression that it is a form letter. What does that have to do with anything? It’s fairly simple, the article stated that, if you’re handwriting is so bad that it would be almost illegible than it may be better to type it out.
It is the same idea when it comes to design, if the font you choose is unclear and can’t be read, than your content doesn’t matter because no one can understand it anyway. Fairly simple.
As a second point, it is important to note that my writing tends to include exaggeration, perhaps more accurately, hyperbole. I stretch things to make a point. Did I actually not understand the difference between an M and an H? No, I got it, but it was unclear and didn’t really make much sense to have a poorly written letter when you are trying to show off an exclusive part of the magazine. Why give people the opportunity to guess at what a letter is, why not, instead, print the letter clearly? It just didn’t make sense to me.
I also commented on the music with a bit of hyperbole, the part where I mentioned jamming a knife into one’s eye. Was the music itself necessarily my problem? Again, no, it wasn’t. The problem I had was with putting up this music in the first place. People have CD Players, MP3 players, AM/FM/Satellite radio and plenty of ways on their computer alone, to play music. Why do I need a website to throw in some music for me to listen to when A) it may not suit the tastes of all readers and B) it increases load time on an already graphics and image heavy site. It doesn’t make sense.
If you like AFK Magazine and everything about their site is perfect for you, great, go praise them and everything they do. Send them links to my “evil” article and vilify me (hey, more traffic is more traffic), that’s certainly your choice. Or, you could accept the fact that maybe, just maybe, there were some poor choices made when it came to layout and design and, though you may not agree with the way I wrote about it, that I still brought out valid points.
Happy reading everyone.
December 3rd, 2006 at 6:13 pm
At least you’re being objective now, and actually acknowledging that while the mag, its site etc may not appeal to you personally - there are positives. Thats what p-ssed me off most bout ur first blog, nitpicking for nitpickings sake.
I dnt know if ur getting things mixed up, or if its me, but are u criticising their website or their *mag*?
On the font thing, yeah, it does look like a H, but ur talking about 2 letters of a font that only appears in 3 places from what I see, the mmoart button on the site, the mag title and the view mag button. yeah i agree it cud b better, i just find it a little odd u base a lot of criticism around such a tiny part of their site and mag. I honestly can’t see any other examples of it not being readible. if anything i’d probly complain that some of the fonts are a little too plain sum times
Don’t like the music, press the button to turn it off. pages taking ages to load, pick a lower quality.
then again, ur opinion is ur opinion, and i spose if the worst u can find 2 complain about is one letter in one shoddy yet rarely used font, then thats a good thing for the ppl who made this
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Danny, I think we agree on more than we disagree. Generally speaking there are very few problems, the content of the magazine seems fine, generally speaking, though the magazine and the site have their problems design-wise (I’m speaking of both of them, but each one at different times) it’s basically a decent publication, if not revolutionary.
The idea behind nitpicking as I did, is, as mentioned, a tool. By stretching things and making them seem like a much bigger deal than they may actually be it creates a feeling of “this guy is just being a jerk” which, apparently, worked
If I accomplish that, then, as a writer, I feel better that I can take a voice and make it seem real. If you’ve read over some of my other posts you’ve probably seen that there are some which use hyperbole extensively and others that are just “here’s some news”, personally I prefer to have fun writing and stretching things to the limit then just saying “Here’s this e-magazine that launched that talks about MMOs”. I could have said that, it would have been basically the same, but that is boring, it’s more fun for me and the reader to delve into that extreme exaggeration and for some people to come out going, “this guy’s an ass” and for others to go “this guy is totally right”.
In any type of communication in a group you have two basic groups of people to cater too, those that agree with you, and those that don’t. That’s obviously basic, but relatively true. Assuming I had just posted the “here’s this new e-magazine” bit that may have been accurate, but it doesn’t exactly scream “read this blog”. What does get people to read? Satire, sarcasm, humor, drama, and whatever other words you want to put in there.
Personally I feel my complaints are still legitimate in the areas I mentioned, but you are right, they are small areas that matter, overall, not so much. Did my complaints stop me from reading the magazine, or will they stop me in the future? No, I’ll read it, see what they have to say, maybe even comment again on an article inside the magazine (and yes, I’ll probably take that post and exaggerate the negatives and not highlight the positives) because, quite frankly, the positives will speak for themselves to anyone who is reading, as they obviously did for you.
It’s often been said that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and that’s absolutely true here. I may have said I didn’t like the magazine, but I also gave them a free link from my site, I wish people would hate my site that way
So, all in all, yes, you are right, I could’ve been nicer about things, but would it have been as much fun to read if I was? Would it have gotten you so excited that you had to make a comment? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.
And once again (seriously) thanks for stopping by and reading, I’d love to hear from you in the future.
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Y’know, i’ve got nothing to say in reply to that - points very well made, and yknow, it worked, got this blog bookmarked now. damn mind-trickery >
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Thanks again Danny, not sure what MMOs you are into, but be sure to check out the Story of the Week, Pic of the Week, and Post of the Week to send me in anything you may like I always love to hear from readers.
Glad you bookmarked it, though I’m not sure what I’ll do with the honor of actually being saved in someone’s browser, it’s overwhelming and a proud moment for me.
December 4th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Hello Brandon,
I stumbled upon this blog through googling. I’m the code monkey that built the magazine browser (as well as the one who composed the background soundtrack).
I wanted to comment a bit on a few issues that you mention.
Loading times of the magazine could appear to be long mostly due to high traffic the first few days the mag launched, combined with a bug on the browser (which has now been fixed, and hopefully the mag now loads faster).
As for the whole approach, we wanted to mimic the experience of reading a real magazine, as well as doing something different. Cause as you very well pointed out what good would it be if we made just another “next->
December 4th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
(apologies for the double post. Seems that the blog software squeeked at what it thought to be an HTML tag)
Hello Brandon,
I stumbled upon this blog through googling. I’m the code monkey that built the magazine browser (as well as the one who composed the background soundtrack).
I wanted to comment a bit on a few issues that you mention.
Loading times of the magazine could appear to be long mostly due to high traffic the first few days the mag launched, combined with a bug on the browser (which has now been fixed, and hopefully the mag now loads faster).
As for the whole approach, we wanted to mimic the experience of reading a real magazine, as well as doing something different. Cause as you very well pointed out what good would it be if we made just another “next — previous” series of images or a downloadable pdf?
Obviously with this being an online mag, we can’t stray too far away from the “online” part.
Now, we’re always looking for constructive criticism. None of the afk magazine crew has ever done this before so we’re practically “stalking” for comments in order to fix things and make the magazine appealing to more readers. Therefore, even if your comments might have been a tad exaggerated, we’ve surely taken notes and will be addressed on the next issue (if not sooner).
We’ve been working on the mag at warp speed to make our deadline so some things might escape our attention and not be as streamlined as we’d like them to be. And I guess that it’s probably redundant to say that we’ll be putting a lot of work in the magazine to improve it on the next issue.
heh.. no we’re not the guys who’re gonna go with “that’s what we have to offer, you can now choke on it”, neither we do this to pat our own backs.
But to conclude with this post, if you intend to be reading our magazine then by all means keep nitpicking! And we’ll be fixin’ =)
December 4th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Thanks for stopping by, as you mentioned, my original post was generally exaggerated for stylistic sake (besides, people love some good controversy don’t they?). As far as load times go, I did notice the news post that was on the front page when I got home later today, and actually planned to post about it, but you beat me to it
As far as things go, great work on the magazine so far, I love coding as a hobby and I can only imagine the amount of time that was spent getting all that done.
I’m sure I’ll be reading it for as long as you guys put it out, and a big thank you to the entire team over there for doing it.
I can understand the want to do something different with the music and everything, not my cup of tea, and not something I even necessarily like, but, as I mentioned in another post, I won’t cry about it to try and stop some ingenuity into an otherwise stale market (that of gaming magazines in general, print or online).
Anyway, I hope that you continue to stop by and comment. Hopefully at some point I’ll even write something that you’ll be putting in the magazine
Till then, looking forward to next issue and many more!
December 5th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Now that you mention it, a “biting the hand that feeds you” column on the afk magazine would be an interesting and entertaining one to say the least.
If that bakes your noodle, then drop me some e-mail and we can discuss the prospect =P
December 18th, 2006 at 3:59 am
lol this is history in the making or something. Its weird when you find out people are actually reading what you write about them.