I was looking at Roger Ebert’s website recently, and with full credit to Roger Ebert, I think I might start up a one-minute review section for people who may be living the fast life style and haven’t the time to read a long review. What do you guys think? It would have maybe 3 or 4 sentences, and a star rating at the end much like Rowena’s site.
Well its always good to have both… that way if you like the sound of the short review… you can look at the longer review. (i do this sometimes if the title sounds like something im interested in)
I personally don’t mind long reviews… In fact I prefer them…
But the mix like Gambit said is nice if you simply can click on a link to get the full review…
Oh & one thing I’ll mention cause I just thought of it… Most of the reviews I’ve read don’t do a very good job describing the way the plot is (rahter than describing the plot itself it is possible to describe the way the plot moves)… Most are super vague on anything related to plot flow…
quote:
Originally posted by Shadow99:
I personally don't mind long reviews... In fact I prefer them...But the mix like Gambit said is nice if you simply can click on a link to get the full review...
Oh & one thing I'll mention cause I just thought of it... Most of the reviews I've read don't do a very good job describing the way the plot is (rahter than describing the plot itself it is possible to describe the way the plot moves)... Most are super vague on anything related to plot flow...
Thanks for the advice. I'm trying to hammer out an acceptable standard for describing the genres of the games my reviewers and I review, I hope to implement them soon when we sit down discuss them.
I will say it depends on the writer. Among my old favorite game reviewers includes Johnny Wilson and Scorpia from (pre-ZDNET) Computer Gaming World. Their reviews were usually 3 (magazine size) pages and they didn’t cut any corner in their reviews. It shows they really went through the game as many times as necessary to give you a fair detail of what you will expect from the game (this was because they didn’t use a rating system, just enough details so that you can judge on your own).
I am not too fond of ratings as it tends to be really subjective. Unless the writer has spent some time already doing reviews, that is. Rowena’s site is an example. I like the way she write her reviews telling you why she like/didn’t like it, without forcing you to like the anime/game.
My thoughts? I prefer longer reviews.
But here’s my advice–try to offer both. Part of the point of this is to attract casual fans, and most casual fans ahve no particular reason to read long reviews. (It’s an open secret of user interfaces that the fewer words something has, the more likely people are to read it.) Casual fans probably don’t read longer reviews anyway, so we can’t corrupt them as easily
I think one of the great difficulties of reviewing Bishoujo games that are AVGs is the difficulty to use anything other than graphics and story as the criteria for evaluating this genre. I try to be as thorough as possible, describe some portion of the game without spoiling the fun of playing or reading the game for the reader. A review should also not be a walkthrough to completing the game either, so there really aren’t many ways of reviewing a game other than to treat it a movie.
Thanks for the advice guys,I���m sold that offering both is a good idea.
[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 06-04-2003).]
quote:
(It's an open secret of user interfaces that the fewer words something has, the more likely people are to read it.)
This applies even to posts. Though I'm not talking about yours, it just reminded me of something from a couple days ago...
See I'm a mod at a rather popular tech websites forum & some of the people there asked me to post a deeper write up on a topic that had been mentioned... Well I did. At midnight using what was probably 500 words or more & the first reponse I saw the next day was: "Uh can someone give me a sumary of that?" [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]
& of course it's almost that hour again for me here when I write this up so I have to go back & fix my typos...
[This message has been edited by Shadow99 (edited 06-04-2003).]
I tend to like longer reviews. Short “10-second” reviews don’t really say anything about the game. Shorter reviews tend to pretty much be just the personal slant of the reviewer.
Longer reviews usually mention pretty much everything (story, art, gameplay, translation, voices, reviewers personal slant, etc.)
After thinking it over several times, I want to give my 2 Euro-Ct to this:
I have read way too much so-called reviews on himeya’s website, consisting of just one sentence, stating either “this game roxx” or “this game suxx”.
Because this not quite informative style of reviewing really upset me, I vowed to stay as far away from it as possible.
I wouldn’t call such a sentence a review, but rather a quick statement of the player, stating if he/she was pleased with the game.
I am also not sure what to expect from a short review. I think, they are rather to be called players more elaborated impressions, than really a review, but that may be just me.
One thing that definitely is just me is: I refuse to give any rankings in my review, because they fake objectiveness and usually are mistaken by readers as a simple possibility to draw comparisons between games just by comparing numbers. This effect arises, because readers might forget that these rankings reflect the reviewer’s personal tastes as well as his/her mood while the review was written.
By the way what I was thinking of when you said a short review was more like the side box on Gamepsy reviews (non-Bishoujo) that do a quick write-up that covers the general feel of the game, gives pros & cons, & then lists a score of some sort… They also use those short write-ups as the lead-ins on the ‘story’ links that get posted on the main pages…
Take a look at any of their reviews to see what I mean…
Just a note about using a grade scale. If you give letter grades or scores, you need to also give a key for those. For example:
1-50: horrible game. Several problems. don’t bother with
51-60: A poor game, several points that make the game unrecomendable.
61-70: An average game, some good points, but many poor points as well
71-80: A good game, but some problems
81-90: A good game, a few minor flaws
91-99:A very good game, almost perfect
100:a perfect game.
Therefore, if someone sees “Divi-Dead: 85”, they’ll know that the game was good, but it had a few, minor, flaws
More importantly, you need to give yourself guidelines for how you grade a game. That way each game that gets a 75, gets a 75 for a set number of reasons. One of the big problems with giving a grade is sometimes a reviewer doesn’t follow their own set of rules. Doing this makes it diffcult for the audience to determine why the reviewer gave one game a 95, and then gave the exact same type of game a 25 in a different review. If both of these games are the same game they should have approximately the same scores.
Anyway, if you do something like that, then the 2-minute review is more like a movie trailer. You give a good, brief, review, and the audience knows exactly what to expect. If the audience is interested in knowing more, you can link to the longer, in-depth review.
Hope that made some sense.
Mike
Hmm, long reviews are okay as long as their long for a reason. (blink why do my sentences always sound so weird when I do them?) I mean, places like GameFAQs with a minimum word count often end up with longer reviews but sometimes those reviews veer off in directions that don’t really help or bring up things that only peripherally make sense.
quote:
Originally posted by ekylo:
Hmm, long reviews are okay as long as their long for a reason. (*blink* why do my sentences always sound so weird when I do them?) I mean, places like GameFAQs with a minimum word count often end up with longer reviews but sometimes those reviews veer off in directions that don't really help or bring up things that only peripherally make sense.
Probably because they neither proof read nor edit the FAQs or reviews.
[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 06-05-2003).]
quote:
Originally posted by Shadow99:
This applies even to posts. Though I'm not talking about yours, it just reminded me of something from a couple days ago...See I'm a mod at a rather popular tech websites forum & some of the people there asked me to post a deeper write up on a topic that had been mentioned... Well I did. At midnight using what was probably 500 words or more & the first reponse I saw the next day was: "Uh can someone give me a sumary of that?" [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]
[This message has been edited by Shadow99 (edited 06-04-2003).]
Hehe. Yeah, that about summarizes it. People don't read if they don't have to and aren't particularly interested.