what do you think of this idea?

[TdC]

Hello ladies and germs,

I'd like to enlist your brains for a moment as SAS and I have an idea to float before the collective might of the FH forums. I expand our thoughts below, please take the time to read it and generate some serious feedback for us to work with.

BACKGROUND:
A bloke called Spear posted an idea in this thread, regarding forum users being able to submit their own reviews of games. This struck me as a rather good thing to add to our beloved FH for the community to play with. I told SAS about it and he liked it, and as an added boon it dovetails nicely with his Guides project.
As we discussed the idea, we thought it would be a nice touch if the ability to review could be added to the entertainment forums (films and music) as well. Now we want to let you guys in on it to see what you think, and to help us finetune the idea to make it the bestist that evar was!!

CURRENT THOUGHTS:
SAS posted this in the Guides forum:

If you have any reviews you wish to post, be it gaming or even non-game related, please post away. All reviews will be linked off the guides site with full credit given.
Or... If you have a large review private message me and I can offer to put it upon the FreddysHouse Guides Site.
Let fellow gamers know what you think of a new or up and coming game. Are you Beta testing something and want to tease us with a few snippets of info?
Post away...


Here's some stuff we've dreamt up:

• Reviews in a forum post, linked to from a sticky, with game reviews linked in from the Freddyshouse Guides site.
• A "Review this game!" link in each of the Guides on the FH Guides site.
• A "Been to a concert/Got a new CD/Seen a movie/Read a Book" link in the entertainment forums to the review mechanisme.
• Reviews should be moderated before posting, like the quotes(yes/no)? I think so. Your thoughts?
• we need some kind of widget to keep the submitted reviews in, I imagine vBB can take care of that -or- there's already a module or hack that does this for us. Need to check.
• if we use stickies, come kind soul has to create them (and keep them up to date)
• can we hook this in to the Petz stuff? or a forum rank perhaps?

I imagine I've forgotten stuff, do tell me if I've missed something SAS matey

HERES WHERE YOU LOT COME IN:
What do you think of our plans? Have we blatently missed something? Want more? Please let us know!!

As we work this out, there's no reason why you shouldn't unleash your creativity on the community in the mean time. I've been pestering people about reviews for certain games, but if YOU have a burning desire to write about your fave movie/CD/Book/Game/sport or some activity you undertook recently then do feel free to post it! The only thing I'd like you to do is to tell either myself or SAS about it so you can be credited once the system is in place at some future point. We want the idea to be as fully worked out as possible before we ask our fearless leaders to make the thing for us, so pitch in and we'll make something beautiful

Thanks for your thoughts,

TdC / Andrew

 

[Wazzerphuk]

There's one major problem.

'Reviews will be moderated': Obviously for inappropirate comments etc etc. but will there be a system whereby only reviews that are WELL WRITTEN get past? Most of the schemes are great ideas but then let any retard with a keyboard and no English skills, invalidating the point by making the site seem ill-educated. I dunno about you but I'm fed up of hearing stuff like "This game is great, you can shoot things!" from every random person that thinks they know about games. But don't, at all.

Might work, but it all depends on the current readership as to whether or not it could be a success. Given the drones of clueless people on the net, I'd say no.

 

[Jupitus]

Sadly, most of our users are having trouble reading this unusally long and un-spam-like tdc post and it is sinking off the boards

*Schlurrrpppp!!!*

Stickied, (though it ought really to be in the feedback forum ).

Thanks for your efforts guys

 

[TdC]

thanks Jupitus


Swiftyphuk, I had moderation on well-written-ness in mind personally. I don't mind the odd well-placed bit of strong language myself, but there are certain standards we must uphold no?

 

[Cyfr]

Example:
dis game is r8 gud cuz it lst long time n u can kill ur m8s n laugh @ em

 

[granny]

Great idea and agree with the moderation which could even drift slightly into editing - maybe if the mods think a submitted review is good but could do with some "tweaking" bounce it back and forth between the author and mods a few times?

Also how about having some kind of "extended poll" kind of rating system for games which are thus reviewed? Some kind of pro-forma that people who've got opinions on the game can tick rating boxes for gameplay, graphics, sound, manual blah blah? Or is that beyond the capabilities of these forums?

 

[TdC]

I would prefer to bounce a review back rather than editing someone elses work directly. Tbh, I'm not rightly sure how often such a thing would happen. Imo people have a pretty good idea of what will get through so it won't be too much of a problem. Perhaps I'm being naive though, but that is what this thread is for.

If someone takes the time to do some thinking and write a review of say, BF:V then it deserves to be posted. People know that a post saturated with swearing/txt spch et al will be poorly taken by the consensus, you get the idea.

As to your other thought re the poll, I personally have no idea what a vBB can do. Someone in the know will have to answer that one

 

[tRoG]

'Tis a great idea, but if you want the reviews to be in forum posts, how can you moderate them?

Tbh, I still don't really understand how you want the system to work

 

[Skyler]

Sounds good.. would be nice to have some down to earth gamers opinions on things..

 

[SAS]

I'd be happy to help edit any draft reviews that are decent, but just need some tweaking. Problem is my time is limited... (still trying to sort out the Half-Life 2 / Doom 3 features at present)

Although sending back a review with some constructive ways to improve it would allow the writer to sort out any problems and send it back for posting? It's a good way for anyone wishing to learn, and practice upon the field of writing?

 

[TdC]

'Tis a great idea, but if you want the reviews to be in forum posts, how can you moderate them?

Tbh, I still don't really understand how you want the system to work

well, re your first point, there is already a way to do it in the form of the quotes widget. you will submit your review, someone will quickly have a look at it and it will go into the database (or not, if it's like Cyfr's example). clicking a link in a sticky, browsing guides.freddyshouse.com (or maybe in the future reviews.freddys etc) pulls the review from the database and displays it.

re your second point, that's what this thread is for! We are well aware that there are different ways to go about making it work and we want to explore options. I personally have only the most general insight into the inner-workings of the FH architecture, but then DBs and the others are gods and can dream up such things in their sleep.

the idea behind this thread is to get as much thought thrown at the idea before we ask our resident people to actually do stuff.

 

[SAS]

Skyler's hit the nail on the head

Sounds good.. would be nice to have some down to earth gamers opinions on things..

Not sure about you lot, but I am fed up of reading sites which hype up games they have not played, or biased, and some because they've been told to write a good review on a otherwise pants game (it happens very frequently nowadays). Also don't get me started on asking joe blogs in a games shop for advice... </end rant>.

A lot of users of FreddysHouse have extensive gaming knowledge and play a wide range of games. If I'm ever unsure about a game I usually ask on the forums or pop onto IRC and hear some views from people who really know what it's like, guys and girls who have actually played the game and who's advice I trust.

If we can sort out a review system then other people will benefit from this knowledge and people will come to FreddysHouse for this reason to boost our ranks. Amazon is one site which has a review system, but a lot of the reviews are pointless. For example do you want to read "reviews" about Half-Life 2 (here)? Funny since the game is not out yet.

 

[Will]

Sounds like a good idea, and I think vBB should handle it pretty easily. But don't link it in with the "soon to be hopefully dead" Petz.

Encouraging people to give reputation to reviews would be a good idea though.

 

[Wij]

Do we get links to "review copies" ?



Actually it would be nice to hear some of your opinions on games. I'm sure my views are best kept private tho.

 

[TdC]

your submitted endless multiple viewpoint QuakeWorld reviews aren't everyone's idea of fun Wijlet one is enough

 

[Binky the Bomb]

thanks Jupitus


Swiftyphuk, I had moderation on well-written-ness in mind personally. I don't mind the odd well-placed bit of strong language myself, but there are certain standards we must uphold no?

Well, an honest review etc would be welcome from other gamers, as well as any upcoming stuff ppl find on the net (Links to be provided as well, unverified shite hold no water).

I personally feel that another gamers comments on a game would be a good idea, as long as there not bitching for bitching's sake.

My condolences to the fool who's going to take this load on. My hat goes off to you.

 

[TdC]

My condolences to the fool who's going to take this load on. My hat goes off to you.

I'm sure someone will be found to pick up your hat mate. A little bird told me that someone has actually submitted something, I do hope others will follow

 

[]AC[dRuM]

I'm sure I tried to discuss this elsewhere once.. *thinks 'oh yeah they thought the idea was shite'

..but yeah I think the whole community review thing is a rock solid idea, this can provide credible unbiased reviews for the industry and.... if you work together as a team you lighten the workload and provide support for one another when things get a little down.

Great idea community news / reviews. Form a group of like minded people, generate some credible and lasting input that the industry can feed from and you could be looking at a great success story for FH. Lot of work though but if you have others to lean on when things get a little down etc You can make a great go of it.

 

[Skyler]

If they put up a list of the most recently released games or games 'to be released' plus sections for older games people could browse through and read reviews that members have written on any game, even multiple reviews for any one game... it would be a very good thing.. I'm sure those that wouldn't want to write reviews would love to be able to read them... also submitting our own screenies to reviews would be beneficial as most game screenshots are engineered or enhanced... or taken on 'uber' machines... it would be nice to have screenshots from 'real' PC's.. whether they are good or not so good... this would also be a good thing in that those with lesser machines can describe how enjoyable certain games are and what settings are used compared to those on top class machines....

Just do it