We just want to know if you think this is a good idea or not.

http://www.quartertothree.com/news/weeks_reviews/reviews_march17_2001.shtml

Post your thoughts here.

It is a good idea, though I'd probably get rid of the first impressions and quick takes and only link to actual final reviews.

My ideal site would actually read all of the reviews and give some analysis, i.e. "this review makes a few good points but is so poorly written it makes it difficult to find 'em," or something like that. But that's asking a lot.

"My ideal site would actually read all of the reviews and give some analysis, i.e. "this review makes a few good points but is so poorly written it makes it difficult to find 'em," or something like that."

Yeah, I'd love to see that, too. But as a reviewer, I'd be pretty uncomfortable being the guy who reviews the reviews.

I'd also get tired of finding ways to say, "This review isn't very well written". :)

-Tom

While I probably won't use it enough to justify you guys putting the time in on it, I do think it's cool. It's nice to be able to find a review on a certain game when you're looking for one. (I, for example, thought it nice that I could see what other reviewers had to say about Konung.)

I hope that other people use this resource more than I am likely to -- I like knowing that it's there, and would hate for it to die because nobody used it. I think it's good for you guys as a site, too. It's cool to be able to say "If you go to Quarter to Three, you can find a review on any game that has been written about in the last week (month, etc.)"

Personally, I'd rather not get a list to all the reivews out there, good and bad. Posting a list of two dozen reviews that appeared during the week really isn't of much use to me. How do I know which of the half-dozen Nascar4 reviews to read?

If I just wanted a list of review links, I'd go to www.gamerankings.com and get that and a lot more.

What I want is a site that only links the GOOD reviews. (by that I mean reviews that are well-done, not ones that are positive)

Cull out the 90% of web reviews that read like they were written by a fifth grader and/or are nothing more than fanboy drooling and/or use the word "fun factor" somewhere. Put a moritorium on the phrase "kick ass."

Gimme a list of five reviews a week that I should probably go read, because hey, they're nicely done. Maybe a review is quite funny, or really hits the nail on the head and backs up the opinion with good examples, or maybe it's a review of a niche game from a reviewer who knows that niche very well. Maybe it's not particularly well done, but interesting because it's written by an expert (like an Air Force pilot who reviews some air combat sim). Gimme a list of THOSE reviews and those only, and you'd be doing me an actual service.

I doubt I'd ever visit the review list the way it is now. It just doesn't give me anything I can't get from a dozen other sites. And hey, finding reviews of games is the EASY part. Finding ones worth reading, that's another matter.

>>Yeah, I'd love to see that, too. But as a reviewer, I'd be pretty uncomfortable being the guy who reviews the reviews.

Yeah, the only way a site could do that is if they weren't reviewing products, otherwise it smacks of slamming the competition.

>>I'd also get tired of finding ways to say, "This review isn't very well written". :)

It'd be like figuring out ways to end a preview without saying, "If this turns out as the developer intends, it should be a winner," or in a review "had they fixed these problems, it could have been a winner."

"Gimme a list of five reviews a week that I should probably go read, because hey, they're nicely done. Maybe a review is quite funny, or really hits the nail on the head and backs up the opinion with good examples, or maybe it's a review of a niche game from a reviewer who knows that niche very well."

This sounds like an awful lot of work for two guys who are already very busy and who get little or no income off the site. I think that's the key. Sure, we'd all love to have a list of "Can't miss" reviews only, but I don't know if it's fair of us to ask that of Tom and Mark.

On the other hand, they're probably already reading a lot of reviews as it is, and it might not be much more work. We'll see what develops.

"Gimme a list of five reviews a week that I should probably go read, because hey, they're nicely done. Maybe a review is quite funny, or really hits the nail on the head and backs up the opinion with good examples, or maybe it's a review of a niche game from a reviewer who knows that niche very well. Maybe it's not particularly well done, but interesting because it's written by an expert (like an Air Force pilot who reviews some air combat sim). Gimme a list of THOSE reviews and those only, and you'd be doing me an actual service."

I've entertained this idea. I thought of doing a "Best of the Web" roundup once a week that would highlight a few good reviews, interviews, etc. The problem is that I just don't have time to read them all. Also, some sites would get cited more often than others simply because they get a lot of exclusives. I sort of hate to reward the big bullies.

There are so many gaming sites now that an Utne Reader approach and summarizing and linking tot the best articles would be something of value, but without any real hope of making some money off such an approach, it becomes a neverending, time-intensive hobby.

No offense, but I'd much rather see more original content out of you guys....

If that means less daily news, fine. No review roundups? Good. If this review thing takes you 10 minutes to do, I'd rather see 10 minutes of something I can't get anywhere else.

A much more useful thing, imo, would be a Column Roundup (and I don't just mean my columns). Nobody else is doing that and there's gotta be some decent editorials out there we aren't reading.

--Andrew
(Who has TWO columns nobody reads!)

Oops! I must've clicked the "anonymous" box by accident. Could you figure out who I was without the tilde?

"I've entertained this idea. I thought of doing a "Best of the Web" roundup once a week that would highlight a few good reviews, interviews, etc. The problem is that I just don't have time to read them all."

How about a "distributed review reading" effort? Put a paragraph on the review list explaining that you try to link to the more interesting reviews, but don't have time to read the entire web, so if a reader comes across a review they like, send a link. That way, the first cut will be done for you. Sure, you'll get some pimping, but keep a list of those folks & put them on your Junk Email list. :)

Actually, a column roundup is kind of interesting. This review round-up probably took me about 1.5 hours. It wasn't too bad.

We are but two. That's the issue. Original content is great, and we have a couple of things we're going to post tomorrow -- no Shoot Club, so don't get all flustered with excitement -- but it takes a lot longer than 1.5 hours to generate orignial content that's based on games. There really are no shortcuts. It would be easier to be a movie critic because at least then you could legitimately see 5 or 6 movies in a week and write about them -- not like Pauline Kael, maybe, but like the other 98% of the movie critics out there.

I don't know why other folks here seem intent on telling you guys what feature they would like in an ideal world... I think this new feature is very useful, and I plan on using it often. The fact is, I only have the time for one game portal in my life... It used to be Gamecenter, but then I came here (following a link from their final "issue"). These links to other reviews make it easy for me to bone up on a particular title I'm interested in without having to sift through piles of deitritus on my own. My vote: great new feature -- keep it up! Thanks.

Waste of space it seems like. I come here for the witty quick takes on games and snappy, to the point final reviews, there are other sites that offer links to review sites VE, BN but it's your gig (not gigabyte) and your space, go nuts.

It's really just a weekly version of the Gold Guide which I find the most comprehensive and invaluable list of reviews around. I think you're well aware of the GG, Mark. I also think the GG is tough to beat because it has all reviews listed by game and with a blurb from each of them along with the rating. That's just too tough to beat IMO.

The Gold Guide

Your opinions and your writing are your strong suit. That should be your focus I think.

--Dave

"I'd also get tired of finding ways to say, "This review isn't very well written". :)"

LOL, isn't this the truth! After a while you would start to get angry that you were required to read such an enormous amount of poorly written reviews and it would show.

But to answer the question, it's fine if you're looking for an alpha list of latest reviews, but I would be sorely dissapointed if the front page went away for this type list. I like the daily list of short witty blurbs. Now, if you were going to add another section for this that would be cool, but that's probably asking a lot.

BTW, whatever happened to the idea that a bunch of people were going to make posts to the front page using some sort of script. I saw it happen for like half a day and then back to the usual style of semi-annoymous blurbs using the royal "we."

> This sounds like an awful lot of work for two guys who are already very busy and who get little or no income off the site.

Hey, I didn't say it would be easy, or even feasible... just that it's what would be useful to me. They asked, after all.

Just a list of every review up on the web that weeek does nothing for me. It takes a *LOT* less time, but it's time totally wasted (on me) because I won't ever use it. I get the same thing from the front page of www.gamerankings.com, and I get it broken down by platform too.

I don't even think a blurb or pullquote from the reviews would help too much. It still doesn't tell me if I should bother going to read it.

>I sort of hate to reward the big bullies.

Well, if I was doing such a list (and I don't have that kinda time either, so I sympathize, but then I'm not running my own game site), I wouldn't care if they're a "big bully" or a little fansite. It's just 100% based on the quality of the content. If gamespot has a big exclusive preview and it sucks, no linkage. If planethalflife happens to have a particularly interesting interview with Robin Walker, they get a link. Daily Radar, a "big bully," would probably never get links, exclusives or not, because I find that nearly all their articles read like quick one-offs that could REALLY stand another day or two of effort put into them. It's not about who gets the most stuff the quickest, but who presents it best.

Anyway, it probably would require too much time, yeah.

But something you might want to do, which would be worthwhile, is this: Over the course of the week as you happen to read reviews and previews and features around the web, just paste in a text file the URLs for ones that really should be read, and maybe a sentence why. Then at the end of the week, slap that up on a "web coverage we liked this week" page. It probably would amount to ten articles a week or so (depending on how busy the season is) and might be worth something. It wouldn't require reading all the articles, or even most of them.

I mean, with the list the way it is now, there are going to be 15 reviews of Black and White the week after next. I sure as hell aren't going to read all of them...what am I supposed to do, pick from the list at random? Not to mention the other thirty reviews that week. A list of all the reviews in a week just isn't a time saver for me.

But a list of ten or so articles Mark & Tom thought read and liked, those I would read.

Jason said: Over the course of the week as you happen to read reviews and previews and features around the web, just paste in a text file the URLs for ones that really should be read, and maybe a sentence why. Then at the end of the week, slap that up on a "web coverage we liked this week" page.

That's a good idea, but it would probably end up being a compilation of a lot of news links that had already appeared throughout the week. After all, if Mark or Tom read something really interesting, I assume they'll add a link on the news page that day.

Jason also said: I mean, with the list the way it is now, there are going to be 15 reviews of Black and White the week after next. I sure as hell aren't going to read all of them...what am I supposed to do, pick from the list at random?

Frankly, I'm not going to read any reviews on sites I haven't heard of, or ones that replace the letter "s" with "z" in their names, or whatever. So that cuts out a lot of the list right there. The Infinity Retreat review of Oni listed this week is a perfect example.

Maybe include the name of the author next to the review? That would make it easier for me to decide whether or not to read it. If I saw Tim Chown's name next to a strategy game review, for example, I'd click on it right away.

Bubster said: A much more useful thing, imo, would be a Column Roundup

I agree that this would be interesting, but again, any column worth reading that Mark or Tom happens upon during the week would probably get a link on the news page, and thus it would be duplication once more.

Dave said: It's really just a weekly version of the Gold Guide which I find the most comprehensive and invaluable list of reviews around.

I agree that Gone Gold does this well, but for those of who only have time to read one gaming page, and it happens to be Qt3, it's helpful.

Dave also said: Your opinions and your writing are your strong suit. That should be your focus I think.

I think the thing everyone would like to see more than anything else is more original content from Mark & Tom. I assume what's being discussed here is stuff that Mark or Tom and can do in less time than it would take to write something original. In other words, "with this limited time, what can we do that's useful?"

That said, any way in which you guys can squeeze some actual opinions or commentary into something you post is good. If that's simply by culling out bad stuff and presenting a "worth reading" list (reviews, columns, news, whatever), that's worth something.

Tom: Yeah, I'd love to see that, too. But as a reviewer, I'd be pretty uncomfortable being the guy who reviews the reviews.

Yeah, I guess we review the reviews of the reviews. (We're just having a bit of fun tormenting you, Tom.)

I think it'd also be interesting to track which writers consistently show up on the Roundup. Of course, that would be a bit biased towards columns that get posted more regularly (e.g. the Gold Guide).

- Alan

First off, this page of links to reviews wouldn't replace the front page with the news. It would just be a weekly roundup that I'd do that would sit in its own little corner. So the only real question is, am I wasting my time actually creating the weekly list? I think that I will go ahead and do it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.

I don't actually read many reviews, and when I do, I tend to read them in "60 Seconds", meaning I skim them and get the concluding paragraph. I guess if I did that with the list and found a few that were interesting enough to go back and read more closely, I could highlight them in some fashion. (What I'd really like to do is have someone like Erik from OMM be a guest writer who would savage a lame review or two, and then Tom and I could throw up our hands and disavow ourselves of his comments. That would be pretty cool.)

If I thought doing this list would keep me from a piece of brilliant writing, I'd drop the list. My brain feels kind of tired lately though, so I think I need one of those "Flowers for Algernon" operations to work up to something a few notches above moronic.

About the Gold Guide -- it's great if you want info on a game. My list is simply a weekly roundup.

Gamerankings -- just checked it, and they don't have all the links that I culled from Blue's. It's kind of weird that they have no entry at all for King of Dragon Pass, for example.

As Bruce said, if we read something really interesting, we'll link to it from the front page, although we tend to not link to reviews and previews, so one of those would have to be really fascinating to get a link.

This is one of the (relatively few) web sites that I hit frequently during my day at work. I haven't cared much about gaming sites until this one came about, and if it were to die, I would probably go back to not caring. The information I find here is secondary to the style of its presentation. So, like everyone else, I'm here more for original content.

However, unlike most people here, I don't know of twenty gaming sites that I could visit to find reviews. I would probably check the list every week to see if there was anything that I was interested in. I would probably follow 1% of the links that you posted to, but I would find the list useful.

How do you guys feel about the idea of readers finding good reviews and passing them on to you? Personally, I would be more than happy to do something like this, but I don't really know where all the good sites to go for reviews are, like I said before. Beyond ign and dailyradar...well, that's about all I could name off the top of my head. (Which, again, is why a list like this is helpful to me. If I'm looking for info on a certain game, and you guys aren't covering it, at least you can tell me who can.)

Since this seems to be the post where everyone is voicing their opinions, I'll throw this in, though it's been suggested before, and a lot of times you do this. Could there be somewhere on this site that a)Links to articles on the web that you two have written, and b)Names the magazines out for the month that you have articles in, and names the articles themselves. I could be wrong, but this doesn't seem too labor-intensive, as you both could probably name these things off the top of your heads.

Also, Gamespy Daily lists reviews, though I don't know how comprehensive it is.

I tried to do something called the Weekly News Wrap-Up at my currently dormant site, One Gamer's Voice. What I found when I had a relatively high readership (this was in '99) was that the amount of people looking in didn't justify the time spent. I linked some of the best articles I could find and also put blurbs with commentary on big news stories. Most people were coming for the main page stuff anyway, so I bagged it. Though it was a lot of fun to put the editorial with the content...

The last Weekly News Wrap-Up

--Dave

Sorry guys, but I'd trade two weeks of review roundups for one Shoot Club.

I don't rush out and buy stuff the week it's released, so getting very quick access to reviews isn't a priority for me. When I'm thinking of buying a game, I go look at the Gold Guide.

And how do I start thinking of buying a game? From comments on Usenet and articles or mentions on sites I trust. Your 60 second reviews do more to make or break a game in my mind than 10,000 words on Daily Radar.

---

Quote:

Sorry guys, but I'd trade two weeks of review roundups for one Shoot Club.

---

The problem is that 98 percent of the reviews on the Web are drek, and, thus, even the most comprehensive reviews list winds up being a Guide to Drek.

I would rather Mark and Tom simply cue us to interesting pieces they've seen in their wanderings--a less burdensome task than the one they've set themselves and one, frankly, that's more consistent with the tenor of Qt3.

Peter

"How do you guys feel about the idea of readers finding good reviews and passing them on to you?"

If you want to do this, I'd suggest starting a thread on these boards and just posting in that thread for this purpose. It's a good idea. Tom and I are always interested in good content out there. I'd certainly appreciate a pointer now and then to something of interest.

Honestly, I don't read reviews all that much. My web wanderings are mainly confined to finding news for the site, so I hit a lot of mainsteam news outlets and a lot of smaller sites.

I think this is a good idea, though half those gamesites i barely heard of, are they really worthy of a click? anyway, what would deem a review listing neccesary to be listed on Qt3? I generally will take more out of a review from CGO than from Daily Radar.

I think a review of gaming websites might be a cool idea. . .theres a lot of gaming websites that are listed, but i have no idea which are generally "good" with reviews. . .

anyway, i just stick with reviews from CGO, GDR, AV, and for the DreamCast DC.IGN (a very good console site from IGN), or just the usenet. whatevers on those sites influences my purchases. . . though

or maybe a list of gaming websites for specific genre's ?

etc