[P-A] Video reviews: Yes/No?

The Professor · 13-04-2008, 04:18 PM

After posting this thread I don't want to hear anyone say they don't get a say in things again

Anyway, over the last few days a concept has been thrown around in the articles staff forums. The idea is born from the website "the escapist" which is an online gaming "magazine". It had some pretty enjoyable content, but lacked the big crowd puller that it needed to become the next big thing. However, a review that goes by the name of Yahtzee was drafted in to produce video-reviews of games, and as soon as he was the website's traffic increased by 400% and he now has a loyal following (I'm sure some people reading this will have already heard of him). Another success story of video reviews is the Angry Video Game Nerd, who is like Yahtzee but uses less subtle wit and more "I hate this, this and this" which has become his gimmik. Both are incredibly popular.

The theory is that this style of humourous, video-based reviewing can be transferred over to habbo based things, namely rooms and websites (but it can be expanded to include albums, films and the such if it takes off). After running it past the articles team, they all (well, most of them

) seem up for giving it a shot, which will divide the workload drastically and hopefully get it running regularly. It has since been run past all staff in the staff forums, and it has their support, so now we just need to get some idea of how the users feel about it!

But of course, if no-one likes it, it isn't going to happen

Which is where all you lovely beta testers come in. I've produced a proof-of-concept video using my style of wit (which is admittedly extremely similar to Yahtzee's). Since it's only a prototype, none of the other staff had any input into it, so obviously the finished results could be drastically different, and probably better than what I can produce alone. There's only so much one person can do with a low-quality microphone and MS Paint

The video is a review of the habbox website. I fear that if it does go into production, MAD will want it toned down somewhat, so this may be a bit "raw"

Most of it is anecdotal anyway, and every claim in it is truth (lying is something you just don't do) except maybe the year habbox was founded (I know this forum incarnation was founded in 04, but I think habbox was going a bit before that).

Anyway, I've spoken enough, so I'll let you watch the video. Tinypic have taken it upon themselves to resize the video, so the pictures are poor quality compared to what they should be. Also, some words are still a bit inaudible because of my amazing vocal talents, so I'll post the script below. I think I pronounced "facetious (sp?)" with a P at the beginning :p

http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=m94rd0&s=3

Back before the internet was around, things were generally much simpler. People went down to the greengrocer to buy an apple, to the carpenter's to get a new bed or to the local hitman to get their wife murdered. Men were men, the French smelled a bit and everyone got on with attacking each other in the traditional way of getting together their biggest collection of firearms and having a bloody good war. These days, if someone has a serious grudge against a nationality because one of their representatives accidentally stepped on his cat's foot, they go to the nearest internet forums and post illiterate drivel, often replacing letters with numbers and punctuation with shoe laces. This kept the British happy with their fix of ego, the French annoyed because the English pigs were calling them n00bz and left everyone with a sense of achievement and smug satisfaction.

But some guys in Finland who spent too much time at home with their mother knitting decided it would be a good idea to give all these anonymous fascists avatars, and thus habbohotel was born. It was originally called “Hotel Goldfish”, probably because goldfish's have 2 second memories and the average habbohotel user base was about as smart. As it expanded and expanded until it encapsulated most of the known universe, people decided to start making websites about websites which had spin-off websites and bits of code hanging out the owner's backside. But hey, I'm not here to talk about the bleeding obvious am I? (End obvious sarcasm) </Obvious sarcasm>

habbox.com is the most guilty website for this. It originated back in 2004 when mizki, who has since disappeared into the deep abyss of internet hell, got together with a team of amigos encourage share a bit of their English ego fix with the rest of the world. Today, it's evil monopoly towers over the lesser beings that are other fansites, growling at them once in a while to keep them in order.

The way it tries to do this is by blinding those poor fansites with its orange and white colour scheme, which I hated when I first opened it, and still hated when my eyes adjusted enough to actually read what's on the screen. Maybe it thinks if all its users are blind, people will just go “OK, ITS THE BEST FANSITE, JUST DON'T HURT ME!” Or maybe all its staff have the sheer good fortune to walk around with forks jammed into their eyes to hidethem from the hideousness.

But looking past the blatantly obvious, it isn't a bad little piece of kit. It totalitarian dominance of the rare values market is displayed in nice little boxes with nice little numbers under them, although when I hover over those pretty little pictures it tells me that the piece of furniture in question was released in the catalogue recently, the word recently apparently having its definition stretched to include “any time post World War 2 but before the apocalypse.” I have jam that's expired before the word recently came into effect on the little orange planet. Not that there's much point in telling people rare values these days, because according to them they're either rigged, too accurate or a mixture of the two, depending on if the person in question is swimming in a sea of thrones or sits in his bath molesting his lone rubber duck.

Habbox has always professed to have the most up to date news on anything anywhere, and on that point they're pretty much spot on. It seems as though their lovely news reporters spend their time watching the poor habbo homepage, waiting for something to happen, and when it does they get so excited a little bit of wee comes out. Of course, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with this, it keeps people up to date and helps the reporters make a good name for themselves, but their mother's aren't too chuffed when it comes to the washing. Or cleaning the chair. Or being in the same room.

I could keep being facetious and scrutinise each part of habbox until it seems like the inbred offspring of Mr. Hitler, but that wouldn't be doing the poor thing justice. Its team of 10,000 staff use their precious social time to keep the poor dog pushing its skateboard along, and on the whole they do a bloody good job, the site's been going for the best part of 5 years and it's still as enjoyable to look around and use as it's ever been, if you can excuse the occasional 50-Pence song on the radio and if you don't mind your eyes waging war on the rest of your body. And trust me, they will. Mine have.

Thanks

Alex