I don't say all that much on escapist many of you probably never seen me around but being a daily member this has got me stirred. So rather than ***** and complain. I give you a poem that my heart did proclaim. At least that adds some uniqueness to usual complaints.
Ode to Escapist (Twas the night before christmas style)
Twas 15 nights before Christmas, when all through escapist,
Almost every user was stirring, even the mods,
The new website was put up without even a care,
In hope that the users would not go in despair.
The users were face-palming with their hands on the head,
While visions of the old site danced in their heads.
And the escapist website on my monitor and I in my chair,
Wondered how the fuck did this get on air?
When on the forums there rouse such a clatter,
I sprang to the comments to see what was the matter.
Clicking to the forum at least that was a flash,
It might be the same but still not the best.
The flashing white on the new website shown,
Fogged the features and objects below,
When all of a sudden a box seemed to appear,
It was the article box and my oh dear!
With things clutter and not so quick,
I knew in a moment there had to be some dick,
More powerful and evil than any man that came,
As he whistled and screamed, Haha your cries are in vain!
Now Sally! now, Ron! now, David and Rickerson!
On cue! On, call! all night we be getting a-fixen.
From top to bottom to the large and the small!
Now hurry god damn it let's fix this issue all!
As the old site gone the users did sigh,
When they meet with obstacles, right on the fly,
So up to the top that the users did knew,
With hopes that the links at least worked the same too.
And then in flash something hit the escapist roof,
The running and pulling as each man went in a booth.
As I looked about, and was scrolling around,
Down the ladder the men came a bound.
Dressed in the quickest ware from their head to their foot,
Their clothes full of nerdy references that talked about loot.
A bundle of laptops and supplies hung on their backs,
As they took out the things out of the packs.
Thier eyes full of furry and not so merry!
Their cheeks flesh from the cold, honestly it looks scarry!
As they armed their tools like a hunter's bow,
the process was starting but it would be oh so slow.
They sat down at the desk biting their teeth,
As the smoke from their anger could lit up some beef.
Their faces stone cold and full of jelly,
As they turned on their PCs and rubbed their bellies.
Tired and over worked they hated their self,
and I feel for the workers, can't smite them myself!
A reassuring statement went off in their heads,
Soon gave know that their night was dead.
Simple words were said and they got to their work,
And starting to program and hate the big jerk.
And wishing they reconsidered the site that did pose,
And hoping the fixes would soon arose.
With that, the team went on with not even a whistle,
in hopes that soon they could sort out this missile.
But still they sat and complained as the boss went out of sight,
"This shit should have not launched, now it fucked up our night!"
My actual reaction to the new site:
Open chrome click escapistmagazine.com bookmark
In a daze look at the homepage
Do a double take
Spit out my hot coco
WTF happened here!
Desperation kicks in, click around to find what used to been
Realizes everything is fucked up
Pray to the gods of skyrim that this is some type of joke
Look I can be pretty forgiving because the website industry is my professional forte. However for a major site that is geared to a gaming community I'm not sure who the hell thought this would be a good design. This new piss poor design makes escapist actually look like there is less content. I loved the old design it was easy to navigate and had its own personality. Now? Well now it looks like start-up gaming site Z.
This brings me to a quick story, we were commissioned for a job of a high profile company that wanted to "update" their website. The CEO had his own terrible ideas which we told him to all hell that it was extremely bad idea to change the website in such a way. However the customer is always right we conceded and made the changes, launched the new website and they lost so many sales that they literally went out of business.
I'm not sure if this is the same here but sometimes you just need to look back and say hey programmer A or programming team A that we hired are professional maybe I should like them handle it. When people outside of the industry step in with their tastes well you pretty much get what you see now.
The homepage needs a redesign if you end up keeping this design and the pages of articles will need some color why not just keep that gradient through the whole page why just the outside? Too much white, at one point web 2.0 was the new thing now it's just absolutely annoying. In my eyes you guys took a step down in design not up.
The words from a humble web developer
who lost his way, on a site he frequently visited everyday.
