Hey ho, Sega friends! So many of you liked the recent “What’s Next!” post that it got me thinking about the Games Lists. I acknowledge that they are… lacking. I’ve never liked how they look, and yet, I’ve never known how to fix them within the boundaries of my current (basic and free) WordPress account.
Would organizing the reviews by month be better? Let’s say you go into the Master Games List for the Master System. Instead of a huge string of games under each year, you see 1987 – January, February, etc. When you click on February, there’s a list of games that released in February ’87, complete with official release date and cover art, similar to the “What’s Next!” post.
If not that idea, I’m open to others. As Sega Does enters into its third year, I’d like to focus on making it more accessible and user-friendly. Please let me know what you all think in the comments below. Thanks a bunch!
– DC
14 replies on “Organizing Reviews”
Hmm not sure of the month thing to be honest. Perhaps date reviewed and score ?
I know a lot of folks want to see the score, but if I do that, there is a strong chance people will not click to read the actual review.
Yes good point with the review score.
Just think if you break it down to months it could make searching the master list a bit of a chore.
Fair enough. Thanks Sut!
I’m fine with them being sorted by year.
I don’t use the games list all that much (I like being surprised by whatever the newest review is) but I do like the system you use on Questicle – the alphabetical list with artwork looks great.
You can make an argument for either alphabetical or chronological lists but if I do look for a game on a site, I’ll always look for it by name first.
Thanks to Questicle and it’s alphabetical game list I realised that the first ever video game I played was Castelian (it goes by Nebulus on the Atari ST). Your review of it made a lot of sense….
Thanks for the feedback, GH. I too like the alphabetical list on Questicle with the artwork. Sega Does has always been about the chronological journey, so I’d like to keep that aspect going (though I’m not sure how many people care besides me, to be honest).
As for Castelian, yeah, wow… can’t believe that game saw as much praise as it did back in the day. Awful, awful game. What a way to start your journey into games!
Think the chronological process is a big draw for your site. Especially for long time readers your journey and discovery is as compelling as the reviews.
I guess when searching for a specific review, alphabetical would always be easier for the layman who doesn’t know about when certain games were released. So I like the current games list. But maybe you could also have an alphabetized list of completed reviews only as well. (I don’t know how hard that would be to implement.) I do enjoy browsing the current lists being able see chronologically which games are coming up and what came before, and that aspect is of course a huge draw for me on this site. Honestly I’d probrably be annoyed having to break down the lists with another click for month. (Especially when that data is so unreliable anyway.)
You raise a good point about the average person not knowing/caring when Sega games were released. I’ll see if I can’t make something work.
I’m really digging the new setup of having the reviews show the first little bit, and then having to click into the review to read it. It makes the front page MUCH easier to scroll through and find what I’m looking for, rather than having to scroll for what seems like forever. Big improvement, and probably something I should do with my blog, now that I think of it…
Thanks Josh! I can’t believe it’s taken me almost three years to figure this out…
Hi Dylan, I like Sean’s idea of retaining the current annual chronological list and adding a second alphabetical list of reviewed games.
I don’t use the master games list often but I think I’d find an extra layer of month by month searching awkward. I do love the “what to expect next / this month in Sega” post idea though.
Thanks for the feedback, Rom. Hopefully I can figure something out that doesn’t involve dozens of hours of labor, haha.