Playing Havoc with community reviews, and what makes good content?
Fly Havoc and let slip the wags of jaw
Just About is all about giving communities a voice, starting with gaming ones. In our bounties so far and in these newsletters, we’ve talked a lot about how we support and celebrate their creativity and curiosity.
But what about opinion?
Fly Havoc and let slip the wags of jaw
EVE Online’s latest expansion, Havoc, launched just yesterday. We’ve got plenty of bounties lined up to get our capsuleers digging into the new content and posting their finds back on Just About EVE Online.
These include challenges to find a blueprint for the coveted new Titan-class ship and an easter egg hunt on a space station, but the biggest deal is our $50 review bounty.
It’s common to see critics’ roundups on gaming forums when a new game launches, but the community’s thoughts are usually split among many topic-focussed threads: ‘The writing in this game is awesome’ or ‘the accessibility options aren’t great’.
We’re excited to deliver a more authoritative take from Just About EVE. With a two-week deadline from the expansion’s launch and a big reward, we’re hoping for some thorough reviews of EVE’s latest chapter from real players, and we’ll curate and publish them all in one place.
There’s a similar theme on Just About Video Games, where we want the community’s nominations for the best first-person shooter ever made. You’ve seen ‘best of genre’ lists like this before - every games media site does them - but it’s important that gaming communities have their say in defining the canon of their medium, too.
Just About Content: our latest deep dive
A few months ago, we invited Tom to discuss our approach to design on Just About. It’s a terrific read that sheds light on our decisions for the user experience on our platform - interesting in itself, hopefully, and important given our core value of transparency. So we’re going to do a few more of these ‘departmental deep dives’.
This week, it was Rich’s turn to talk about the fillings of that lovely user experience: the things you read, see, and hear, which Bill Gates dubbed ‘content’ 30 years ago.
So what makes good content on Just About, why do we think we can do a better job than some in handling it, and how will we do so? Click here to find out.
Let us know what you think in the comments, and come on back to Just About to get involved in our latest range of bounties!