Gaming Reviews: Video or audio reviews?

Son_of_Thunder

I love driverheaven's reviews, both for games and hardware. I will unabashedly say that I trust them more than I trust any other site. That being said, I prefer to go to gamespot or IGN for game reviews. The reason is that they have video reviews. Now, it's not that I'm lazy, I have no issue reading DH's reviews (and make a point to do so) it's just that sometimes I don't have the luxury of devoting 5-15 minutes solely on a review. With IGN and Gamespot, I can open the video review, catch a few seconds of gameplay, and then minimize it and go about doing other things on my system while it plays in the background.*

The reason I suggest audio reviews is because GH already has the trailers (and could easily embed gameplay footage as well) video editing programs are pricey, footage is hard to come by, and I'm a little scared of what some of the reviewers look like :P

Audio, even if it were played over a looped version of the game trailers, could be uploaded to youtube, easily embedded, and it would add a great new feature to reviews. I'm not expecting to see it happen, but it would really be nice to have this option

*I think this would only work for gaming reviews. Personally, I don't want someone telling me about benchmark scores, I want to scrutinize every number, every frame, and really dig in. The tables and graphs that DH uses right now are already perfect

OmegaRED

I figure it's better that DH do one thing really well (in depth reviews with flash graphs and lots of detail) rather than half assed video or audio reviews which would never be able to compete with gaming review sites.

Son_of_Thunder

I can see where you're coming from, which is why I'd lean more towards audio than video. The video reviews would take a lot more time and funding, which just isn't available. Audio on the other hand, heck, give a decent summary of a written review, pop it on youtube and you've got it.

Zardon

I appreciate the feedback however it all comes to down to a few things. Time, manpower and resources.

I agree with you regarding gamespot and their video content, however they have a huge team of people solely dedicated to game reviews, we basically have one (great) reviewer. So for him to start doing video or audio reviews right now would actually mean we would probably have to cut our content by a third. We do however try to add videos to them were possible showing gameplay or a game overview to add a little to the text based content.

As you said hardware reviews are somewhat different, if you look at predominately gaming review sites like gamespot you will see their hardware reviews are very very brief and are basically an intro, a few results and a conclusion, normally all on one page. To do a video review of a hardware product (while sounding cool), rarely works, as you can never get the same detail or analysis into them.

Son_of_Thunder

Very understandable. If I had the resources to purchase new games as they came out I would whole heartedly offer my services as a reviewer. I have the time to do it due to my being unemployed, but you can see where money would be an issue. By the way, something that always amazes me is how you run this website and still find time to respond to posts like this one. It's nice to think that even though there are so many members here, you still pay attention to the little guys

BlueMak

I like video reviews because they usualy show more gameplay action than other types of videos. They also tend to focus for more than a couple of seconds on a scene, where most "gameplay" videos on their own have too fast cuts. Also video reviews tend to have at least some better footage in general like, if it is a racing game and there is such a view possible, in car view while driving, rather than external views of how the car crashes or how beautiful it is while panning the camera fast...

Having said that, most video reviews suck cause they are forced to have them very short, plus they always risk showing parts of the game that they could spoil surprises for you. Classic example for that is the Mass Effect (xbox 360) at gamespot where it shows extented footage of the final battle, the place it takes place in, the enemy etc.

I know that Opera has a text to speech fanction, so you might want to try if you can use it to read a written review for you?

Son_of_Thunder

Eh, I think I'd feel too lazy if I used a text to speech plugin. I think I'd get really bored with the monotone voice.

Now if we got Shatner or George Takei to read the reviews, book on tape style, that could be hot.

Zardon

Well, we get our own games and John (our gaming heaven reviewer) does some work for gamespot so he is really experienced in the field (he is on a salary too like most of our full time reviewers). However I would prefer for now to concentrate on our strengths and expand slowly, doing it all as best we can. I think if you throw your eggs into too many baskets at once then quality suffers.

Maybe in the future we can look into that side of things more. It has already been mentioned behind the scenes, but for now its just not feasible.

Your comments however make sense, and I don't think of any of you as "the little guys", regulars like you are invaluable, so your opinions are very relevant.

Mousey

Now that's what i love to read from senior staff members such as Z. It's just that kind of approach from Driverheaven that seperates it from other communities on the web.

Sorry it just had to be said

Son_of_Thunder

Ok, I'll admit it, i got a little bit of a "he knows who I am!" rush when I read that :P You're awesome Z.

geraldmango

Yeah Z is awesome. I got a bit of a rush when he addressed me on the forum once too yeah I know it doesn't sound cool but you are a very talented man Z.

Mousey

All hail the mighty Z lol