Articles

[Nick]

OC3D is a fantastic site, and being far from a technology expert I find the easy to approach yet still detailed and statistic heavy reviews an interesting read. (Although seeing all those fantastic graphics cards knowing I'll never have them is tough! ) However, I'm a huge fan of opinion articles and the like and I've noticed a distinct lack of them. (Although I must confess I'm still a fairly new reader and there are many I may have missed)

Articles and thoughts about matters such as the games or technology industry as a whole seem fairly absent and often the articles in this subject are fairly short and lack depth. Articles like this could provoke interesting thoughts as well as promote in depth discussion and debate and I feel it could add another aspect to the already fantastic website.

Keep up the good work!

 

[VonBlade]

Personally I like that the main brunt of the site unintentionally follows David Kirkaldy's maxim of "Facts, Not Opinions". Once you start introducing opinion then it tarnishes everything because it's easy to read reviews and think "ah but they're bias/fans/something" rather than just looking at the numbers and believing those. Look at somewhere like Gamespot and how much damage a little bias did to them.

Not that I am suggesting the fine people behind this site couldn't be impartial, merely that introducing opinion is the thin end of the wedge.

Review products as they are, let the chips fall where they may. Otherwise we'd all be scoring an Nvidia low for lack of effort

But hey, I'm a hardliner lol.

 

[Nick]

Personally I like that the main brunt of the site unintentionally follows David Kirkaldy's maxim of "Facts, Not Opinions". Once you start introducing opinion then it tarnishes everything because it's easy to read reviews and think "ah but they're bias/fans/something" rather than just looking at the numbers and believing those. Look at somewhere like Gamespot and how much damage a little bias did to them.

Not that I am suggesting the fine people behind this site couldn't be impartial, merely that introducing opinion is the thin end of the wedge.

Review products as they are, let the chips fall where they may. Otherwise we'd all be scoring an Nvidia low for lack of effort

But hey, I'm a hardliner lol.

When it comes to reviews of products I completely agree with you. In an area such as technology the quality of the product boils down to pure facts and statistics. And you're right in saying that opinion in a review could certainly damage the site's neutrality. However, I am talking about opinion articles on much broader and more industry or thoughtful focussed articles. For example, I don't think many people would read an article on 'The Future of Interactive Technology' and then presume that any reviews on keyboards or mice would be biased due to the discussion and ideas put forward in that article.

 

[FarFarAway]

Articles are a toughie as some are received well (see my gaming article), but cause controversy. Some people just dont care about at all really.

We have to ensure we focus our time on things that:

* People are interested in reading

* Produce good solid content that gets us respect from our peers and our readers enjoy

* Get us a decent hit ratio

* Provoke good sensible discussion. Sensible being an operative word here - a tough one to do

Remember that reviews have to be paramount from a readers perspective and a content perspective. Reviews are what people want to see and what people want to find using their Google finger

Having said all that: we are always open to suggestions and have a knowledgeable staff so fire away with what you would like to see

 

[Nick]

Articles are a toughie as some are received well (see my gaming article), but cause controversy. Some people just dont care about at all really.

We have to ensure we focus our time on things that:

* People are interested in reading

* Produce good solid content that gets us respect from our peers and our readers enjoy

* Get us a decent hit ratio

* Provoke good sensible discussion. Sensible being an operative word here - a tough one to do

Remember that reviews have to be paramount from a readers perspective and a content perspective. Reviews are what people want to see and what people want to find using their Google finger

Having said all that: we are always open to suggestions and have a knowledgeable staff so fire away with what you would like to see

I guess as a reader I was thinking fairly selfishly I completely understand that your priority is reviews as that is what most people find appealing about the site. Thanks for the response.

As for what I'd like to see, I reckon a few more articles in a similar vein to your 'What do gamers want?' article wouldn't go a miss. Perhaps make articles such as that a regular feature? It's not that I'd want a lot, just that I'd like to know there's always another its way.

 

[FarFarAway]

I'm quite happy to write articles if people want to read them

Ideas appreciated for sure

 

[JN]

Articles is something I definitely agree that we are lacking as they can make a bit of easy reading when there's nothing on the review side that interests you.

As VB said, I think we need to be careful not to become too opinionated to the point where people may think that our reviews are biased. This could probably be easily solved by having a single writer dedicated to articles with no involvement in the review side of things. We could also choose to write articles that are based on fact from our own investigations (eg: Who is the best UK retailer - based on delivery/rma turnarounds) rather than going the "I think X is better than Y - what do you think?" route.

My only reservation is that I think we need to maintain some level of focus on hardware. When speaking to manufacturers OC3D is often praised for its unwavering dedication to performance hardware reviews that places us at the top of a niche (in the UK at least). Bit-Tech have their mods/games focus, Hexus have their news focus and Trusted reviews cover a wide range of tech - but OC3D is strictly hardcore

 

[w3bbo]

Hardcore - you know the score

Seriously though I am totally with Jim on this. While an article will provoke discussion, it can also tarnish a sites reputation. I do agree though that we are low on that side of things and I do think we need a few more 'tech investigation' articles however it is very difficult obtaining pre release samples and giving them a thorough testing in the short timescales available.

I think shop reviews could be a good thing but that would mean gaining access to the way a shop works rather than a disguised advertisement of the shop to make it an interesting read. Something not a lot of retailers are willing to do - trade secrets and all that.