Saturday, September 22, 2007

Kotaku sucks

It's no secret; I hate the steaming pile that is Kotaku. And so it's only appropriate that my first post should be about them, as their garish logo is pictured right next to the entry of shit in the (admittedly twisted) encyclopedia of my mind.
I present to you exhibit A (I can already see we're going to run out of letters, fast); Their shitty video player. One would think that a blog, the poster-child of Web 2.0, would embrace new technologies such as embedded flash videos and take full advantage of the features they offer. Such as, oh I don't know, embedded playback maybe. It's right there in the name; Embedded.
But this is clearly too much to ask in terms of usability for Kotaku, they present the reader with a play button and other controls in the bottom of the frame, something which clearly shows that by golly this right here be one of them newfangled interwebs videos. And if you hover your mouse over the frame, another friendly play button presents itself, which one of course could make the mistake of assuming would actually play the damn video. But no, unlike pretty much every video hosting site, something which looks like an embedded video is in fact not. It is instead a link that takes you to the relevant posts dedicated .html page. There is no way to play the apparently embedded video apart from, uh, not.
Awesome. For every reader of theirs that reads the front page and wants to watch a single video, they have now successfully doubled the amount of ad-hits, for no apparent usability or convenience to the reader. Do they expect people to watch videos in one window while still continue reading their front page in another? And if you for some sadistic reason want to expose yourself to more than one of their guaranteed content-less and inane videos, you now triple their amount of hits (and so on).
Great job Kotaku, you're at the forefront of shitty ad-hits-milking tactics, and stand as an example for blogs everywhere. I salute you!

9 comments:

Dameon Angell/Mathematik said...

Yeah, these guys are real assholes, especially when it comes to their "fans". Mainly just a small assortment of people who's comments they like. Banning everyone else from being able to talk. Then having random ban days where they ban people for fun... right. How are these guys still in business? Better yet, how are they even respected?

Seriously, Kotaku more like Third Reichku. Elitist assholes.

Unknown said...

They're not. In fact, there's a rumor floating around at Gawker Media that their days are number because of constant complaints to Gawker about the behaviour of the Mods.

Eien Ai Betsu said...

They suck big time, second time my account was stopped from commenting.

Both times, I was on topic and never cursed. Someone ratted me out and my account is disabled. There are plenty of people who curse up a storm and with comments worthy of ban, I guess I just don't brown nose enough.

Also I can't stand the fact that the whole site is so pro-nintendo even when its clear as day light that some of the games are shovelware...they'll still eat it up and say YUM YUM. Matter of fact, I am so pissed I'm going to pay GAWKER MEDIA a visit. They're in the local neighborhood.

guyjin said...

@kenny: pro-nintendo? are you serious?

Given, I haven't read the damn thing in a year, but when I was reading it, Kotaku posted a story Sony didn't like (it's called "journalism", assholes) sony basically made them persona non grata for a day, after which kotaku promised to kiss sony's ass extra hard now.

Seriously, read the blog if you can stand it; count how many Nintendo stories have negative statements vs. sony stories. there was no comparison a year ago, and I doubt much has changed.

mh said...

I somehow liked the discussions there and wanted to comment but after I realized that I am not able to get approved by the assholes during my lifetime I stopped reading it.

Anonymous said...

Funny, I realized today that none of my comments are being posted (and previous ones removed..?), so I looked at their FAQ. Apparently I must have been banned or whatever the shit they want to call it, over the course of the last couple months. For what? Who knows. I didn't curse, troll, etc. so I can only imagine my post didn't meet the high-level expectations of the moderators (though it appears this comment- "Yess FTW!" does). Or maybe I was someone who fell into the random ban-for-fun pack. Too bad these pricks ARE still around, as I see this blog dates back to 2007. What was once my default homepage will never be visited again.

Gaston LeScarf said...

Holy shit. I'm not sure if you all still read your comments or even get email notifications, but I just stumbled across Shitaku and I was blown away to see that it was created TWO YEARS before my friends and I created http://greatjobkotaku.blogspot.com/

Your Kotaku Sucks post even has "Great Job Kotaku" at the end of your article! hahaha. I swear we never saw your blog before we made ours, but I'm so amazed how similar the two formats are. Even down to the screenshots with the arrows! I feel like I've found a long lost sibling!

If you're still around, reach out! Or comment on our blog. We have hundreds of posts and now that there is a pandemic we might just start posting again. All the best! <3

appel said...

the reason kotaku sucks is that it intends to put space for self-advertising ("Ashley Burch and how to voice act and be a writer" as of now for example), it puts #metoo plastered everywhere and its too much of a cringe worthy site where the last thing is gaming news and the first thing is fucking leftist shit (or any other political crap for that matter, be it left or right they can both kiss my ass).

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