Best and Worst Websites #3
Blue's News: Good
I've always been into video games. When Quake was released in the mid 90s, I was just starting to get the hang of using the Internet and the game was my stepping-stone into online multiplayer and modding. To stay on top of new developments in this scene, I began visiting Blue's News.
The website's design has changed very little in the twenty or so years it's been up. No pictures are displayed in the news feed, just headlines with descriptions, links, and commentary. There's a sidebar on the left, and a few ads bookending each day's posts. For someone looking for the specific information this site delivers, its ease-of-use is hard to beat. The site started as an aggregate for the .plan files game developers posted on bulletin boards, specifically focused on id Software games. Over time, Blue's News expanded to cover the gaming industry as a whole, but still holds a strong connection to first-person shooters on the PC.
Being such an old website does give Blue's News some problems though. The toolbar on the right side has many useless and outdated items, like LAN party listings and the once-central .plan updates. Also, the site is not mobile-friendly, since the text-based link aggregate format is difficult to read through on a smaller screen.
Blue's News has been my homepage as long as I can remember being on the Internet. Whenever I set up a new computer or installed a new browser, it was always the first page I visited and the first bookmark I saved. For gaming news, no other website has been easier for me to read and navigate.
I've always been into video games. When Quake was released in the mid 90s, I was just starting to get the hang of using the Internet and the game was my stepping-stone into online multiplayer and modding. To stay on top of new developments in this scene, I began visiting Blue's News.
The website's design has changed very little in the twenty or so years it's been up. No pictures are displayed in the news feed, just headlines with descriptions, links, and commentary. There's a sidebar on the left, and a few ads bookending each day's posts. For someone looking for the specific information this site delivers, its ease-of-use is hard to beat. The site started as an aggregate for the .plan files game developers posted on bulletin boards, specifically focused on id Software games. Over time, Blue's News expanded to cover the gaming industry as a whole, but still holds a strong connection to first-person shooters on the PC.
Being such an old website does give Blue's News some problems though. The toolbar on the right side has many useless and outdated items, like LAN party listings and the once-central .plan updates. Also, the site is not mobile-friendly, since the text-based link aggregate format is difficult to read through on a smaller screen.
Blue's News has been my homepage as long as I can remember being on the Internet. Whenever I set up a new computer or installed a new browser, it was always the first page I visited and the first bookmark I saved. For gaming news, no other website has been easier for me to read and navigate.
posted by Nick at 8:25 PM
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