The Hard Drive Review Section — Grant Report 2

Jeremy Kaplowitz — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 04:06:30 +0000

Review Section: Our initial goal for the Hard Drive Review Section was to add a section to our website where fans can read all of our review content, including articles and videos we have made in the past. We have successfully created and categorized this section for readers to peruse: https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/reviews/

Content: Since beginning Grant for the Web, we have produced a number of reviews for the new section.

Review: ‘Link’s Awakening’ Is More Gorgeous Than Ever After 26 Years, Unlike You

Review: PS5 Undeniably Best Way to Play PS5 Games

Review: ‘New Pokemon Snap’ Lets You Take Sexy Photos of Pokemon (Assuming You Already Find Pokemon Inherently Sexy)

(Review: Bo Burnham’s New Special Has a Joke About Gamers, Which Means We Can Write About It)[https://hard-drive.net/review-bo-burnhams-new-special-has-a-joke-about-gamers-which-means-we-can-write-about-it/]

Review: Hades, a Game About an Inescapable Hell, Is the World’s Greatest Life Sim

Review: Microsoft Flight Simulator Is So Realistic My Son Is Still Dead In It

Review: 'Assassin's Creed Valhalla' Brilliantly Uses Viking Lore to Tell a Story of Fatherh—OK I'm Realizing Now I'm Playing 'God of War'

Review: The 'Snyder Cut' Is Whatever We Already Decided About It Before It Came Out

Review: 'Cyberpunk: 2077' Is a Perfect Game, Is What I Must Say to Make Sure the Abused Workers Get Their Bonuses

Why We're Replacing Review Scores With a Photo of Either an Approving or Disapproving Parent

Technology: In order to announce the new section of our site and incorporate Coil technology into articles through the ability to vote on reviews (for Coil members), we wanted to revamp the design and layout of our website. The new design of the website is now complete and is available here: https://hard-drive.net/.

The new layout of Hard Drive deemphasizes advertising in favor of content, Coil, and community. We’re working to make sure that our articles are the most prominent feature of the website and encumbered by fewer (and, often, zero) ads. The next biggest thing on a review article will be the voting feature for Coil members. Thirdly, to keep subscribers staying on the website, we want them to feel like it’s a home for them to interact with like-minded people. That’s why we are incorporating a larger chatbox that works across articles, so that fans can converse with each other about the content they are interested in.

We also think that the above will create a more user-friendly experience that will keep users on the website and encourage them to sign up with Coil for more content.

Outside of our website, we also have had success uploading our videos to Cinnamon and loading them directly into the body of our review articles to direct users to paid views if they have a Coil subscription.

Coil Integration

This is the big update for Hard Drive since our last progress report. We were finally able to add our 'Review the Reviewers' feature, and we're really excited about how it came out.

You can read about the new poll feature here: Who Reviews the Reviewers? Why We’re Adding Polls to the Bottom of Our Reviews to Let Our Writers Know If They’re Right or Wrong

It was very important for us, as a satire website, to utilize our Coil integration through a satirical device. That's why we came up with our idea to parody how video game fans read and react to real video game reviews. We think this will help fans enjoy our Coil-related content without thinking that it's too different from the usual satirical content that we publish daily.

We're also a website that lives and dies by its viral content. As a result, it doesn't make sense for us to gate our content behind paywalls, effectively limiting the exposure to just those who pay for Coil. Our solution to this problem is to make all of our content free, but give Coil subscribers access to better versions of that content.

With the Review the Reviewers poll, this functions as "super votes" in our voting system. Everyone who logs onto Hard Drive will be able to experience and participate in the polls, but Coil members get an extra feature that influences the game for everyone. This also furthers the satirical device, parodying the way that people think video game reviewers are paid to give good scores to certain video games.

We're very excited about how this came out and we're especially proud of how fine-tuned it is to be seen and appreciated by a large group of readers. Hard Drive is thankful that Coil is a place where creators can experiment with monetization, instead of just falling back on the same tired strategies. Hopefully, our Review the Reviewers poll is a huge success and we can work towards giving our Coil subscribers, as well as our free readers, an even cooler experience on our website.

Hard Drive Progress Report

Jeremy Kaplowitz — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 04:01:44 +0000

Content: Since beginning Grant for the Web, we have produced a number of reviews for the new section.

Review: Hades, a Game About an Inescapable Hell, Is the World’s Greatest Life Sim

Review: Microsoft Flight Simulator Is So Realistic My Son Is Still Dead In It

Review: 'Assassin's Creed Valhalla' Brilliantly Uses Viking Lore to Tell a Story of Fatherh—OK I'm Realizing Now I'm Playing 'God of War'

Review: The 'Snyder Cut' Is Whatever We Already Decided About It Before It Came Out

Review: 'Cyberpunk: 2077' Is a Perfect Game, Is What I Must Say to Make Sure the Abused Workers Get Their Bonuses

Why We're Replacing Review Scores With a Photo of Either an Approving or Disapproving Parent

Technology: In order to announce the new section of our site and incorporate Coil technology into articles through the ability to vote on reviews (for Coil members), we wanted to revamp the design and layout of our website. The new design of the website is coming along great and can be seen here: https://dev.hard-drive.net/ - please don’t share this publicly, as it is a WIP.

We also think that the above will create a more user-friendly experience that will keep users on the website and encourage them to sign up with Coil for more content.

Difficulties: Rebuilding the website has been slow. We were hoping to have the voting feature for Coil subscribers sooner than later, but we really want to make sure that the website is ready before we announce it. With any paid subscription feature, we know that you only get so many chances to show people what they’re able to do, so we don’t want to mess up our first impression. We’re making great headway on the website, however, and hope to have it ready soon.

As for content, we were hoping to have more reviews up on the site by now. Unfortunately, there simply have not been many big releases in video games (and nerd culture in general) since the beginning of Grant for the Web due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost every major release, from video games to movies, have been severely delayed. The reviews that we have released have done very well, but we want to focus on quality over quantity, so we have not been digging into smaller releases to hit our content goals, knowing that most people will not be familiar with the content.

In order to solve this problem, however, we were able to produce some meta content about the review section (our article about review scores) and turn old reviews into new videos (the Microsoft Flight Sim video, as well as an upcoming video about Link’s Awakening).

The Interledger Community 🌱: Jeremy Kaplowitz

The Hard Drive Review Section — Grant Report 2

Hard Drive Progress Report