Monday, March 3, 2014

1up, the stagnant

Ever since January 2009, which saw the original EGM go belly up, and a great deal of their editorial staff out the door, 1up has never been the same. Bland news stories, a tiresome preview/review cycle, and a general lack of enthusiasm have been active to deter former fans, and send them to more modern, better-kept websites. 1up's lack of a charismatic editorial staff bears some carry-over though. The GameVideos, Cheats/Guides, and even especially the 1up podcast side of things have taken a notable beating.

The bulk of the original GameVideos content consists of shaky-cam office-tomfoolery, disparaging, albeit somewhat insightful whiteboard discussions, and relative to the 1up Show days, some very poorly-presented video reviews -- but have the fact that they aren't seemingly pulled from rote templates (much like the IGN ones) going for them. Although the gap separating Gamevideos and IGN's video service are lightyears apart in terms of technology; 1up's videos are showcased in a greatly outdated player that takes ages to load, and insists on showing advertisements prior to nearly every view, wheras IGN boasts a highly streamlined service that loads quickly, shows few adverts, and most importantly, gets the job done.

As for the podcasts, their quality has noticeably sunken. Take the podcast formerly known as 4 Guys 1up, for which has very well never seen episodes so shoddy in quality up until now. New, poorer riffs on old podcasts, like the Oddcast, or At1up have further disccredited 1up as a quality podcast outlet -- which is especially disheartening, as 1up was one of the very first to pioneer into the new form of reaching fans

27. May 2010

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