what is delicious is six years old today, and that's pretty rad.

I've had this site for six years now. Man, that feels like a long time. Just look at this thing. It's gone through so many iterations and weird changes as I find new ways to refine the look and feel of the site and my writing that make me embarrassed for what came before. It's a totally different site than it used to be.

I mean, honestly, just look at the original layout template I built the site from. The whole site used to look like that. You can still see those foundations, but I've been slowly replacing almost every single piece of that template with something new of my own. That template was made for a different era of Internet, and it's absolutely insane how far the web in general has come in six short years. When I look at sites like Polygon, Kotaku, and Giant Bomb now, it's hard not to feel like a dinosaur with my classic two-column blog. I have some cool features here and there, but ultimately, I'm not a web developer. I dabble, I mess, I make due.

So my writing is where some of my biggest changes have come. I started out really sloppy, and I still feel that way sometimes when I read the work of more talented writers like Kirk Hamilton or Mark Serrels, but I'm still proud of everything I write. For instance, my review of Dark Souls is probably the best review I've ever written, and people really responded to it. Same with my examination of how broken Xbox Live Indie Games is, where I interviewed the games who made Super Meat Boy, the guys running the Summer Uprising community promotion, and a couple other developers.

I wouldn't have written anything nearly that good when this blog started.

So I don't know where this all goes from here. I never really know what the next change is for the site; it just kind of happens. There are some things I'd like to do, like put in real pages for each category instead of just having it display all reviews in descending chronological like it does right now, but it's the kind of non-essential feature that I'll just have to get to when I get to. I'm not getting paid for this. I don't have ads on the site and I never will.

But it'll be cool to revisit the site a year from now and see what it looks like, see where I am. That's why I used to like doing these yearly check-ins. They're self-indulgent to be sure, but they're fun to look back on.

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Go ahead and light that third candle, Jim.

what is delicious is now three years old. Three years. Man, it does not feel like it's been that long. Looking back on my old stuff is really eerie; it's crazy to think how much this blog has changed since then. It's gone through a few major redesigns and dozens of little refinements. Thinking back to what the site looked like back then compared to how it looks now is absolutely insane. You wouldn't even believe it's the same site. But you know what? It kind of isn't.

In every conceivable way, the what is delicious you see before you is a vast improvement over the original, even down to the URL you type into the address bar. What used to be a default Blogger layout has organically evolved over time, one element after another. The sidebar got icons to make it easy to find past work, the hideous original header image was swapped out for my custom one, the whole blog turned black and got wider. Over time, it became less and less recognizable from where it all started.

Even my writing style has changed so much that it's hard to place an old article next to a recent one without cringing. Yep, this is how you started off, I have to remind myself. Thank god you've gotten better at this since then. I've learned how to break up the walls of text, better edit my own work, and just keep myself in check in general. There's still plenty of room to improve, but I'm happy with the progress I've made so far.

Hopefully in another three years, I'll be looking back at the stuff I'm writing now with the same reaction of "man, I used to suck."

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what is delicious HD

Like the last time I redesigned the site, I only intended to make one small change, accidentally messed with something else that gave me an idea, and hours later, here we are:

Before

After

Also, I've been double-spacing the text recently so it's easier to read, and I spent at least an hour or two previewing how the site would look in various other fonts, but decided it's probably best left in Verdana. You know your life is exciting when you find yourself researching the differences between geometric and humanist sans-serif fonts, right?

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You're In The Big Leagues Now, Kid

Welcome to www.whatisdelicious.com.

After a very long, exhausting process, I finally managed to free up the whatisdelicious.com domain name and claim it (again). Without boring you with the details, suffice it to say that you should never, ever use Microsoft Office Live to register a free domain name.

No more needlessly typing in ".blogspot" to get here. I'm pretty pumped.

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Redesign A Go-Go Baby!

Let's put it this way: I need to stop being a perfectionist.

I went into the site's HTML to change one tiny thing and ended up hours later, waist-deep in code with twenty Photoshop windows open. Yeah, this redesign is something I've been meaning to do for a long time, but this is ridiculous. When you've got work in the morning, don't start redesigning a website.

Well, whatever. You're looking at the product of a foolish all-nighter. The background's a slick black now, the text a brilliant white, and my eyes a sweet shade of blood-shot that I'm sure my co-workers will love.

I even found a way to make the entire blog wider, which required a lot of trial-and-error and culminated in me realizing that I needed to expand the site's banner. Then I realized some of the icons needed to be replaced, some text and link settings modified, and every single review, preview, feature, rating, in the news, and contest story banners (still) need to be updated to match the black background. Awesome.

You can see now how this all snowballed from one ten-second easy tweak to a six-hour trip through insomnia.

And to top it all off, I spent a good chunk of time trying to get rid of the white separator lines you see between posts and sidebar items, and totally failed. So if anyone out there knows how to manipulate Blogger's HTML to do that, please contact me. Also, I want links to be underlined when you hover over them, and despite putting in the correct code, it still refuses to work. Again, any help would be much appreciated. Thanks, GreenLava.

I'll leave you with the before and after shots:

        

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New Review Style

Something I've grappled with for every review is "how much should I write?" I know I'm the smallest of the small-time blogs, so why write a full-length review? Not to say that I shouldn't put effort into my reviews; that would be idiotic. I just feel that, because what is delicious is not one of the commanding videogame websites or blogs out there, I should focus on concise writing that doesn't require the reader to invest as much.

Concise writing is much, much harder because there are always things you want to say that you just have to cut, but ultimately, it's more rewarding. If I can fit everything important I need to say about a game into a 120-word paragraph as opposed to a 1200-word epic review that includes all the minutia, that's doing the reader a service.

Besides, almost every "full-length" review out there from major publications only has two important paragraphs: The first and last. The first usually introduces the basic feeling about the game and the last concludes to offer a final verdict. Everything in the middle is just explaining how to play the game and how all the individual components work with excruciating detail that you've probably already read in previews and seen in videos. And that middle section rarely deviates from review to review. Only the first and last paragraphs tend to offer a truly different opinion.

So, in keeping with my new review scale that trims things down from a three-tiered rating system to just two, I'm going to start trimming my reviews down. It's certainly a writing exercise, but I'm hoping that by limiting myself to one paragraph with a 150-word ceiling, my writing will be tighter and deliver the message quicker.

The first example of this will be in my Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic review, to be published shortly.

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New Review Scale

While I like the ideas behind my old review scale, I took a hard, objective look at it and realized... it's kind of stupid.

The descriptions add an extra layer of complexity to something that I wanted to just keep as simple as possible. To an outside observer, it would take longer to decipher the real difference between "delcious!" "mediocre!" and "digusting!" without having it explained to them, and that's completely against the entire philosophy of my review scale.

The whole reason I stripped it to three ranks was because I felt that numbers were arbitrary. I still stand by that sentiment. Honestly, what's the difference between a 67 and a 68, or a 6.7 and a 6.8, or even a 6 and a 7? But then again, at least people are familiar with that number scale. Having a personal scale that only applies to this blog? Stupid.

Beyond that, there were still flaws in my rating scale. Having a middle rank was always kind of a cop-out for myself, so the decisions wouldn't be quite so tough because some games really do seem to sit right in the middle of the scale sometimes.

Then I realized that spending time and money on a game is even simpler than that. Either you do or you don't. Whether a game comes out to an 8/10 or a 74/100 or a D-, it's always reduced to a binary value: "Based on the review score, I will/won't spend my time and/or money on this game."

This leaves me to present the new (hopefully final) scale:

      
It's a pretty self-explanatory scale: A "Thumbs Up!" rating means the game is worthy of your time and money, and a "Thumbs Down!" rating means the game is not worthy of your time or money. Simple as that.

Many reviewers have expressed resentment that the general public seems to skip over the text of the review and jump directly to the score. I feel differently. It allows people that aren't invested enough in a game to read the entire review to just get a quick thumbs up or down assessment. Occasionally there are times where I'm personally just not interested enough in a game to go deeper than finding out more than the basic "how was it?" And depending on the score, I might go back and read the review to learn more about the game.

I feel that the rating should be the most concise version possible of my review. My goal is that by the time you've reached the end of the review, you don't even need to see the rating because you already know what I'm going to put. You should never be surprised by the rating I've given a game if you've read the review.

I'll have some tough decisions to make with the games that feel unworthy of a "Thumbs Up!" yet a "Thumbs Down!" feels harsh, but I think that it leads to a much better experience for the reader.

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New Site Banner

    Okay, hopefully you've noticed the new site banner. I finally got sick and tired of looking at that hideous default banner, so I loaded up Photoshop and went to work, the result of which you can see above.

    It's something I've been meaning to do for awhile, though I never really had any design in mind. Usually I load Photoshop with a clear idea of what I want to execute, and considering that this time I had next to nothing, I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Definitely an evolutionary process; I wish I had saved some of the iterations to show off. Some were awesome; some were really, really atrocious.

    A good thing about the design on this one is that the color can really easily be switched, so once I get tired of this color, I can swap it out on a whim. The only problem with it is that now I really want to switch the blog to black, but the way Blogger is set up, I'm not sure I'll be able to get it exactly the way I'm envisioning, so who knows what the future holds?

[UPDATE: Just messed around to see what it would look like in black, and it's not worth it. Yeah, the new banner looks great in it, but everything else becomes so generic. Totally not worth it; keeping what I have now.]

    Now that that's done, it's back to playing PixelJunk Eden for me.

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Screw Windows

    Wondering what's been taking so long? Let me just be completely candid here: I hate Windows. My computer crashed, wiped my hard drive, and with it, all the articles I had written, the graphics I had made, everything. That happened a few months back. After that, I was pretty discouraged and didn't write or do anything productive in relation to this blog for awhile.

    But I think it's been long enough, and now I'm on a MacBook, so I think I'll be able to return to work pretty soon.

    I really should've cleared the air sooner though, because looking at the front page, it just looks like I keep promising to reboot and keep pushing it back for no apparent reason. Kind of frustrating to see, actually.

    Anyway, there you go.

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Stay Tuned

    UPDATE (2/14/2008): Yeah, I'm still alive. Yeah, I'm still going to be making a comeback. The gears are in motion. The ball is rolling. You get the point. Bottom line: Yes, this is happening. When? Soon. I'd say probably early March would be a good estimate. The reason why it's been taking so long is for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with because they essentially boil down to "shit happens," but the main one is that I want to make sure that I've thought far enough ahead into the future that I'll be back, better than ever and won't crash again.

    ORIGINAL: Hey, just wanted to let everybody who still checks the site occasionally know that I'm toying around with the idea of making a possible comeback. I'm hoping that I'll be able to sort out my life well enough that I'll have time to start putting things out this year, but just know that if I come back, I'm doing it right.

    See, before, I would just write an article, then publish it immediately, even making edits long after publishing. That was pretty much when I did my proof reading (though obviously I read my stuff a couple times before clicking "PUBLISH POST"). Anyway, that was a terrible system of doing things.

    Now, it's bad not because my articles were so badly written or anything (though I looked back at some of my oldest stuff and I'm noticing errors and ways I could improve, etc) but because I'd never have anything just ready to publish for deadline. I'd just sit down and write it before I needed to post it; I didn't have any stuff written in advance.

    And therefore, especially during the decline of WID, I'd keep missing deadline and publishing things days late. Now I'm smarter, so I'll have a handful of things pre-written and will be able to just publish them slowly, always keeping a few things behind-the-scenes until I need them. That's a much more efficient way of doing things.

    Well, I just wanted to let you guys in on my writing process a little bit and to let you know that I'm actually itching to write some more stuff. There have been new developments in both the general gaming world and my personal gaming world that I'd love to discuss, as well as some features and other articles and things I'd like to write.

    So, to sum up that whole huge spiel, stay tuned for more (hopefully before 2008, but I can't promise it).

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Review Scale

      After careful deliberation, I've decided to avoid using a number or letter scale. I mean, really, what's the difference between a 6.7 and a 6.8, or for that matter a 6 and a 7? Those small discrepancies aren't helpful when you're deciding whether to buy a game or not. Trying to look at reviews as too much more than a consumers' guide is foolish and denies the nature of a review. Therefore, sticking with the theme of this blog, I've decided to use just three ranks:

            

      A "delicious!" rank doesn't mean that I'm telling you that you should buy this game, or even if it's a good game. It just means that I feel it is worthy of my own time and money. An "undercooked!" rank suggests that the game was worth my time, but not my money (as in "rent-worthy"). And as you can imagine, a "disgusting!" rank implies that I would not spend the money or time on this game again (since I obviously already did).

      Now to explain this further: Not everyone has the same tastes in games. If I review a game from a genre I don't really like all that much, and I'm using the typical base 10 scale, I'm probably going to give it a low score, even if it excels in that genre. But my reviews are personal. I'm not telling you whether or not this game is good or bad. I'm telling you whether or not I liked it. As a result, you can develop a feel for the kinds of games I like and you'll know whether or not we have the same tastes in games easier.

      So if I review a typical RPG, it'll probably get a "disgusting!" rank simply because I don't like RPGs that much, and you the reader will know that and take that into consideration. If I review an RPG and I give it a "delicious!" rank, you'll know that this game is special. And if I'm reviewing a game in a genre that you and I both like, you can trust my opinion on it. I think that this three-tiered scale is much more valuable than an out-of-date number 1 to 10.

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what is delicious

So what is delicious exactly? Well, the origins of the phrase date back to an old Penny Arcade comic:


I can hear your thoughts. "What does that have to do with this blog? Is this a blog about candy or something? That shit's lame." Good news for you then, because this is a blog about video gaming. This isn't a news site, so I'll never have some breaking news story, but you can expect logical, thought-out responses to gaming current affairs that represent a consumer's point of view. Not only that, but maybe occasionally I'll accidentally click on Photoshop and decide to try my hand at some rudimentary, but funny webcomic designs, or open Audacity and record a podcast entry. Don't expect it often, because I'll only release things that are entertaining.

Anything you do to get involved will only make this site better. So, as this blog develops, send me your feedback as often as possible, post your comments, share your opinions, get involved. Whenever I read an opinion that I feel is rational enough and developed enough to warrant a shout-out, then I'll make sure to add it on to the original post and maybe even offer up my own response. I want this to be the kind of site where if you email me, I'll email you, not just let it sit in my inbox collecting virtual dust. If you want to write up an article or your own blog post, feel free to submit it, and if it's good enough, it'll be posted.

So what is delicious, you ask? The future, baby.

Our future.

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