Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Website video. No thanks

Ok, so lots of people have broadband now. Yipeee. But just because I have decent bandwidth, doesn’t mean that video is always preferable to text. A lot of the time when I’m surfing, someone else is watching TV or having a conversation. I’m sat there reading the web, just like I’d read a book. Someone might even be asleep, (human or cat). In other words, in a lot of these situations sound is not desirable.

Plus I read quickly, very very quickly, and videeo rarely keeps up with the speed I want information. Because of this, again, video is inferior to text for me in the case of spoken word information.

I find TV weather reports unwatchable. minute after minute of some gormless fool waving his/her arms around and trying to ‘engage’ with the audience. Get over yourselves, you are there to tell me two things, the temperature and the chance of rain. Everything else is filler. Weather reports should be capped at 12 seconds.

Online video is obviously a great thing, but ONLY when it’s better than text. Would this blog post be better if it was a video of me sat there reading it? I doubt it, but I just wish a lot more web sites realised this. Thats my complaint of the day :D


6 thoughts on Website video. No thanks

  1. I totally agree with you, and am annoyed at the increasing number of video clips on the bbc news site (curmudgeonly grumble), BUT! I demand that you post a video of yourself reading this blog entry so we can compare and decide.

  2. If the content of your Blog would be the same then yes – videos would seem unnecessary.

    On the other hand, you could show things you can’t show with text such as footage from you game. But of course, this would require a different kind editorial preperation.

    If done right, Videos can be at least as informative and dense in information as a text. I think http://www.ted.com is a good example.

  3. I totally agree, I really dislike this increasing trend of people doing video tutorials especially when they then don’t want offer any notes to go along with it.
    Quite often I’ll want to flip back to a section to recap and having to find the right time segment is a pain in the arse.
    Plus there are plenty of people who really shouldn’t be doing video clips!

  4. agreed.

    I also think that using video when text is sufficient encourages illiteracy/lowered literacy among younger people.

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