Rant @GameDev
*Very ranty, and quite wordy!*
There’s a whole crapload of spam showing up in my inbox lately.
Stupid rubbish uninteresting “Newsletters” that I probably did sign up for, expecting something good, but that I usually end up getting pissed off at, due to the lack of interesting.. anything!
Aria is an example of how to do things well.
Aria.co.uk sell nice cheap stuff, and they have daily bargains. Their daily newsletter is like a little catalogue of bargains every day. Always good to read, and pick up the odd £50 1tb harddrive!
But there are bad ones out there.
There are REALLY bad ones out there.
One of the worst pieces of weekly trash in my inbox is the GameDev “Newsletter”
This is an unwritten, unchecked, automated spambot of crap.
The spambot flicks through the site, blindly copy+pasting whatever content it can find, shovels it into a weekly email, then passes it off as something amazing.
When I join up for a “Newsletter”, I do not want your website in my inbox.
I want you..
I want you writing things, I want you bothering, and I don’t want some god damned copy+pasted list of sodding links.
eg..
====================
2. GameDev NewsBytes
====================
[2/20/10]
- GPU Pro 2: Call for Authors
[0 Comments]
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=562839
Uhuh..
So, what about it?
Where’s the content in this newsletter?
What’s going on?
Tell me stuff.
WRITE SOMETHING!!
FFS.. ANYTHING WOULD DO!!!
USE A GOD DAMNED KEYBOARD, NOT JUST THE MOUSE!!!
Lazy assed Newsletters are all the rage lately, and I’m getting sick to death of the bloody things.
1. B3ta – Content hand picked by the author, nicely written up.
2. SoCoder – Content hand picked by the author, nicely written up. (albeit by me!)
3. Aria – Well, it’s a bargain isn’t it!!
Other than that, the rest can piss off..
Today I’ll be mostly clicking “Unsubscribe” links.
Comments
Comment from Sticky
Time February 26, 2010 at 2:14 am
Oh also by the way I’m pretty sure the guy that sends out the GameDev.net newsletter writes it up in notepad himself, I remember one of his emails a while back saying “Sorry you didn’t get last week’s newsletter, I thought I’d sent it off but it must have still been sitting in notepad”. Don’t you use a similar technique?
Comment from Jayenkai
Time February 26, 2010 at 3:09 am
Geeze, how horribly depressing it must be to “write” something that incredibly unimaginative..
I’m not sure, but I think that makes it even worse!!
And yes, that’s what I do, except with keys, and a head.
This week’s newsletter is available now.
Comment from Sticky
Time February 26, 2010 at 2:13 am
Yeah I saw that too, and was quite annoyed myself. Usually if I even bother reading the GD.N newsletters I’ll just skim the dailies’ summary, and only open it if it’s worthwhile.
Maybe this was an attempt to combat this and get you to open everything…?