The Twitter client I use has occasionally ads cycle through as "payment" for using the program for free (which I am cool with). I just saw this tweet come up in my stream as one of these paid adverts.
At first I was annoyed at the idea, but then I had to laugh. The A CYOA is for Adventure and that is made up of both Ad and Venture, which both fit with the idea of somebody trying to sell you shit. I figured if done well and creatively, it could also be neat.
I had to go look at the site and it was less CYOA and more a list of questions about what you want out of your camera, which I have seen done a million times before. Other than the front page of the thing, which explained the whole idea of using the CYOA method from those books to create this tool, it had no story to it at all. Hell, NewEgg does it better and cleaner on their site when I try to choose an item within a category.
But it then got me thinking about how you could actually do this tool in a more entertaining and creative way, actually making it a story you go through. It would still asked the same questions in the end, but got you there through little scenes that told the story. At least then they could really call it a CYOA and not just an items selection tool. I might actually like to see something like that done. It sure as hell would have kept me on their site longer than the two minutes it took me to read the front page and click through to see the rest was crap... Hell, I may even do it at some point if given the half the chance.
Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books? @t1mmoynihan wrote one to help you figure out what camera to buy. <URL clipped out>
I had to go look at the site and it was less CYOA and more a list of questions about what you want out of your camera, which I have seen done a million times before. Other than the front page of the thing, which explained the whole idea of using the CYOA method from those books to create this tool, it had no story to it at all. Hell, NewEgg does it better and cleaner on their site when I try to choose an item within a category.
But it then got me thinking about how you could actually do this tool in a more entertaining and creative way, actually making it a story you go through. It would still asked the same questions in the end, but got you there through little scenes that told the story. At least then they could really call it a CYOA and not just an items selection tool. I might actually like to see something like that done. It sure as hell would have kept me on their site longer than the two minutes it took me to read the front page and click through to see the rest was crap... Hell, I may even do it at some point if given the half the chance.
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