   Requesting some critique on a game design folio website
  Hi everybody. :)The purpose of this thread is to seek out some critique on a folio website I'm currently creating.The purpose of this folio is to demonstrate to prospective employers my abilities to communicate, design and create design related content. After doing a few years in the industry as a level designer I'd like to make the jump to a game designer and I'm also looking for prospective employers in the USA/Canada/Europe so I'd like this folio to really impress. :)I made a post of this months current content update to gamedev.net but I haven't really received any feedback upon it or my folio website. So what I'm requesting is if any experienced game designers or anyone in a lead development position has the available time, could you scan over my design folio site and provide some feedback. I'm always looking to improve my work, and while the project the website is promoting is still young there's now enough content on the website in way of videos, work journals, game design documents and resume to give someone a general idea of the quality this folio is aiming for.Your critique can be based on the website itself and it's general layout, the content on the website, the videos, the design documents. Any constructive musings will help. :)I'd also like to request if you could please direct the feedback to my e-mail at designerwatts@hotmail.comYou can find the design folio website here.Cheers and thank you for your time,Chris Watts   
  Looks blank and white to me. Maybe you require &#106avascript to see anything at all?   ;  Like the feel, three points:1)Not sure it should be a wiki?2)Keep the 5 option navigation bar on all pages3)This is more of a guess, but if I was looking to employ a designer, and I had 100 websites to go through, I would look for a quick download which I can see if it is any good. A mod or small thought out mini game would work. I probably wouldn't have the time to read long design documents until I had sorted out the wheat from the chafe. But, playing a 10 minute half life mod would be a quick way of assessing you.   ;  I'm not an experienced game or web designer, nor am I in a lead position, but I'll offer some critique nonetheless:1) I like the logo very much. Nice colors and composition. Same for all other logos and headings, although I'm not sure why you need exclamation marks (style?). You seem to have great artistic sense, and it also comes across in the game pitch video. 2) I'm also not sure why it's a wiki. At the very least you might want to style it so that it's not obvious that it's a wiki.3) The logo on the front page is taking up way too much space. The page needs to have content "above the fold". Half the people who come to your site will never scroll down, so they'll never see your welcome message and other content.  4) Why is it called a folio instead of portfolio or pitch or something else? Is it a game industry neologism, or am I missing something? My understanding of folio goes back to Shakespeare manuscripts ^_^;;;5) Actually referring to your own IP as IP (capitalized, no less) seems a bit pretentious. You probably do not want to give off that impression. 6) Hotmail account won't kill you but isn't very professional.Looking forward to playing the prototype!   ;  In my opinion, a quick text summary of what your game is about, with screenshots (in your case, concepts of the GUI and levels) on the front page of your site would help a lot. It's just a lot easier to see a brief glance/summary of everything right on the first page you land on rather than having to get that info by navigating through the tabs and content - in my opinion, the person would more likely spend the time going through your content if you grabbed them on your front page.But, the site is looking pretty interesting; I love the concept of the game and the general approach you are presenting it - the videos help a lot as well.EDIT: Opinion from a common browser to your site.[Edited by - Tangireon on May 6, 2009 12:43:48 AM];  Hi, I think your website graphics need more definite contrast. It is pretty tiring (eye strain) and directionless to look at.If you could, you should rearrange the "Welcome" section next to or near the Crest logo. The viewer should never need to scroll down to see the Welcome section if it exists.   ;  Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to provide some pretty valuable feedback.Judging by the websites views of general response of what's been developed so far. I think the best course of action at the moment is to re-focus my efforts on constructing a polished game demo of Tower City. At the moment my focus is split between design document creation and managing the demo.Directing more effort into creating design documentation related to what the demo team needs and dedicating more time to managing the team seems like the right way to go. With the games overview now both in design doc and video format the vision of Tower City is strong enough to focus on a high quality demo development. Rather then writing a full fictional design document development that no one will probably ever read.An employer can play a browser based game demo in a much shorter time then reading a document that describes the experience. :)Cheers,Chris Watts   ;  I'm not sure exactly what your intention is with that website.While everything seems to be laid out in an organized fashion, nobody is going to sift through that much information to find out if you would be a good game designer.Typically a game designer does not have a portfolio, however of you do want to include something, do include a website that represents who you are.You can include a link to your project from there, but again I would say that to be a game designer you must sell yourself more then your work.