By Jessica N. Bowles-Martinez
The site offers a way for visitors to either play cards on their
computer with one another online or to download personalized cards,
which have been designed by other players, for the purpose of playing
games by themselves. The site had a very poor layout and I wasn't
very interested in the idea of playing cards on my computer. Yet,
after looking at the posts to the message board, and the fanaticism
of some of the sites on the web ring I realized this was actually
entertaining to some people.
The site has extremely crude graphics that look as though they are
from an early 90s adventure game. Perhaps that's its major flaw, it
looks like it should be part of one of those pre-AI games that I grew
to hate when I was young. Trying to get beyond my biases I still find
the site's layout and color choices to be hideous. They want it to
have a look that reminds people of wood; as a result the colors are
shades of browns and yellows. The buttons advertising the awards they
won are huge, and displayed next to the main graphics creating a very
amateurish look. I would not expect this place to be a professionally
run site from how it looks, rather it seems like something a teenager
who likes medieval stuff would throw together on a weekend.
The games themselves are not innovative at all; rather the hardwood
solitaire is identical to the solitaire included on most computers,
but with a lot of ugly graphics added. Behind the cards is a wooden
table pattern and the cards can have pictures on them. I just don't
get why people would be all that interested in this product as I find
the wood pattern distracting and ugly while the game is not original
at all.
I searched around on the sites I found on the web ring list which
had a listing of twelve fan sites. The fan sites had even worse html
design than the site they were celebrating. I guess this explains
a lot, since they probably have either low standards or actually like
the cluttered layout, busy background, and silly graphics the site
has. Most of the pages were made by people who seemed really excited
about making their own cards. Many made them with the theme of their
favorite movies or fantasy characters. The cards that I downloaded
just had pictures of characters on them, but nothing unique was done
with them. Once again I was at a loss at explaining why people would
be so into this.
I was about to assume that the 12 sites linked to this page were
probably the only 12 people in the world who cares about this stuff,
until I went to the forum area. Many areas had well over one thousand
posts and, surprisingly enough, the same people didn't write them
all. Most of the posts were in areas pertaining to the multiplayer
games as opposed to solitaire, which makes sense since the solitaire
types probably don't want to communicate with other people anyway.
I wonder if people who frequent this site just want to have others
to play cards with and are merely tolerating the poor site design
and are apathetic to the graphics on the cards. The other possibility
is that many other people are at the other end of taste regarding
aesthetics than I, and they come here because they like the interface
and a chance to have silly graphics on their cards. If I were a card
player I'd appreciate the opportunity to play with others but would
prefer a less busy site.