"And I go to the site, and I still have no idea what the hell it does. I'm just hit with an ugly login page, and no incentive to sign up at all."
What he said. what the blog is suggesting is what Dropbox does amazingly well (which his site does not)- Explain what the service does on the front page with little to no navigation, show how your day could be improved by using the product - and then split second the user thinks "mmm, maybe I'll give it a shot" they should be registered and using your product in less than 5 seconds. Super quick registrations with no verification emails and those damn password/email 'type your email again' boxes will sell me every time. Hell, let me just type in a username and email, log me in and shoot me the password later. If it's worth using, I'll come back and use the password you sent. So while the blog has a good point, it's just applying it to the wrong area.
Also worth noting that if I go to connect with facebook and hit don't allow because I don't want your wall posts, I get faced with the weirdest rendered page in the history of today, that simultaneously has all and none of the info.
Yeah I have to agree - I really thought I was up for a return to the past, a good classic action FPS, a great piece of history that will go back to the classic FPS formula...but it looks and plays like a mod of Hexen or Quake or SIN. A very boring, half assed Hexen mod. It manages to take everything people HATED about FPS games back then (ie. long boring puzzles, long areas with no enemies, confusing jumping puzzles, the "run around the room mashing the use key to figure out what to do" gameplay) and put it in one package. So while it's certainly a return to the past, it's also a return to a style of gameplay that got killed off because it was boring as buggery.
Having finished the game and gone thru all the extras you see that very little has changed at all since the original conception in '97 apart from the engine changes over time.
Ironically the final boss battle is the most Duke3D like gameplay moment of the entire game.
The main problem I have with this is the same problem I have with the horrible Xbox dashboard - The left to right sliding tiles hurt my eyes like crazy. It's like trying to look out a side car window as you are travelling along and your eyes don't know what to focus on. At least the old Xbox dashboard tiles lined up behind each other so your eyes were always in the middle of the screen, but with this, ugh my eyes hurt just watching the demo.
Good work on fixing the background :) I feel the only thing missing is seeing what videos are coming up next. So rather than hitting "Next" and "Previous", it would be nice to see a row of thumbnail videos underneath the main video so I can skip around like a grooveshark playlist.
Edit - Gee willickers the site is fast! Really cool :D
-edit - but I like the submission by the OP too, I can see it becoming a meme XD