The website I have chosen to write about is The Forever Club. This website is based on a comedy ensemble that has made an interactive webisode series. This group is based in Buffalo, New York. Anyone from the buffalo area would be able to recognize the streets mentioned or the local restaurants and bars.
This website consists of 6 webisodes, which take about 10 minutes each to get through with an interactive storyline that moves you through the story using modern-day techniques, like text messages, Snapchat, Twitter, and interactive questions or polls on some episodes. Each episode consists of a story about the 4 friends in their mid-twenties. Gabe, who is a bartender, Karen who is a lawyer, CJ who is an artist of some type, and Jordan who is a college professor.
Each episode tackles a new problem or situation with the first group. For example the first episode, “the blank” follows the storyline of jordans sister who went missing and it gives every friend’s point of view of a certain situation.
The second episode follows a more profound attack on what each character thinks of “reality” which for some characters means goofy pranks or for some others a deep self-reflection for others. The third episode is more of a fun one about the friends going out on the town and playing drinking games with each other.
The fourth episode tackles something almost everyone can relate to these days, social media. The friends decide that they would take a one-week to cleanse from social media. As the week progresses you can see how each of them looks rougher and rougher. It really shows how media affects our everyday lives.
The fifth episode goes into the complicated relationship between Jordan and Gabe which had been hinted at very lowkey throughout the last 4 episodes.
The sixth episode talks about a subject that makes some people (most certainly me) uneasy, The end of the world. But the director made it more comedic and about friendship and what they would do for each other.
Each episode also had historical ties to the storyline which I thought was very cool but also did not understand well because each historical popup was very sudden. There were recurring characters you never saw but were brought up in almost every episode like Earl Gray and Karen’s private investigator. Each friend has their own struggles but at the end of the day these friends are “forever”.
The website has 5 tabs, “Episodes”, which has the list and links to each episode of the web series. “Cast” has all 4 cast members and a little biography of them. “directors notes” has pictures and stories from the director, earl grey from throughout the series.“ Fan Feed” has a bunch of reviews from viewers, and “contact” which has a few boxes to put your name, email, and the question you want to ask the forever club.
When I first opened the website for the first time I thought it looked a small bit outdated, like it was from the early 2000s. After watching the episodes that clearly mentioned Snapchat Instagram and all of the above I quickly realized that this was in the more modern years and as one of the videos briefly mentioned it may have been filmed in 2018. The website is user-friendly, as mentioned before all of the different sections are labeled so it is easy to find exactly what you are looking for. I would say the least organized part is the director’s note section there are a few broken links and areas where the text is out of sorts. It took me a moment to figure out what exactly this website was and what its purpose and after some scrolling, I learned that it was made for pure entertainment.
The size and color of the font are pretty good. The font is bolded, large enough, and black which comes out great on a white background. For other user experiences, the website is pretty easy to use. When you’re watching the webisodes and ready to move on to the next section all you have to do is click your space bar.
After putting this website into the WAVE report the website seems to be somewhat accessible. There was a minimal amount of errors, primarily empty links. I noticed while going through the interactive webisodes that it depended on a lot of reading, which could be an issue for sight-impaired people as there was no option on the website for the text to be read. Another accessibility issue could be some of the video portions because again, there was no option on the direct website to have closed captions which could affect the hearing-impaired community. The website does not have a search bar but as previously mentioned, there isn’t much need for one because everything is in clearly stated sections. At the bottom of the website is 8 different links that lead to 8 different of their social platforms.
Overall, This was a really interesting and new type of interactive media I have never used before and I had a really good time watching these episodes and getting to know the characters in a super fun interactive way.
https://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://webyarns.com/wp2/episodes
