The video player is one of the best examples of an area we really care about on the team; it’s chock-full of interactions, icons, and states that are required to feel simple and approachable. It needs to work with live streams as well as recorded video. People should be able to scrub the timeline, change the volume, and change settings all at varying sizes and placements on the page.

We’re excited about the next iteration of the video player we’ve been working on. The player is transitioning from an ever-present control bar to one that surfaces on hover or tap (just like many of the video players we all use daily on other sites). Similar actions have been grouped together and organized to reduce the number of actions and options you’re bombarded with when you interact with the player.

We’ve also started creating a more unified icon set to make sure everything feels like it belongs together a little more. This is a fairly small detail most folks aren’t too concerned with until something doesn’t make sense, but we want to make sure we make these to help guide people to the right action or setting.

The new player is currently being developed and should be ready in the coming weeks. As always with things made for the internet, there’s a chance things may change slightly between concept and development. It’s going to be updated across all the CBSi Games sites, so you’ll be seeing it updated on GameSpot, Giant Bomb, and ComicVine.

Have feedback, questions, concerns about the new player? Feel free to hit me up on Twitter. I’m @danauer over there.