Hello!
I’ve finally finished this bloody site after a gruelling week of trying to understand some of WordPress’s less beginner friendly quirks but it’s here. I still have some temp posts up which I was using for testing but they will come down shortly. I want to use this post to explain some of the sections of my site.
Reviews, quick thoughts and critiques
I’ve split my writing into 3 groups: reviews, quick thoughts and critiques. While these may change over time, these groupings came about as I looked at everything I’ve written in the past.
I have a fair chunk of reviews under my belt, most of which have sat festering in my Google Drive for no one to see. These will be uploaded in due time, but for the most part the reviews that get uploaded to this site will be new, bespoke writings I’ve done from now into the future. Put simply, “reviews” will be moderately sized pieces that delve into the good and bad of a particular game.
Quick thoughts on the other hand have never seen the light of day, and instead reside in a grand spreadsheet I have to track every game I play. These were never intended to be public, but as time has gone on, despite their short length, I’ve found myself putting more effort into them despite their shorter length. For reference, here’s a slice of what my spreadsheet looks like:
As you can see, I enter every game I’ve played, meta information on the game and a rating. That final column is my “final thoughts”; bitesize reviews which I use as a reminder for what I thought about a game as I perpetually fret about the fragility of my memory. Those mini reviews are going under the “Quick Thoughts” category, which I aim to compile at least two games together in a single post due to their length and, perhaps, reduced quality in comparison to “Reviews” and “Critiques”. Speaking of which…
“Critiques” will (I predict) be the least frequented category, due to their required time investment: researching, planning, writing, panicking etc. I’ve done some in the past, and notably one of them was what actually got me into writing consistently due the good response it got, but due to the aforementioned resource investment it’s highly unlikely it will be a well worn category. Perhaps if I’m feeling particularly ostentatious one day, but for the most part the former two categories will be the primary mode of writing.
Ratings
You may notice on my spreadsheet excerpt that I give every game a rating. This is purely for my reference. The 10 point scale is a hideously flawed means of conveying a games quality due to the flawed perception people have of it, by that I mean one man’s 7 is another man’s 3. I commend sites like Eurogamer for example for dropping the scale and instead utilising their terse “Avoid, Recommend, Essential” tagging system – not that it stops arguments in the comment section mind, but it eliminates a lot of unnecessary confusion. On top of that, I’ve seen far too many people ignore the written portion of a review (you know, the actual analysis) in favour of taking a number as final, qualitative judgement on a game’s quality. Fuck. That.
My reviews will use simple 5 point system that replaces numbers with words, replacing an empty, misinterpreted number with a simple, well-understood adjective. Terrible, Poor, Mixed, Recommended and Sublime.
I will keep my personal number scale, because it’s for my reference. No one else will see it. No one else will judge it. I like to think this simple, yet elegant way of tagging a game review will avoid confusion and allow readers to filter reviews based on what they really want to see.
Summary
Quick thoughts short. Reviews medium. Critiques long. Simple rating system. Fuck the 10 point scale. Goodbye!