About Us

PressStart is an independent publication about games — the ones being made, the people making them, and the industry deciding which of them get made at all.

We publish four things: news that has been checked, reviews written by someone who finished the game, guides that were tested rather than transcribed, and features that take the time a subject actually needs. If a story does not fit one of those, we probably should not be publishing it.

What we are trying to do

Games coverage has a structural problem: the fastest, cheapest article is almost never the most useful one. A rewritten press release goes live in eight minutes. A guide that has been played through takes a day. Both occupy the same slot on a homepage.

We have built PressStart around the slower version. Fewer pieces, longer, with the reporting visible in them. When we do not know something, we say so in the piece rather than implying otherwise. When we get something wrong, we correct it in place, with a note explaining what changed and when.

Editorial independence

Our editorial decisions are made by our editorial team and by nobody else. Specifically:

• Advertisers have no say in coverage. Nobody selling advertising on this site sees an article before publication, and no advertiser is told what we are working on.
• We do not run paid coverage. We do not accept payment to write about a game, to write about it favourably, or to write about it at a particular time.
• Sponsored content is labelled unmistakably if we ever run it, and it is not written by the writers who cover that subject.
• We disclose relationships. If a writer has worked with, invested in, or is close to someone connected to a game, that is disclosed in the piece or the piece is assigned to someone else.
• Review copies are not payment. We accept review code because that is how the industry distributes games. We do not accept travel, hardware or gifts in exchange for coverage.

How we review

A reviewer plays the game to a natural conclusion — the credits, or the point at which a live game has shown you what it is — before writing. Every review states how long that took and on what hardware. If we publish before we have finished, we label it clearly as an impression rather than a review, and we go back and do it properly.

We do not give scores. This is deliberate, and it is the question we get asked most.

A number invites you to skip the argument. It converts a few thousand words of specific, arguable judgement into a value that can be averaged, aggregated, printed on a box, and used in a bonus calculation for people who had no say in it. Worse, it flattens the thing that makes a review useful: whether a game’s particular compromises are ones you would accept. A game can be structurally excellent and completely wrong for you. No number carries that.

So our reviews argue a position and show their reasoning, and end with a verdict written in sentences. You are meant to be able to disagree with us and still know whether to buy the thing. If you find yourself unable to tell what we thought, we have failed, and we would like to hear about it.

Corrections

We correct errors of fact promptly and visibly. A correction stays attached to the article permanently rather than being edited away silently — including when the error is embarrassing. If you have spotted one, tell us at editors@example.com and include a link.

Pitching us

We commission freelance features, reporting and guides, and we pay on acceptance rather than on publication.

Send pitches to editors@example.com. A good pitch is short: two or three paragraphs explaining what the story is, why it is a story now, who you have spoken to or intend to speak to, and roughly how long it wants to be. Please include a couple of links to previous work — anywhere, including your own site. We read everything and aim to reply within two weeks, including when the answer is no.

We are particularly interested in reporting on how games get made, coverage of scenes and regions that get overlooked, and guides for games that have been out long enough that everyone has stopped writing about them.