Editors’ Blog: Navel Gazing

Posted on 04. Jul, 2010 by Mark Cullinane in Editor's Blog

Naval, er, gazing.

We’re nothing if not a self-reflexive bunch of writers here on the site, and we’ve recently been having some internal conversations about the role and purpose of No Added Sugar in the context of the wider world of videogames media. Part of our discussions have revolved around the role of reviews- how we should approach them, whether or not we should be giving games arbitrary scores at the end of reviews, and even whether or not we should be involved in ‘reviewing’ titles at all.

Readers can expect to see multiple changes on the site arising from our debates on these and other issues of videogame journalism, but one decision we’ve decided to make with immediate effect is to change how we approach reviews.

We’ve decided that awarding games a numerical score at the end of a review is no longer something we’ll do. We’ve a few reasons for this, but the most fundamental one is that the text of a review should speak for itself. We don’t feel that a number tagged on to a review contributes anything useful to debate on a game’s merits and demerits, and even encourages laziness on the part of both the writer and reader, whose eyes are so often drawn to the number rather than the words.

The changes will go deeper, too: we intend to further liberate ourselves from the chains of orthodoxy in how we approach reviews. We’re continuing our crusade against the ‘checklist’ approach to videogame reviews. You can expect a more freeform approach that allows our team of writers more space to explore what’s really important.

As for the other changes, additions and subtractions in store for the site, you’ll hear more about them soon.
As always, comments and questions are welcome.