Over the past few years my distaste for sites like IGN and MetaCritic has been growing more and more. Sites like those, which essentially lie and mislead people about the items they cover are, quite frankly, disgusting.
When a friend of mine who runs a site decided to take IGN as a role model for his site, I was more than a little devastated. Since for me, I feel very strongly that that is the model we (as critics/reviewers/journalists) need to move away from.
While attending a small meeting I met up with a few other critics and streamers from the UK, and we ended up discussing this very topic. At the end we came to a conclusion: Put Up or Shut Up.
If we hate the IGN model so much we need to create a site to counter it. A site that gives fair critique to games, manga and anime, sets out all the pros and cons for the reader, and then lets them decide if they’ll like it. Because lets face it, I can love a game to death, but someone else can (and will) hate it.
As a result, after some thought, and soul searching, I’ve decided to change my life in a rather drastic way. I’ve currently moved from full-time to part-time work, and will slowly drop the hours I work further. I’m planning to phase out Ryu’s Dreams, and focus on a new site: GONN. My hope, is that eventually, GONN will allow me to quit work all together and focus solely on the site.
We’ll also be setting up both a Twitch and a YouTube channel, where we’ll host the research streams for the games we play, as we can.Â
GONN, Gaming & Otaku News Network will be a site and Twitch/YouTube channel devoted to reviews, interviews, critique and editorials, without scores, grades or lies. We’ll play, read, watch or listen and then give you our honest opinions. We’ll lay out the good and the bad we’ve found and then leave it to you to decide if this is what you want.
While the site itself is live now, it’s going to go through some changes over the coming month or so as we finalise the site layout and design. We just wanted to the get the site up and running as soon as possible.
Drop on by and leave a post in the forums (live later this week) saying what games, shows, or manga you’d like us to take a look at and we’ll add it to our list!
