This is not meant to be rude or meant as a personal attack against anyone on here, but more and more i see in users signatures links to review sites they have. Isn't that kinda the point of this site? and also why we make threads to get peoples opinions on a game, and what about the reviews on the appstore. I'm surprised arn actually allows this since it is direct competition with this site, anyway just curious.
This is a serious blog. By that I mean Arn and Blake actually care about the games, the platform, and the devs. They go to conferences, the talk with the coders and publishers of some of the biggest games to date (Rolando, NFS, SlotZ). Do you really think some random guy that started a blog on blogspot is really gonna compete with that. TA rolls out reviews periodically. That's more than a lot of sites can say. Having people's reviews on games offers more perspective. Just because Arn says a game's good doesn't mean it'll be fun to someone else. Plus, I can get more details on a game with forums members. And hey, it's fun! Don't worry, TA's safe
Not to mention TA doesn't really bother with b rated games, so instead of waiting for someone to toftt, perhaps those other sites have the review to a game your looking for. To my knowlage TA doesn't take review request considering their busy networking practices. So having other sources isn't competition, it's just good social networking. And even TA now has an exclusive guest contributing reviewer, and they still can't review everygame. I wouldn't suggest they try either. TA knows where they lye in the growing pool of review sites. I'm sure even arn almighty would agree that having more then just a few sources is a good idea. I agree there are a lot of reviews sites, but know one person can view everysite on the Internet. So with that in mind, know that there are a lot of apple mgd owners that haven't even heard of Touch Arcade. *mgd-mobile game device
Believe me I don't think it is either I was just curious as to why a lot of people on here have one, I wanna be cool too.
The more the merrier. In the age of text messaging and the dumbing down of the English language, I have no problem getting behind anyone who wants to write down some coherent thoughts about anything. Some of the review sites I've seen in peoples' signatures have been pretty good.
LOL. You guys are hilarious. And again, you don't need a review site to be cool. Some sites are just crap.
^^ I agree, Alot of the sites are pretty bad, some of the reviews, it doesn't even look like they've played the game.
I think it's natural that forum-goers who are very interested in games might want to start app review sites themselves. I don't mind it, and understand it. We do allow forum goers to place links in their sigs to advertise their sites -- with-in reason. We do have strict rules about self-promotion, and advertising on this site, however.... and despite what some people think, this is not due to fear of competition. The point of the forums is to discuss games. People who are just here to try to pimp their sites detract from that experience by posting links rather than actually discussing games. It is for this reason that self promotion is strictly prohibited -- it brings down the forums. As for something Redstar said.... I'm not sure he meant what he actually wrote. But yes, we generally don't review games we don't like -- unless they are high profile titles. That's not to say we don't review low-budget or or small-dev games. It doesn't matter to us. In fact, I think a lot of our purpose is finding those hidden gems and solid but lesser known titles. But, we don't see the point in spending time writing or forcing readers to see tons of reviews of otherwise unknown games that we don't actually like or recommend. arn
Yes arn, blake, and hodapp are generous allowing people to link their sites in their signatures. Many forums forbid it due to massive spam fests. I get on average 50 clicks/month from my toucharcade sig so it's not a huge amount at all (I get 20,000 unique/day but that ain't iphone stuff). But yes I never click on sites that aren't iphone related though. Glad they enforce me from pimping a motor parts site for instance as that has nothing to do with the target audience of this forum. That's why I'm here in this forum looking for opinions on various games. Wouldn't have found slidetoplay or fingergaming had I not seen them here in this forum and many other nice sites.
Most of the review sites in Sigs are idie sites like mine but TA isnt a indie site... Its no big deal
It's the constant debate of what "indie" means. It seems many people just think "indie" means smaller than yourself. If it means two guys starting a site in their part time without any significant funding, then yeah, we qualify. arn
I think I see Toucharcade as a blossoming indie site that's heading towards great things . I see ipodtouchfans as a more developed site. I like toucharcade for the games discussion much, much, much more than iPTF but that site helped me out a lot with jailbreaking. Toucharcade seems like the nice little hometown site that is a pretty tight community and all that good stuff. Anyway, back on topic... Having a blog and writing is just fun for some people (myself included!) Some people just find writing enjoyable and they understand that they could help some people out and have fun while doing it if they write app or game reviews. I may eventually open a site up with a fellow member of this site and I would have a great time with it.
Um, 3. Two real ones. And WildCowboy. Well, that's how a lot of places start, but you have grown to become a fairly large site. I mean, look that the forums. Not as large as iPTF or iPhoneGamesNetwork, but somewhere between iPhoneGamesNetwork and my blog. Lol.
Just wanted to add in my own two cents (or pennies if you will). I love playing videogames in general, always have. Started with an original game boy, psone and then game boy advance and ps2 (I also spent many hours on a Megadrive whenever I got the chance). When I got an iPod Touch I felt that the new era of mobile computing had arrived. Here is a device that can do all sorts of things, and it was actually for it's other capabilities that I made the purchase. But then along came the App Store and it completely changed my perceptions of how mobile games were supposed to look and play like. It also occurred to me that many high quality games were being released, some at little to no cost, and that was even before everybody deciding flogging titles for 59p. I had always wanted to review games and I thought this was a perfect opportunity, in between my work I could download new games and review one a night, every night. Downloads enabled me to do this, and certainly one guy can't go to the game store every day for a new game when he has a full time job too. I've never thought of it as promo code grabbing, being from the UK we're exempt from this anyway, just the love of playing new games and telling other people about them. Of course, I'd love to be able to say that yes, I created a hugely successful site and quit my day job, just like the guy who released iShoot and got a large amount of income very quickly. But in reality it's just me, reviewing new games for the fun of it, and if you think I'm just another statistic then well, you'd be missing out. edit: arn brings up a good point about not covering games that are below par - why would I want to write a few paragraphs on a game I didn't like? Well to be honest the reason is a) to provide balanced coverage so that I'm not giving out recommendations for everything and b) when I buy a game, I am looking to get enjoyment from it - if my pound isn't well spent I like to inform people so that they know not to buy either.
