Three years working in a games shop before I started writing taught me more about how people actually engage with games than anything else could have. You hear the same questions enough times and you start to understand what useful criticism actually means. A twelve-year-old asking if a game is scary and a forty-year-old asking if it’s worth sixty quid are both doing the same thing, they just need the answer framed differently. English Literature gave me the tools for it. The shop gave me the audience. I’ve been reviewing since 2013, finished well over two hundred titles, and I still think a seven out of ten is one of the most interesting scores you can give something. Most coverage flattens games into recommend or don’t, which loses almost everything worth saying about them. Beyond individual reviews I put together ranked lists when the question is about a whole platform or a genre rather than a single title. I keep a spreadsheet for all of it. Several, actually. My girlfriend thinks this is strange. She’s probably right.
