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The Contribute page of the blog says this:

Some suggested topics include:

  • Reviews of books, TV series, comics, or films (sci-fi or fantasy game reviews are better suited over at our cousin’s place), whether something newly released, or a classic more people should know about.

Given that Stack Exchange has discontinued the standard community blog mechanism (and I'm not aware of a successor to Arqade's community blog), should we just absorb video games into the list of suggested media? Or are games out of scope anyway (e.g. because a review will probably be more about gameplay than story)? What about "story-only" reviews, where gameplay is ignored and the writer only discusses the story elements?

Either way, that parenthetical should probably be changed.

(Looking through the reviews tag, the second item is currently an Assassin's Creed review, but this is a red herring -- it's a review of the movie adaptation, not the games themselves.)

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    Just as an FYI, the contribute page hasn't been fully reworked. So it's it's good to ask, because we haven't had all those discussions yet.
    – user31178
    Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 1:47
  • I see that you (presumably) submitted a Gargoyles review last week. I didn't see it until today. In the future ping me via the sff blog chat channel. The article looks good, so I can publish it if it is ready, let me know.
    – Jack B Nimble
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 20:50
  • @JackBNimble: Sorry for the confusion there. You might want to update the Contribute page and/or this answer to clarify that authors should ping you for new posts. As far as whether it's ready - If you think it's in a good state now, please go ahead and publish it on whatever schedule(?) the blog uses.
    – Kevin
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 21:03
  • @Kevin the contribute page does say to pop into the chat room and ping us to discuss it. But no matter. I have scheduled your article to publish on Monday, March 6.
    – Jack B Nimble
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 21:46
  • @Kevin Your article is doing well, it has a few comments on the blog site (thesffblog.com/2017/03/gargoyles-a-review) as well as comments on reddit (reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/5xy9y3/…)
    – Jack B Nimble
    Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 18:58

2 Answers 2

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Since the blogs are now "unofficial" blogs, I think we can relax a bit on what we limit ourselves to. So, my opinion is, if it's an article you think would be of interest to this community, it's fair game for the blog.

In the case of a video game review, I think you'd have to be aware of who your target audience is. We're here because we like to watch/read/etc sci-fi and fantasy material. Some of us may also enjoy playing video games, but that's not the thing that brings this community together. So a mechanical review of the latest CounterStrike is probably not something we'd want.

On the other hand, there's plenty of sci-fi/fantasy themed games, and they share many of the same qualities as a movie. Reviews of Witcher games or Elder Scrolls games that discuss not just gameplay, but the story, characters, appearance, sound, etc. I think would be welcome.

The best thing I can recommend is just write and submit one to start with and see how it goes over. If people like it, we can publish more. If people don't like it, we'd probably want to pass on them.

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    +1 for mentioning The Witcher
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 20:58
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    Yeah it's pretty rare for game reviews to focus on the story and worldbuilding side of things rather than graphics and gameplay, so a review/article that treated a game as a work of fiction and reviewed its literary merits would seem like a good fit here as well as providing something different and interesting
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 9:59
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I have no objection to content based on a video game, but I would rather see content based on the story and the world, and not particularly the gameplay.

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    This is consistent with the policy on video game questions on the main site.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 12:52

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