PixlBit

Yeah, Metacritic evaluates sites over very long periods of time and doesn't readily add people. Last year we were "wait listed," which essentially meant that we passed their tests and would get added after some others were removed.

I was hopeful that we could pretty much take 1up's space now that they're closing up shop. I haven't heard anything back since I last emailed them a month ago. I guess we'll see what happens, but it would definitely open up doors for us that wouldn't be opened otherwise.

http://style.org/unladenswallow/

I'm not really sure I have one. Generally speaking, I like bright, vibrant colors, especially in games.

I don't know that we have a ton of traction in the gaming world at large. Some people have heard of us and have been to the site, but I don't know that we register in the same way some other sites do. Of course, being listed on Metacritic brings that visibility, so that's why we're hopeful to be listed there.

Publishers do send us review copies of games, but there's no consistency to it. Certain publishers are better about sending stuff than others, but if a game comes out, it's always a dice roll if they're going to respond to my request and then actually follow through with a code or copy.

If we didn't receive a copy, that means someone from the site bought the game with money from their own pocket and reviewed it. Up until this month, there haven't even been enough ad dollars to pay for a single game a month. Even at this point almost four years later, I'm sure the site is technically still in the red after figuring in the costs of the server and its operations.

We've been to E3 twice, the first two years we were around, but have been rejected each year following. They've made it almost impossible to get there for smaller sites. Even though we have this now active and amazing community, we're not hitting the raw unique hit counts to qualify to send even ONE person to the show. It's crazy and completely unfair. Bottom line, they'd rather have sites with no consistent users visit who simply rake in more unique users than sites with dedicated and active communities.

The industry seems to be constantly forcing out us little guys. From the point when I started the site till now, absolutely everything is harder for us. Nobody gives us a free pass and nobody makes life easier. It's quite frustrating at times. No matter what, we keep hanging in there and bearing it out. I hope we catch a break one day.

I think that game journalism will eventually be turned around. I don't think it's going to come quickly and I don't think it's going to be easy, but I do think that as the medium grows and matures the coverage around it will too.

In some ways game journalism has improved from when the whole blog scene started, though we've stepped back in a few ways too. I think there's a movement currently by people like the Penny Arcade Report and others to help legitimize the field, but a lot still has to change in the industry in general before we're going to get there.

The onus lies not only on the press, but on the game companies themselves. But in short, yes, I do think it will eventually get better. It's just not going to happen quickly.

Oh man, I've played a lot of bad games, but I think Ridge Racer on the Vita might've been one of the worst. In and of itself, it's actually a very competent racer, plus I like that series. However, on the actual cartridge itself, there were only a scant few tracks and cars. A code was included in the box that provided a few more cars and tracks, but there were still not many.

Namco sold that gutted game to squeeze players for every little thing via microtransactions, which is just despicable. I'm not going to say that microtransactions are inherently evil, but what the hell is up with their Ridge Racer strategy? Didn't we used to get ACTUAL FULL GAMES when we bought them from the store. This nonsense is just too much. Games like that make me wish we could rewind a generation or two to a better time.

Let's see, favorite bands... I'd say Coheed and Cambria take the top spot pretty easily. Their side projects, The Prize Fighter Inferno and Davenport Cabinet, are really good too. Back in my teen years I had a love affair with System of a Down, but since then my love has cooled into a firm like.

Some other favorites include Liquid Tension Experiment, Led Zeppelin, Glassjaw, early All That Remains, early Atreyu, Third Eye Blind, and Andy McKee. There's a ton of other stuff that I have on my iPod that get a regular spin, but those are some of my top choices.

Yup, I'm living up in NY and I'm even from Brooklyn originally, but have yet to go to Grimaldi's. I'm sure I'll visit some time, but typically when I'm down that way we hit up L&B Spumoni Gardens for our pizza fix. 

As far as AdSense goes, you can make money pretty readily if you have people clicking links, but it takes a super long time for your CPM (1 CPM = 1000 ad views) to be worth anything. We still make nothing on ad views, only ad clicks, and even that doesn't amount to much. You need to rack up $100 to get a pay out from Google and our first pay out took probably a year...

Haha, sleep happens for me, but it's usually not all that plentiful. After doing this for years, I've managed to strike a pretty good balance that I think works out well. When my kids are awake, I don't spend any time on the site or playing games. After they go to bed, I usually have time to do either work on the site or play games or various other hobby type activities. Since Chessa and I both play games, that's something we get to do together. Whenever I do site programming or stuff she has no interest in she does arts and crafts, so it all works out pretty well.

I think the last time I was genuinely shocked was the airport scene in Modern Warfare 2. That was pretty grizzly and definitely unwarranted.

Most of my shock these days comes in the form of being shocked that game companies can't seem to get certain things right, even after all of these years. Funky Barn on Wii U comes to mind. It was a solid game, but it had no auto-save and as a result of a hard freeze, I lost a ton of progress. Had it been auto-saving, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but at the time I couldn't help but think "seriously, no auto-save!?"

I have no idea how this is happening for you guys. I've done a bunch of testing on my end and the drafts are being incrementally saved as expected. I've tried closing my browser in a given time frame and doing a few other things and it's just not happening.

I can't seem to reproduce the Live and Post issue either. If you can give me some more specifics (if you remember them) on how it happened, starting with clicking the link to "Post a Blog," I might be able to figure out how to test that exact case and fix it accordingly.

Sorry that this has happened to a few of you. I thought I had this problem ironed out with the auto-save ability.

I'm going to say Psychonauts, Ocarina of Time, and Persona 3: FES.