I'm the Founder of CriticDB, a new Game Review Aggregator, Ask Me Anything!
Hey r/games! I’m Rutledge Daugette, one of the Founders of CriticDB, a new game review aggregation platform that we JUST launched yesterday!
To introduce CriticDB: We want to be more than just a review aggregator site. Our goal is for CriticDB to be a website to find new games you might have missed, or an outlet that you wouldn't have known about otherwise.
Since September, we've been building CriticDB to be a game review aggregator that "does more", with a focus on both game and outlet discovery, as well as features that help PR connect with new and/or smaller outlets.
For me, this is a labor of love. Much like the gaming outlet (TechRaptor) I founded in 2013, I'm building this for industry and for the love of games, and not money. In what is an exceptionally difficult time for both Games Media AND Game Development, it was important to us that we built something that went beyond what existing aggregators did/do, and built features that help Gamers, Outlets, and PR.
Our Vision | About Us | FAQ
CriticDB launches with:
- Dedicated pages for each game featuring reviews, previews, user reviews, and curated similar game recommendations.
- Sort games by release date, genre, and platform.
- Allow the community to add new games and suggest similar game recommendations.
- Build your game collection, favorites, and wishlists for free.
- Write user reviews for your favorite games.
- Public user profiles displaying your game collection and user reviews.
- Verified author profiles with user features.
- (Coming soon) Earn XP and badges for using the site.
We’ve detailed out a lot of questions on our FAQ – but also wanted to directly engage with the gamers who would be utilizing the site, here’s some of the initial questions we expect:
- What are the criteria for a new Outlet to be included? Answer in the Site Application Page
- The Criteria seem high – won't that exclude a lot of Publishers? Full answer in our FAQ
- Can I license data via a CriticDB API? Eventually, yes!
- Does CriticDB sell Outlet or User Data to 3rd Parties? No.
- Does CriticDB use any form of AI? No.
Any questions that we missed in the FAQ, we’ll make sure to get added after the AMA, we want to be as transparent as possible as we build CDB.
While you’re here, join our discord and follow us on BlueSky (or X) too!
Excited to jump into this, answer questions, and show off some of the cool features we’ve built – we have a pretty cool long-term roadmap too!
So... AMA!
Edit 1: Thank you for a number of great questions so far. I plan to keep answering on this for as long as is needed. I'm still writing replies and will continue to do so until I go to bed (10EST) and then all weekend :)
Edit 2: 1/31 @ 7p EST - While it seems this may be winding down, I'll continue to answer any/all Q's this weekend. This project is deeply important to me, and I want to answer any questions that anyone may have.