Off the Shelf Media

Today, we’re celebrating two years of gameplay, tips, and reviews on all things entertainment. We want to give a special thanks to those who have been a part of our platform from the beginning. It was your support that keeps us as determined today as we were when we first started. On top of our thanks, we wanted to offer a look into our methodology. 

While you can find articles on books, movies, TV, and videogames on our website, our content weighs more heavily on videogames. It has a lot to do with our founding. My wife, Emily, and I love writing as well as the previously mentioned media. Combined with our editorial experience, hers far outweighs mine; we recruited the best critics on the east side of the Mississippi River: our friends. Some from childhood, while others we had the pleasure of meeting in college; we all remained close largely because of online gaming. Oddly enough, it was surprising for us to realize most of our writers had formal education and degrees in journalism or writing once we actually started publishing. 

It was our love of storytelling that made this idea feasible and our interest in discussion that made it more than theoretical. Even now, we are actively voting on our own bracket to determine the best movie of the 2000s, a list of 256 movies we personally selected. It might be something we publish, but we really just thought it would be fun. Ideas like that got us started on what type of content we wanted to release. We wanted to make our content come from the same places we found so much enjoyment. We scoured other platforms and discussed how to present our material in an honest way, and one anyone could easily enjoy. So we created a rubric to rate videogames. Something that could be applied to any game and would remain consistent. Our metric follows the same format to make extracting the information easy for our viewers while also allowing our writers to piece together their article while playing. While viewers can find our takes on all types of media here on our site, we thought a more in-depth look at our thought process for videogames, because such content is more abundant, would let new viewers understand more about our formatting as well as offer clarifications to our day one fans. 

Our first review to our most recent use the same formula, and their success has even encouraged the more recent changes on our YouTube channel: to deliver our reviews on the platform rather than our previously frequent gameplay footage. While we still plan to release both, we have noticed the interest, we have listened to your comments, and we hope to offer more types of articles on the channel in the future. Naturally, there is a learning curve not just from the additional time for editing but from backend components such as scheduling for our team. 

While we have offered tips and tricks and guides, these take substantially longer, and it’s important for us that these releases remain distinct from walkthroughs.  For us, it’s an important distinction. We think that walkthroughs are not conducive to actually playing a game. This is why we instead offer guides to help people get started, but ultimately, how you, our viewers, choose to play the game is entirely in your hands. The experience and discovery are still up to you.

Now, on to our review methodology. Each review is divided into five parts: Gameplay, Story, Atmosphere, Value, and Duration. Each category is weighted from zero to two, with zero being bad, one being okay, and two being great. We then add those categories together to get our total score. It might seem complex, but I promise, we do it for a good reason.

Our goal is to offer unbiased reviews, at least as reasonably as we can. This system keeps us honest without overvaluing one specific aspect of each game. It also lets those viewing know exactly what to expect from each review. Take, for instance, we review a game and rate the atmosphere zero because the writer feels the sound and music design are bad, along with bad animations. If you personally do not care at all about atmosphere in your games, you will know you might like this game more than our writer did, without us compromising the total score. It removes as much bias as possible from our end to not overweigh a specific category so as many people as possible can look at the review and extract useful information. 

Gameplay, the first category we evaluate, is the most straightforward. We ask ourselves: how well do the mechanics come together to make a fun game? Are the controls simple or convoluted? Do they function? The elements combine to, hopefully, create a satisfying gameplay loop.

Story, on the other hand, can be a bit trickier. Not all games have one, and for that category we ask: does the story, or the lack of one, help or hurt the gaming experience? Risk of Rain 2 is a great example. It has minor story elements sprinkled throughout the game itself and almost none during the actual gameplay; however, the expansive codex offers far more insight for those who are curious. Imagine how frustrating the game would be if flavor text paused gameplay and forced you to read story developments each run? Because of how the story is handled in that game, it received a perfect score. It exists without forcing players to interfere with the gameplay loop. 

Atmosphere is more straightforward: we want to know if the sound and visual design work well. Bad graphics do not automatically make a game worse, just as good graphics do not mean a game is good. These elements are critical in any type of media and are some of the most often overlooked. The worst feeling while watching a movie, reading a book, or playing a game is being taken out of that moment and remembering you have some minuscule task, like taking out the garbage or turning the living room lights off when you are done. Atmosphere is the bonding agent that holds the world of such media together. Without it done well, your focus can slip out of whatever world is trying to be built.

Value is also easy to understand: Is the game priced well? Often we deal with PC games on Steam, the largest retailer for games, and while we try to mention how often a title fluctuates on sale, we use the base price for our score. After all, it is the estimate determined by the people who made the game. An evaluation of what value they believe the game to have. It is a major factor that can make or break a purchase, which is why we try to offer sale frequency from the best platform, often using SteamDB.

This can naturally blend into our last category: Duration. As a general rule of thumb, we ask if each dollar spent gives one hour of enjoyable gameplay. Some games are obviously longer than others, but that does not make them immediately better if the time spent is not fun. Some games do not really start until hours into gameplay or constantly thrust players into tutorials long after the game has started. This category can quickly become subjective. Our explanations try to give reasoning why the time may or may not have been enjoyable, especially if there is any benefit for New Game Plus.

Obviously, these categories are subject to the reviewers’ own interpretations, and many games might blend categories. We have often found the best games manage to blend them together or maintain a consistent identity across the board. This format helps maintain a consistent review for every game we go over, so our viewers know what to expect each release and never have to worry about random, arbitrary factors for evaluation. We also think it makes extrapolating information easier on a per-viewer basis. Our goal is that even if you do not agree with a writer’s take, they offer enough information for you to make your own judgment without reasonably spoiling the experience. 

I know it is a lot of information. Just as our gameplay uploads on YouTube also served as evidence that we actually play the games we talk about, we want this article to show the reasoning that goes into each review. These first two years have been a great experience for our team, and we have covered a lot of ground. We have had the pleasure of covering a live event, demo launches, and developer interviews on top of our regular releases. It is the type of content we hope we can make more of, and your support made all of it possible.

We want to thank everyone who has been a part of our journey so far over Off the Shelf Media’s first two years in operation. For starters, we want to thank the developers and publishers who were part of our interviews. We know a lot of work goes into making a game and appreciate those who have taken the time to answer some of our questions. If you are a developer or publisher and want us to take a look at your game or schedule an interview, reach out to us via our website or through social media. We also want to thank those who have reached out to give us access to their games; it certainly makes our job easier and helps broaden the titles in our view. And to our viewers, we cannot thank you enough for your support and comments. Continue to let us know how we’re doing, what you think of our work, and the type of releases you want from us. We read what you send our way across all our platforms and take time to review every request. From everyone on our team here, thank you for these two years so far.