IF-Review: About Us

IF-Review
The Online Interactive Fiction Review Site

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About Us

What I'm seeking

I would like to host reviews for any and all IF games. However, to get this site started off in an interesting way, I want to restrict reviews to games which are not part of the annual comp or of the mini-comps. This means some of the longer games that are released outside of the competition umbrella -- LASH, Losing Your Grip, Bad Machine are good examples. I won't name them all here, since there are so many. If you want to write a review, but you don't know what games are available, ask me (email address listed below) and I can help you out.

Reviews should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Longer or shorter reviews can be accepted for games which warrant it. Reviews can be submitted either as text files or html files. If you use the latter format, do not add fancy things like graphics or css -- try to restrict yourself to the basic markup tags. I want to create a uniform look to IF-Review, and it would be easier if I don't have to edit out whiz-bangs.

What you get

My current budget allows me to "buy" one review a week for $20. What I'm buying is twofold: first, the right to publish your review on my website and, second, the right to be the first to publish it. In order for this site to be a worthwhile visit for the IF community, I would like to have content that would not be available elsewhere. Otherwise, why visit?

For this website, I would like to be able to exhibit the review for a period of 30 days before it shows up on another site, whether it be your own personal site, or some other site. After that, while it will remain on my site indefinitely, you can publish it wherever and whenever you want.

Please note that I am not buying the copyright to your review. The copyright is yours and yours alone. Can you submit it to SPAG? Sure. Can you send it to a print magazine? Sure. Can you send it to Stephen Granade's review site? Sure. Just give me the 30 days, please. That's all I ask.

Why am I doing this

Because good games have traditionally gotten very little feedback (with the annual competition being the obvious exception). When a game is released via the annual comp, it generates LOTS of feedback from everyone falling over one another to review the game. But there are games other than comp games that deserve to get reviewed too, and it is my hope that offering compensation, small though it may be, would encourage people to write those reviews.

The money for the reviews is initially going to come out of my own pocket. At some point, if I can figure out how to do it, I will be putting banner ads on. This will hopefully allow me to offset the cost of the reviews, or allow me to buy more of them. One review a week means $520 a year -- if I can get even $5/month out of the banner ads, that would mean an additional 6 reviews per year.

How I pay

I can offer you payments through PayPal or by US money order.

Anything else?

I think that just about covers it. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at and I'll do my best to address them.

Are you interested in participating?

That would be great! The more people who write reviews for this site, the better it will be. And I hope it will be very good indeed. If you wish to be a reviewer, please send email to the address above and let me know which games you'd like to write about. If someone has already covered a game you want to review, no problem! Feel free to submit it anyway.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go out to Adam, inky, Ellison and dfan for their help.