BasedGamer Funded: What you need to know

Published: January 13, 2015 10:38 AM /

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The Indiegogo campaign for BasedGamer, a user driven aggregation and gaming community site, has been successfully funded.

BasedGamer was pitched by Jennie Bharaj, a youtube personality focused on academic critique of video games, along with her anonymous team. Their stated goal is to foster dramatic change in the gaming industry, from the Based Gamer Indiegogo page;

The gamer voice has become more prominent than ever before. Through social media, game forums, and aggregator websites, gamers have taken it upon themselves to demand a more sincere platform for games journalism.

BasedGamer will be devoted to a community driven by gamers. Similar to the popular website, “RottenTomatoes.com,” BasedGamer will feature a genuine aggregation of game reviews and other great features.

BasedGamer’s reviews will include written and YouTube reviews. Unlike other game-review aggregators, BasedGamer will compile and score game reviews based on four categories: Visuals, Storyline, Gameplay, and Entertainment. The categories will be rated via a simple, four-point scale: Excellent, Good, Okay, and Very Bad.This simple grading system will define scores with much more clarity.

BasedGamer will also include transparency, a platform for the gaming community, and monitor trolls and astroturfers.

Developers and gamers alike have spoken on the negative effect services like can Metacritic have on the gaming industry. Influential scores can be skewed dramatically by the conditions games were reviewed under, such as the Sim City launch in 2013 or the Halo: Master Chief Collection just a few months ago. Additionally, the power of the current review aggregation environment has led some companies to tie bonus structure to Metacrtitc score, such as when the team behind Fallout: New Vegas famously missed their bonus by just one percentage point.

BasedGamer purports to be the solution to the top-down review system by focusing its energy on grassroots community building from the gamers themselves. During the crowdfunding period, concerns were raised regarding the number of signups necessary to make the website viable and the experience of the majority anonymous BasedGamer team. However now that it has been successfully funded we will soon see if BasedGamer can become an important resource for gamers going forward.

Check the BasedGamer site or the BasedGamer Indiegogo for updates going forward.

Did you support BasedGamer? Do you plan to use it when it launches officially? Let us know in the comments below!

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| Former Staff Writer

Wyatt Hnatiw is a lifelong gamer with a borderline inappropriate love of BioWare RPGs and Bioshock. Maybe he just loves the prefix Bio...