For those who are new to eShopperReviews, just discovering this website for the first time… hi! Welcome! I thought I’d take the opportunity to tell you more about this website, what we’re all about, and who’s working behind the scenes. A lot of this information will mirror stuff you can read about in the FAQs and About sections of the website, but I wanted to put it all up front here as well.

So first, the “who” part. I’m Jake McNeill, the owner of eShopperReviews, and sole writer, editor, video editor, sound editor, art designer, web designer… yeah, almost everything around here was created by me. I’ve worked on various other game websites prior to this, both as an Editor-in-Chief to a small games website, as well as a freelance writer for a major games website (all no longer around, sadly). I’m joined by Jenn Ip, who acts as the host of our monthly podcast, and also helps out with a few other small things around the website here and there.

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How We Got Here…

This website started as… well, not a website at all. It was originally a subreddit on Reddit.com, just a way for me to post my thoughts and opinions about games on Nintendo platforms. From there, it grew to encompass a Patreon page, and a YouTube channel. Through all this, my focus was always primarily on my writing on the subreddit.

However, that changed when Reddit changed the terms of their API in a way that I felt was clearly deliberately designed to harm third-party applications. Initially, I responded by “blacking out” that subreddit in what was originally meant as a temporary protest. But it soon became clear that not only did Reddit’s leadership have no desire to budge, but that they seemed to have active contempt for those who complained about this change. Even more worrisome, Reddit’s leadership was apparently talking about removing moderators from the subreddits they worked on and replacing them with others who would “tow the line”, so to speak.

eShopperReviews was and is a labor of love for me, and the very idea that the platform it was hosted on might someday try to oust me from it and put a puppet of theirs in my place… well, it made it clear to me that I needed to move everything somewhere else. Granted, I’m under no delusions of grandeur here – eShopperReviews was most likely so small that it would fall under the radar of anyone in power who might care about such things, but the principle was still the same for me.

While figuring out what to do, I continued writing reviews and posting them to the Patreon page, which I viewed as a lifeboat of sorts, but never as a long-term solution – Patreon simply isn’t well-suited to this sort of content. In the long-term, a number of possible alternatives were considered, but soon enough it was decided that simply bringing my content to a website (created in WordPress) would be the best fit.

It has taken months to bring all my old writing brought over, get it properly formatted and get all the links re-worked, and to get everything looking in a way I felt satisfied with, but after all that, eShopperReviews.com is finally ready to be introduced to the world!

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So… What Exactly Is eShopperReviews?

When I started eShopperReviews, it was inspired by the fact that the Nintendo Switch has a wealth of great games on the eShop, but the eShop itself is poorly-organized and doesn’t have any sort of user rating system. Apart from major releases, there’s just no way to sort out the hidden gems from the shovelware trash. There were some genuinely great games that no one was paying attention to because of this, which I strongly felt was really sad, and I wanted to do something about it.

Eventually, I started reviewing major releases in addition to smaller indie games, both to share my opinions on them and also to give readers an idea of where I stand on games they’ve played so they can better judge how my opinions compare to their own.

When Nintendo announced they were shutting down the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShops, I expanded the focus of eShopperReviews to include those platforms as well, specifically focusing on games that had not yet been ported to Nintendo Switch. And I anticipate that there’s a good chance I’ll be reviewing games on Nintendo’s next platform as well – hopefully it will feature backwards-compatibility to allow players to smoothly transition from the Nintendo Switch to the next platform, and I also expect that it will continue Nintendo’s tradition of having a poorly-organized online storefront with poorly-managed (or a complete lack of) user reviews.

It is for this reason that Nintendo has become the focus of eShopperReviews, and not because of some bias in favor of Nintendo or against Sony and Microsoft. For the record, The Last of Us is one of my favorite games of all-time, I’ve spent thousands of hours playing various Xbox consoles, not to mention Sega consoles, PC, mobile phone games… if it’s a good game, I wanna’ play it!

Because of this focus, and because I’m not a well-funded subsidiary of a media conglomerate, eShopperReviews has always approached game reviews differently from other game review websites.

First, the games that are reviewed here aren’t always new releases. Yes, sometimes I will write reviews for new or recent releases, but sometimes I’ll write reviews for games that are months or even years old! As I see it, what does it matter how new or old the game is if you haven’t played it yet? Also, since I’m doing this out of pocket, I often have to wait for good game sales before I buy a game.

Second, I usually do not complete the games I review before I review them. Instead, I play a game until I believe I have gotten a good feel for what the game plays like, what its good and bad qualities are, and overall what it has to offer. Look at it this way – there are some games that you have a pretty good idea within minutes of starting the game what that game will be like from start to finish, while other games will clearly be gradually unfolding major new elements hours into the game.

I am well aware that this is a practice that many may disagree with. If you want someone to tell you that the ending to a game was disappointing, or that a game improves after 40 hours, that reviewer is usually not going to be me. However, in my opinion, if a great game has a terrible ending, the bad ending doesn’t make the parts of the game you loved any worse. And on the other hand, if a game is terrible, but it gets better after 40 hours… to me, that’s a terrible game, and I wouldn’t ask anyone to slog through 40 hours of it just to get to the good stuff.

If you disagree with how eShopperReviews does things, there are plenty of other game review websites that do things differently than we do. And that’s not to say “it’s my way or the highway”, but rather, you should feel free to find a review website that reflects your own tastes and sensibilities. The more you feel “in sync” with the reviews you read, the more you should be able to rely on those opinions to determine how you will feel about those games when you play them!

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What Do I Get Out Of This?

Why do I continue to post these game reviews? What’s the point?

Honestly, I still want to express my thoughts and opinions on these various games, to spread the word about great games worth playing, and also warn players about games to avoid.

If you’re wondering about who pays for all this… well, I do, mostly. I do receive some funding from the kind donations of patrons on our Patreon page (and please, if you want to help us out, we really appreciate it!), but as of right now the amount made through Patreon is small compared to the cost of the games and the cost to keep the website running.

I do not answer to anyone else, save for perhaps you the reader. I don’t take orders from anyone else. eShopperReviews is not affiliated with Nintendo or any other game company. In the sake of full disclosure, we are on occasion provided review codes for games – on those occasions, this fact is mentioned near the top of the review for the game, and we make it a point to warn game companies that this will not influence the review we give the game.

Also, I should note that currently one of our Patreon patrons is Exlene, who produces game controllers, a few of which we have previously reviewed. However, their donation came after the reviews were written, and had no influence on those reviews.

When we moved to eShopperReviews.com, I made the choice to make this website ad-free. Unlike the overwhelming majority of other game review websites, I felt it was important to make a website where you didn’t have to look past flashy ads or frustrating splash pages to get to the reviews themselves. It is my hope that eShopperReviews can continue on in this manner, providing readers with helpful game reviews without any of the excess baggage (though again, if you want to support this goal, and also have some say in what games get reviewed, you can do so via our Patreon page, pretty please!).

Anyway, I think that should give you some idea what we’re all about! I hope you find the content on eShopperReviews to be helpful and entertaining!

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