The Message of Niche Gamer

Hey guys, in case you don't know me or what I do, I'm the editor in chief and founder of Niche Gamer. Ever since I started the site late last June, I've had a lot of people ask me what the website is about exactly, or rather what kind of games we cover.

Coming from this, the very question of what a "niche game" really is comes up as well. I want to attempt to explain this a bit, while also talking about something that pisses me off to no end.

Niche games are generally what I and the staff at Niche Gamer enjoy the most - they can be smaller, indie games by small teams, or they can be larger productions that result in a brand new IP. The range is quite broad when you think about it, as too many people associate "niche games" simply with Japanese or Asian games, as they tend to be harder to get into, to relate to for us culturally as westerners, or possibly even harder to play as sometimes they just don't get translated into English.

So we tend to liken niche games to anything that is not the norm, not widely known, or at least more unique. We won't touch iterated franchises that are well known, but we will touch iterated franchises that continue to be cautiously spoken about amongst the most hardcore of alchemy fans. Sometimes, a big developer will come out with a big game that has a big budget, but if it's a unique and or new experience, we may consider covering it, as even those types of games can get lost in the AAA space.

Niche Gamer exists solely as a bridge between the most hardcore of hardcore gamers and the developers who make the games that they love. This is a website where we passionately write about games that easily bring out the most passionate fans - the obscure games. In comparison, rabid Call of Duty players may seem passionate when you hear their chatter online, but from what I've seen in both our audience as well as in other outlets - fans of niche games tend to be the most dedicated, the most loyal, and the most outspoken sometimes as well.

The message of Niche Gamer is clear - we only cover the games unique enough or obscure enough for us to deem them worthy of your attention. Sometimes this may come into question, but we've been on a pretty good track lately and as always, we want our readers to call us out on something if it comes to it. The last thing me or my staff want is for the message of the site to get clouded, like if we wrote about how much money Grand Theft Auto V made, or if we wrote about how huge the Elder Scrolls Online is.

Everybody else writes about all of the games and to be honest - that space is way too congested and you probably already visit a few of the websites that do that sort of thing. We want to bring you a unique experience, a unique message, and a fun combination of genres, platforms, and developers. We're not just about obscure Japanese or Asian games or hardcore European CRPGs, we write about them both and then some.

So recently I've been seeing other gaming news outlets, that specifically target a certain audience, purposely step outside of their usual coverage to randomly write about something "big" that everyone else is writing about. This angers me a lot, not because of the fact that they're blatantly throwing away what their website is about, but because of the fact that their fans don't bat an eyelash. They keep on commenting, they suck it down and engage in the discussion.

I never want this to happen with Niche Gamer, and I will fully embrace what we stand for, and the kinds of games we represent. We will always be about the scrappy underdog, the bold new IP from that one developer, the consistently underrated franchise from that one B-tier studio, or that tough as nails shmup series that no one seems to rate well/fairly because they get too frustrated and give up on the first difficulty.

Hopefully you guys continue to enjoy what we write about, and hopefully we can continue building a home for these games, and for the people that love them.