About
Last Updated: 26 April 2020, 7:41 pm GMT-7 (San Francisco Time)
First off, a huge thanks from the entire team at The Video Game Journal for visiting us. Each view contributes a lot to the consistency of our content, its quality, and helps us stay motivated to continue producing the best video game content possible. Here’s everything you need to know about us.
Launched in April 2020
The Video Game Journal was launched in April 2020, during the horrific times of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the one-month-long lockdown period, a team of journalists from across the globe, with a shared passion for video games, came together to establish the company. The team has since been producing quality content, including but not limited to investigative reports and analysis, constructive criticism, breaking news that matters, reviews, and long-form features.
The Drive
What drove these respected journalists to form The Video Game Journal was the compulsion to produce rich and high-quality video game content while respecting the traditional journalism ethics and practices.
Original Content
The primary focus of every writer at The Video Game Journal is to create, produce and report original content. The production of original content is not easy and it requires serious determination and commitment. Every time you visit us, we want you to leave with some knowledge, information or at the least, a fun fact that stays with you for the day. That’s our goal at the moment.
Credibility
Before publishing, our stories are fact-checked multiple times, firstly by the author, then by an executive editor and finally by the entire team involved with facts, sources, credibility, and correctness. When a writer uses inputs from sources who request anonymity, the writer shares their sources’ details only with an executive editor. The latter then runs a background check, to ensure the source(s) are of appropriate authority to speak on the issues and that their input is free of bias and personal agenda. The executive editor then verifies the information provided to be factual and honorable (even with their source(s) if required). If and only if everything is free of error, the writer is allowed to continue with the story. Hence, it is our first priority to serve you only the most trustworthy, credible, and reliable content.
Sources
Each writer at The Video Game Journal has their source(s), be it a person, a team, or an organization. These source(s) are mentioned whenever possible. But due to the nature of our investigative reports and analysis, most source(s) request anonymity to protect their occupations as most of the time, they aren’t allowed to speak about the issues discussed. In every story with input from anonymous sources, we declare their requests for anonymity and how and why we’ve provided them with it. As mentioned in the Credibility section, each source is rightfully checked and verified before their inputs are added in our stories.
Sponsorships
From time to time, The Video Game Journal publishes sponsored stories, some of which are related to gambling or/and casino. These stories serve the sole purpose of keeping the company running. Advertisement revenue isn’t enough and hence, we have to rely on sponsored stories. Sometimes the stories are marked as Sponsored Article, however, many of our clients request us not to use the term sponsored as it usually discourages readers from reading further. We, however, proofread and heavily edit these sponsored articles to maintain our quality standards so that our readers still find value in them. If you can trust us, it’s our promise even the sponsored stories will match the quality of our ones, if not more.
It is to be noted that sponsored articles favoring certain products/services are always marked as such. There’s no exception to that. We, however, publish a lot of articles that include backlinks, as requested by our clients. Since these articles are purely content-based and don’t favor/advertise/promote any service or product, we don’t mark them as sponsored.
If you like what we do and want us not to rely on sponsored stories, feel free to join us on Patreon (click here). Once we reach the goal of $5,000 a month, we’ll stray away from sponsored stories once and for all. And that’s our firm promise.
Salaries & Wages
All our staff members which include writers, designers, social media managers, webmasters, reporters, video editors, and content researchers, receive due salaries for their work. Freelancers are paid their appropriate hourly rates as well. We believe everyone who contributes to the success of the company must be paid for their services, and hence, we don’t ask anyone for voluntary tasks. Sometimes readers and guests tend to submit stories, tips, and content ideas voluntarily. As a token of appreciation and gratitude, we gift them free games/goodies whenever possible.
Events & Travel
The Video Game Journal rarely partners with events and their organizing teams. This is to ensure we don’t become a PR agency for these organizations, spewing out their requested content and at their preferable timings. We believe we should always have the freedom to write freely, criticize when needed, and report on details the companies refuse to discuss. Hence, we try to stay away from event partnerships. If there’s an exception, we mention our affiliation with the event organizers right at the beginning of each story.
Occasionally, The Video Game Journal accepts paid travel offers from PR companies to attend mostly but not limited to press events and product launches. Whenever there’s a monetary transaction involved, it’s mentioned at the beginning of each story.
Review Policy
For every game/product we review, we mention whether the product was sent to us or we purchased it ourselves. So, does accepting early review copies from companies make our coverage biased? No. Generally, companies don’t ask for fair coverage in return. If there are exceptions, however, we deny their product(s) once and for all, limiting our relationships with such companies.
Read our Review Policy in detail by clicking here.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I join The Video Game Journal?
Membership
If you want to be a member of the network, just log in using your Facebook/Google account and you’re all set! We’ll be sending you newsletters and updates frequently. If not, you could just follow us on our socials. That makes you a part of the community as well.
Facebook — Click Here
Twitter — Click Here
Instagram — Click Here
Jobs
For jobs, mail us your resume and previous work samples to pr@vgj.gg
How do I send sponsorship requests?
How do I win free games/goodies?
It’s fairly simple. Just log in using your Facebook/Google account and start commenting on our articles. Every week, we’ll choose one lucky commenter who’d take away a free game/other rewards.
How to reach the editorial team?
For more information on The Video Game Journal, talk to us over at pr@vgj.gg.
With respect and love,
The Video Game Journal Team
