Who we are
If the name has not given it away yet, we are hooked on games and thus Hooked Gamers. We provide game reviews, opinion articles and news with a strong focus on PC gaming.
We are a volunteer-run outfit (and proudly so) and work on Hooked Gamers for the love of gaming and a passion to share our thoughts with others. Without a payroll but – with – a professional approach, we feel unrestrained in our opinions.
That is not to say that we are unbiased – we don’t believe in unbiased. Game reviewing is a subjective pastime and thus biased by nature. A game that we have been looking forward to for months, hyped up by its publisher to be “god’s gift to gamers” is likely to be judged harsher when the reviewer finds it lacking. And – being as human as you are – we all have developers that we dig and thus favor. You can imagine that taking off the colored glasses before playing their latest game is not always easy to do.
We felt that the best way to deal with subjectivity and bias is to make our scores a “fun score” that reflects how much fun we had playing the game. After all, a game can have many flaws but despite that can still be infinitely more fun than another one that is flawless.
Check out our how we rate page for a better idea of our review philosophies.
History
2003
When Firaxis announced Sid Meier’s Pirates! back in May of 2003, work started on a fan site (remember those?) for the remake of the original classic. Cutlass Isle was born on the 31st of August of that same year but didn't pick up speed until the two weeks before the game was released. Then it exploded. Tens of thousands of visitors found their way to the site and many stayed to form a great community that is still active today.
2005
The success of the site left us yearning for more and we proceeded with building fan sites for Spore, Stronghold 2 and other games. The individual sites were to be spearheaded by a ‘hub’ that would bind the fan sites together. That hub, called Hooked Gamers, launched in 2005 and you are visiting it today, even if it has lost its original function to pick up a whole new one.
Over the years, we realized that game publishers were becoming better and better at servicing their fan base without the help of fan sites. As fan sites lost their prominence within the gaming community, we changed gears and turned Hooked Gamers into an Online Gaming Magazine for core gamers on serious gaming platforms.
2012
Towards the end of 2011, many on our staff had grown tired of playing yet another shooter on the Xbox or Playstation. To us, gaming had become stale and boring and consoles were to blame. Their closed nature and steep onboarding requirements kept innovators away. On the other side of the spectrum, Steam and Kickstarter had lifted PC gaming into a new era. Small developers entered the PC space in droves and they created fun, innovative and surprising games. The PC revival made gaming fun again! In September 2012, we shifted our focus to PC gaming and became the “Frontline of pc gaming”.
Contacting our staff
If you have a PC game for us to review, want to advertise on Hooked Gamers or write for us, then please use the contact form below.
Writers & Contributors
Samuel Corey
Nathan Rowland
Dan Lenois
William Thompson
Lars Grevelink
HG Staff
Johnathan Irwin
Adam Nix
Marko Susimetsä
Howie Howard
Quinn Levandoski
JackCarter
Camrin Santchi
Ingvi Snædal
Guest
Thomas Mikkelsen
Jordan Helsley
Sergio Brinkhuis
Isabella