Editorial Policy

We provide three kinds of information about the games we sell. You should think of these as "sales stuff," "professional content," and "user content."

What's the difference?

Sales Stuff

Sales stuff is stuff we write to try to get you to buy things. It's no different from ad copy, or what you read on the back of a paperback you're considering in the store. We accentuate the positive and avoid the negative. That being said, we don't ever flat-out lie--and anyway, we're not all that interested in selling you a game you won't like. If we do that, we're a lot less likely to sell you another game.

In general, what we try to do in "sales stuff" is give you a sense of what's good about the game, and what you might like about it. But we don't want to mislead you. Not every game is for every person. If you're a serious fan of retro "shmups," we don't really want to sell you a game on the Battle of the Bulge that's so complicated you really need to spend a couple of hours reading the manual first. You're not going to be happy, and neither will we, when we lose you as a customer. So yes, we accentuate the positive, but we also try to steer you toward games that you will like.

One other point about sales stuff, by the way.... If you say something like "The greatest game since Chess! Will Wright, you might as well commit seppuku now!" about every game you offer, well, um, you lose a certain degree of credibility. You have to save that for stuff that is indeed extremely cool. So even though "sales stuff" is, well, suspect by nature, you can still probably get some sense of a game's quality from it.

Professional Content

We run reviews, previews, stategy articles, and the like about many of the games we offer. If you see something like "Our Review," it's not "sales stuff," but "professional content."

What's the difference? It's written either by a freelancer or by our editorial staff, and at least in theory, they have complete editorial freedom to write what they want. Our marketing staff winces when they write something negative, but they don't protest--well, unless maybe a writer has gone completely off the deep end.

Of course, you might say, "But you're trying to sell me stuff, and this material is produced by you, so why should I trust it?"

And you are absolutely right to say so. But we want to make a couple of points:

1. Why would you think, say, PC Gamer or Gamespot is any more trustworthy? They aren't selling games, sure--but they are selling advertising. To game publishers. If they write something negative, you can be sure that the publishers' publicists are on the phone whining at them--and in extreme cases, yanking ads from the next issue. And the zines and web sites like exclusives and access to publishers, too--that helps drive sales and traffic--so it's in their interest to suck up and pander to the publishers.

2. Of course, both the magazines, and the major web sites--and Manifesto, for that matter--have policies that, at least in principle, offer their editors independence from these pressures. In this regard, we'd argue, we're no worse--although probably no better--than other review sources.

Why are we offering professional content at all? For one reason, mainly: the game magazines and big game review sites do a pretty poor job of covering the kinds of games we offer. They're not big-budget titles backed with a lot of advertising dollars, and so they get short shrift. We want you to be able to make an informed decision about our games, and we view this kind of professional content as important to that goal.

When we commission an article from a writer, we do try to match the writer to the material. For example, we would not assign a review of a graphic adventure to someone who hates graphic adventures as a genre; instead, we would try to find a writer who likes graphic adventures, knows a lot about them, and is better positioned to make an informed judgement about the qualities of the game under discussion. In a sense this may bias the article, since we are inherently hiring someone inclined to like at least the type of game he's addressing--but we believe this is more likely to result in insightful and informative work.

Right of Reply

Our policy is not to modify or alter professional content except in cases of demonstrable mistatements of fact. We do, however, offer a right of reply to developers or publishers who feel that a review or other professional material portrays their game in an inaccurate light. Contact our EVP of content and community, Johnny Wilson (johnny +at+ manifestogames +dot+ com) to request your right of reply. Please keep your reply to less than 1500 words. It will be directly appended to the original review (or other material), so that readers will encounter your material immediately following.

User Content

We allow users to comment on almost everything on the site, with comments accessible at the end of articles and such. This is in addition to users' ability to post to our forums, or to their own blogs. In addition, we expect to have a player ranking system that lets users rate games on a scale of 1 to 10. We like to avoid editing user content whenever feasible, but do see our posting guidlines below. In general, you can assume that comments or posts contributed by users are their genuine opinion, and as such possibly more trustworthy than our sales stuff or professional content--but of course, peoples' tastes vary a lot, and one person's bete noire may be another person's shizzle.

Posting Guidelines

We retain the right, but not the obligation, to edit or delete any or all comments or posts. We will not tolerate posts the are commercial in nature (i.e., offering goods or services), or that involve the violation of the intellectual property rights or privacy of others, or that are libelous or otherwise illegal. If you encounter a post that you feel violates these rules, please contact us at community +at+ manifestogames +dot+ com.

We do not appreciate writing that is sexual in nature, except perhaps in discussion of games that contain sexual content, and in any event, such writing should be restricted to pages or areas that are accessible only to adult members of the service; if they appear elsewhere they will be deleted, and even in adult areas, we may delete such material if we deem it inappropriate.

We ask that you remain on topic, and may delete posts that we view as irrelevant to a particular area of the service or forum topic, or possibly open a new forum topic and move the post there.

We allow only signed-on members of the service to post; you may sign up for the service for the purpose of posting without having to give us your credit card number or other billing information (this is required only to purchase games).

We ask you please to remember that the text-only nature of online discussion makes it easy for people to misinterpret the intent of others, and in all online discussion, 'flame wars' and ill feelings are frequent. Please therefore try to be aware of the feelings of others, and to be as clear and as courteous as possible. In general, avoid attacking others; attack their ideas, if you must, but be clear of the distinction. We retain the right but not the obligation to edit or delete posts that we feel offensive or that we feel serve no purpose other than to raise the temperature of a debate. Our intent is to err on the side of permitting open discussion, if anything, but we do also believe in civility and moderation.

We retain the right to ban individual users, either for a period of time or forever, for repeated and consistent violation of these guidelines.

Player Ratings: One Person, One Vote

In general, open voting or rating systems online are frequently subject to abuse. We wish to make our game ratings system useful and reasonably unbiased. As a result, only signed-on members of the service are permitted to rate games, and we do track who has rated what game. If you rate a game you rated previously, this over-writes your previous rating, rather than becoming another datum; consequently, there is no point in attempting to game the system by rating a particular game repeatedly.

Of course, it is possible to establish multiple IDs on the service, and vote with each of them; this is more difficult and time consuming, however, so we assume the difficulty will minimize the frequency of this abuse. We do view it as abuse, and if we detect this, we retain the right to terminate accounts, remove votes by particular IDs from the ratings calculation, ban people from voting, ban people from the service either temporarily or permanently, or take whatever steps we deem useful or necessary to hinder or end such abuse.