Jason Venter

Hello, and thank you so much for your interest in supporting my efforts to continue building HonestGamers (www.honestgamers.com) into the greatest video game community online. Numerous content creators are vying for your attention here on Patreon, and many competing sites cover video games, so I'm happy to explain why HonestGamers deserves your attention in particular!

HonestGamers in a Nutshell

HonestGamers is one of the oldest independent video game sites still operating today. It began as a one-page Geocities site in late 1998, operated by just myself, and with support from gifted volunteers has grown to offer nearly 50,000 game records, more than 10,000 reviews, dozens of in-depth guides and more than 50,000 screenshots. Each month, we reach thousands of readers around the world with our delightfully unpredictable coverage for a wide variety of games, including retro, indie and mainstream video games.

The Cost of Doing Business

As a publisher of completely free content, we don't actually do business at HonestGamers. There's no subscription fee if you want to view every last bit of our content. We run ads, but only a few at a time and we don't require you to whitelist us in AdBlocker. We don't want anything getting in the way of the content we're so proud to host, but that means our revenue is just plain wretched. I spend $80/month to keep the site online, and the site's monthly revenue typically covers no more than 10% of that cost. I can't pay myself for the several dozen hours of labor I pour into the site each week, nor can I compensate volunteer contributors except by providing review keys, experience and exposure. Frankly, that's not enough.

What Will More Financial Support Make Possible?

With a significant bump in financial support, I can finally cover site hosting fees and pay myself a modest sum to work on the site full-time. $2500/month will take care of that. Anything I generate beyond that will go directly to contributors.

What New Content Would Come to the Site?

I can't offer specific numbers, unfortunately. A lot of the ongoing work I perform takes place behind the scenes and involves me adding or improving game profiles so the site can serve as a high-quality source for information about all sorts of games, even if we haven't had the chance to write about them ourselves. Around that, I generally work on game reviews and strategy content. I can do more of all of that once I'm able to forget about holding down a day job. As funding increases and I can pay other contributors to join in the effort, that will mean more of whatever performs best on the site: reviews and guides. In short, you'll see even more of the same. Maybe even a lot more.

The Closing Spiel

If you aren't already familiar with HonestGamers, please take a look around the site right now (it'll open in a new tab so you don't lose this page). Really dig deep. On the top navigation bar, click "Reviews" to browse our thousands of reviews, or "Guides" to pore over the handful of quality guides already available. Enter the name of a favorite game in the Search box and see what comes up, or scroll down the main page and see what screenshot assets have been added most recently. There's a sea of quality content, just waiting for you to dive in and enjoy it. Your can add to all of that, with your Patreon pledge today. Help make the site a more exhaustive resource, one capable of covering in greater detail an even wider variety of games old and new, mainstream and obscure. Every little bit helps. Thank you so much!

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I hope I've addressed any questions or concerns you may have, but I've kept this page brief for a reason. If you have questions I haven't answered, you can reach me here on Patreon, or by email at jason AT honestgamers DOT com. Thanks again for your generous support!