New for 2021: Connecting publishers and developers with reviewers

Happy new year!

One of my long-standing goals with Switch Scores has always been to help connect publishers and developers with reviewers. This week sees a big step forward towards that goal, with the introduction of the Games company dashboard.

How it works

Publishers and developers can create a login, and once I give them the necessary access, they can see a list of reviewer contact details. This is provided as a quick list, to remove the need to go and find contact details for each reviewer individually.

Ahead of setting up the dashboard, I have been contacting reviewers to get their consent to be included in the list, and confirm a contact name and email address that games companies should use to get in touch.

What are the benefits?

Firstly, it makes life easier for games companies to contact reviewers. Even if a review site receives lots of review codes, the games company had to seek you out unless they already have a relationship with you.

Secondly, it helps games companies to see which reviewers exist. While Switch Scores doesn't have absolutely every reviewer (and some haven't yet consented to having their details included) we do aim to include as many reviewers of Switch games as we can.

Switch Scores has been running for over 3.5 years, and in that time we've imported over 17,000 reviews. In doing this we can start to see trends. In our database of 4600+ titles, there are roughly 2200 that are unranked due to having fewer than 3 reviews - and in many cases, no reviews at all. Big games get lots of reviews, whereas many games are getting overlooked. It would be a mammoth task to approach the relevant publisher/developer of every unranked game and get them to sign up. Even if everyone joins the site, it would then be another big task to get every game reviewed and ranked (remember it takes 3 reviews for a game to be ranked). So we have a mountain to climb here.

How can you help?

If you're an existing reviewer, we need your consent to provide your contact details to games companies via our restricted-access dashboard. If you've already given it, thank you!

If you're not one of our reviewers but you publish Switch reviews, let's talk! Have a look at our Partners page for details.

If you're a developer or publisher of Switch games, join today and we'll be happy to have you on board. Get in touch via @switchscores on Twitter to be set up.

As we now include quick reviews in our game rankings, members can now help too. Join the site and you can start reviewing games straight away.

Please shout if you have any questions! Thank you for your support!

Special thanks to Mission Ctrl Studios for their support and feedback on what would be useful to include on a dashboard. Check out their game WRITHE, due to be released on 15th January.

Published: 6th Jan 2021 09:23

WRITHE
Infobox
Title WRITHE
Rank 2658/4207
Average rating 6.85
eShop price £7.99
Europe release 15th Jan 2021
Players 1
Developer(s) Mission Ctrl Studios
Publisher(s) Mission Ctrl Studios

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