What inLobby. is and why it exists

Hi, I’m Carlos, and in this piece I’d like to tell you why you’re reading this.

Video games have been with me my whole life. I’ve been lucky enough to grow up with the industry and watch what it’s turned into. Proof of that is this photo of me, around 2004, when I was already a seasoned player (I think I was playing Pokémon FireRed at the time).

But my parents played before I did: my dad loved strategy games, and I’d ask my mum for help with Spyro on the PlayStation 1. My brother shared the hobby, so consoles kept showing up at home. We pretty much had every platform. As a teenager I wasn’t much of a party person, as you can probably guess: my favourite plan was hanging out to play Halo 3 with my good friend Miguel.

And in summer, when we went away and I couldn’t play, I’d buy video game magazines; they even used to come with demo discs. I still have a few hidden away somewhere (writing this makes me feel old). That habit, playing and reading about games, is the thread of everything that follows.

Why inLobby

I built this for two reasons: (1) I love this world, and (2) it saddens me to see what digital games press has become.

Spend a little time on Google and you’ll see it: ads, pop-ups of every kind, unwanted redirects, invasive subscriptions where you pay with money or with your data. No wonder those sites are slow: the article is drowning under the money infrastructure behind it.

Then there’s the clickbait: a headline that leaves honey on your lips and a body that’s 95% fluff. You click, they drop cookies on you, you swallow six ads and a pop-up… and by the time you reach the answer, you’re disappointed. Because the product was you, not the news.

With inLobby I’m trying to push the other way. I’m not saying you shouldn’t make money from building and running a site. I’m not even saying advertising itself makes no sense: that would be hypocritical of me; I’d like visibility on the internet too. What I reject is turning reading into a minefield: ad networks, pop-ups and trackers at the cost of your patience (and your data).

There are other ways to sustain this, and we’ll explore them: letting people chip in or unlock something if they want, without making things worse for anyone who doesn’t. And if a brand or studio ever wants to promote here, I’d rather do it with clear, careful pieces (an article or a space clearly marked as promotion), not with banners that follow you around the web. You’ll always know what’s editorial and what’s sponsored.

What we promise

We’re not perfect, and we’ll have plenty to improve over the years. For now, the compass looks like this:

• Being able to read without hunting for an atom-sized X in the corner of an ad.
• Finding what you need (and, if it doesn’t exist, knowing that) so you don’t waste time.
• No profiling. Your data is yours; I just want to share this hobby. I’m glad when people read and share what I write. That’s it.
• If there’s a promotion, it should be obvious and made with the same care as everything else: attractive, honestly labelled, no tricks.

We also don’t publish just to publish:

• News when there’s something important and solid worth reporting.
• Opinion when something is worth discussing, not because the calendar needs filling.
• Buying guides when there’s a real decision on the table.

If there’s nothing solid to say, we’d rather stay quiet than invent noise. We write the way we talk: straight, no fluff. If something isn’t clear or we don’t know, we say so.

On privacy: we use aggregated metrics to see what’s being read and how the site performs, with no advertising cookies. That’s why no privacy wall jumps out when you arrive: we don’t store your data or sell it. If you click a YouTube video or a tweet, third-party cookies come in and that’s out of our hands; but we want you to decide when. Details in Privacy.

If you’re here

Thanks for reading to the end. This project only makes sense if someone reads it with care.

Feel free to write to us at contact, and if you want, join the newsletter to hear about what’s new each week.

The short version of this story is on About us.