TechRaptor founder, Rutledge Daugette, unveils CriticDB as a gaming platform hosting reviews from critics and users, XP System and Badge to collect, and many more.
As a competitor to OpenCritic and Metacritic, TechRaptors founder and former member of OpenCritic, Rutledge Daugette, will be launching a new gaming platform, CriticDB, boasting many features from displaying reviews from critics and users, XP System and badges, Game of the Day and Collection, Paid PR accounts, and many more. CriticDB will be launching on January 30th with more than 75 outlet reviews being aggregated, using feedback to fine-tune and improve the platform, with over 20,000 reviews in their database across 2,000 game pages.
CriticDB’s main objective is to collect previews and reviews from the web to help connect gamers to new games and provide a way for outlets and PR teams to connect more easily. To set itself apart from competitors, the platform is building tools for the industry, focusing on game discoverability. This includes better outlet and author functionality, tools to help PR teams and outlets connect, and a strong community-driven approach with game suggestions and new feature requests.
One of the biggest features highlighted is its goal to enhance discoverability. The first enhancement is game discovery, which includes a similar game recommendation on every game page, the ability for the community to add missing games and recommendations, and a “Game of the Day” on the homepage curated by the CriticDB team. The second enhancement is outlet discovery, which highlights outlets on social media and homepages, uses outlet tags for discoverability, and helps PR teams connect games to outlets and authors through a PR account.
But to CriticDB, it isn’t only about review but also preview as a way to showcase more critique. With the ability for outlets to showcase their preview, they will only have one preview per outlet per game, can manually add the links to preferred preview, and the preview will be showcased above the review before a game is released.
As a way to improve working with Authors and Outlets compared to other competitors, they aim to be simplified and transparent with the application process, simplify the author verification, and easy management for reviews, previews, and many more. Not to mention, there will be a 50% discount on ad-free/pro subscriptions for all verified authors and editors.
For the users of CriticDB, they will be abundant of features at their disposal whether they are free or paid users. The features included are:
- Game collection – showing off games you completed or backlogs like a badge of honour.
- Wishlist and favourite games
- Write user reviews (paid-only features)
- Add missing games & recommendations to similar titles
- Authors and editors have access to the same features via their Author accounts.
To combat the negative of user reviews, the feature will only be limited to paid-only members. Doing so, will not include any aggregate scoring to reduce review bombing, reduce bots, and all the reviews will need to be approved by the CDB team and deny any that are inflammatory or “not helpful”
CriticDB will also help PR teams connect with outlets much more easily. Outlets will have the option to share news and reviews with EIC contacts for inclusion, specify their country of headquarters for regional requests, list platforms reviewed and covered, and, in the future, provide an author mock review. For PR teams, developers and agencies, they will be able to view outlets’ contact information through PR accounts and, in the future, “claim” games to note the best contact and create an agency page to list every game their agency manages.
After the launch of CriticDB, the team hope to follow a roadmap focusing on backend data and API to help PR and developers utilize the data anonymously. Included with the roadmap for 2025 are:
- Outlet Sorting (Avg score, Genre, and Platform)
- Author Sorting (Avg Score, Genre, and Platform)
- Favourite and Wishlist Data (only counts and trends)
- Collection-based data
- API access (paid-only)
Expanding on the PR account, there will be features released as part of version 1.1 for $20/mo with an Agency Discount. All the features listed beforehand will be free for 1.0, while 1.1 will have a backend dashboard to view stats and data reporting, backend PR profile, and access to author information but only if they opted in.
For the roadmap beyond version 1.1 which will be released in Q1 2025, 1.2 will focus on a Custom List for Pro Users and allow outlets to link their award articles to games in Q1/Q2, and based on community feedback/requests in 1.4 for Q2/Q3 2025.
That’s about everything that users of CriticDB can expect. For Outlets that wish to add their reviews and news to the website, they can reach the website team for approval. Once accepted, Outlets can verify their author and add additional reviews and previews to the platform, alongside the awards and other content being added as a feature in the future.
If interested in joining the new gaming platform for centralized reviews and news, and to keep track of the games you have or need to complete, be sure to visit the CriticDB website that launches on January 30, 2025.
