What Good Looks Like
Hypes don’t catch me anymore. When everyone’s losing their minds over a new band at some sweaty basement show, I’m at the bar writing "it’s all been done" on a wet napkin and drinking until I can tolerate the room. But a new website—a genuinely ambitious, properly designed, we-mean-it web project—and my heart does something embarrassing.
What The Verge managed is still remarkable to me. They launched and within months made sites that had existed for a decade look like they were running on nostalgia and prayers. Good writing, actual opinions, an aesthetic that felt considered rather than assembled—and a command of social media that their competitors were still reading about in think-pieces. They raised the bar for what internet publishing could be, and in doing so made most of what existed before look like it was built by committee in 2004.
So when they announced a games site, I got embarrassingly invested. I visited the preview page every day to watch it take shape, the way you check on something you already know you’re going to love.
Polygon launched today, led by Chris Grant, and it looks like nothing else in games media. Not like Kotaku, not like IGN, not like Destructoid—like something from a parallel timeline where people who make games sites actually care about design. It trusts the reader to accept something unfamiliar without demanding everything look the way it looked in 1998. Someone in the comments is already asking why the links aren’t blue.
They made trailers for the launch. Cinematic trailers, that Silicon Valley documentary register—earnest people, warm lighting, mission statements delivered like they mean them. Some critics found it insufferable. I thought it was completely right, because that’s exactly how I feel about building things on the internet when I’m willing to be honest about it. The ambition is the point.
The early work—their Dishonored review in particular—convinces without being perfect. There’s room to grow, and they know it. But anyone launching a new games site from here on will have to explain how they’re different from this one. That’s a real thing to have done on your first day.