What is Frame Rated?
Frame Rated is a unique take on a rather common concept. When asked to describe this site, we often begin to speak and are quickly cut off as our audience interjects “Like soandso.com?” It has never been anything like soandso.com. In fact, it might be easier to describe our intentions by first describing what we’re not:
- We are not a review site. You will not find stars, number ranks, ninjas, kittens or any ranking system. We are not interested in reviewing games – we’re interested in letting people decide for themselves. For a lot of people this may sound weird, but think about it. When was the last time you actually read a review and it seriously swayed your purchase decision?
- We do not and will not ever re-post a video created by a publisher or PR firm. The absolute basic principle of Frame Rated is the assurance that these videos are not altered to show the games in a more positive or negative light. What you see is what you get on Frame Rated. The videos you will see on this site are created by the Frame Rated staff. This fundamental assures us, the staff of Frame Rated, that we are not being hoodwinked.
- We will not use pop-up ads, obnoxious ads or any other sort of device to try to trick the user into clicking a link. We are a business and, as a business, we want to make money. The number one goal that we wanted in regards to our presentation is that the site loads quickly, isn’t offensive and looks clean. What we don’t want to do, though, is insult and try to cheat our audience by obfuscating advertisements as part of our content. In fact, if anyone ever sees an ad like that, please email support at framerated dot com immediately with as many details as you have available.
Now, that’s a pretty healthy list of things we promise to not do. So, what does that make us? We’re a group of guys that love video games and want to share that love with others in a unique way – via undoctored game footage. Each video on this site was, at the time of this writing, recorded by either Nik Braese or Jason McMaster and have been presented without edits or cuts to remove load times, glitches or any other undesirable result. Why would we show you this? If you’re not going to like a game, we’d rather you know before you purchase than after. On the other side of that coin is the notion that, after watching a video, you might want to try it out for yourself and discover a game you may not have tried otherwise.
OK, that leaves one question: what’s in it for us? No one would want to pay bandwidth bills, work tons of hours in their free time and do all sorts of gaming leg work for free! Well, no, of course not. As I stated earlier, we are a business and want to succeed, but we don’t believe it has to come at the price of a poor site experience. Our primary concept for income is placing Amazon “buy” buttons associated with each game. We’re hoping that, as people watch our footage, if they decide to purchase a game, they’ll do it through our links. This gives us a small percentage of the game value and helps pay for some of our costs. We will also be selling short ads before videos, but the same non-disruptive rules apply.
Brian Ballinger, – Brian graduated from Miami University in 2005 with a degree in creative writing. Since, he has been working on his writing and graphic design skills with several companies. A long-time gamer, Brian prefers strategy games but loves every genre.
Niklas Braese, – In 2003, Nik graduated with a Bachelors degree in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State University. Two years later he got his Masters degree from MIT. In the professional world, Nik has been involved in several start-ups, as well as having worked as a Supply Chain Management and IT consultant for several years. Nik is responsible for the business side of Frame Rated as well as doing a majority of the coding for the site.
Jason McMaster, Editor in Chief – Jason is the games industry veteran of the crew. Having worked for GameSpy, Gamasutra, Firing Squad, Total PC Gaming, Crispy Gamer and several others, Jason has been getting writing work since early 2003. Before his work as a journalist, however, Jason spent a good deal of time producing corporate videos for the, now bankrupt, Just for Feet Corporation. During this time, Jason learned the skills he uses today to provide high quality video of gameplay and gaming related features.