From Game Reviews to Game Creation
This is not a new site.
It’s a continuation of something that started years ago.
Where It Actually Began
Before any of this—before reviews, before publishers, before any kind of reach—I was working nights in a toilet seat factory.
Long shifts. Quiet hours. A lot of time to think.
Somewhere in that, the idea for a games website started to form. Not just reviewing games, but understanding them. Breaking them down into what actually makes them work.
The name came first.
Originally, it was just going to be The Game Ingredients—singular.
But it didn’t feel right.
It became The Games Ingredients instead.
And that stuck.
At work, there was a lad called Mick. Big into Yu-Gi-Oh!, always writing something, always full of ideas—at the time he was working on a book called The Runic.
I’d been down that road myself years earlier. I’d written a book, Artika: War of Innocence, but it never really found its footing. The publishing house behind it eventually folded, and it just… stopped there.
We were both trying to build something in our own way.
One night we got talking, and he mentioned a mate of his—Dan—who was studying game design and might be able to help.
That was the first real step.
An idea turned into a connection.
I bought some hosting.
Started putting pages together.
And slowly, TGI became real.
Building Something From Nothing
It wasn’t polished.
It wasn’t backed by anything.
But it was something.
Reviews started going up. Articles followed. And over time, it became more than just posting opinions—it became about understanding games properly. Systems, mechanics, why something worked and something else didn’t.
Then things started to shift.
TGI began connecting with companies like Activision, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. We were getting access, covering games, attending events.
We ran competitions with Codemasters, including Operation Flashpoint: Red River.
We hosted giveaways with Guerrilla Games for Killzone 3.
For something that started on night shifts in a factory, that meant a lot.
We’d built something real.
Where It Went Wrong
But it didn’t last.
There wasn’t a big moment where it all collapsed. It was slower than that.
Things started to drift.
Momentum dropped.
The site became harder to maintain.
And the truth is—I drifted.
Not the team. Me.
As the founder, I lost focus. I didn’t lead it the way it needed to be led. People had put time, effort, and belief into TGI, and I didn’t hold it together the way I should have.
That’s on me.
And when I drifted, everything else followed.
Eventually, the site closed.
Trying to Bring It Back
Years later, I came back to it.
I tried to rebuild it. Put the foundations back in place. Start again.
On paper, it all made sense.
But it didn’t feel right.
The structure was there.
The name was still there.
But the magic had gone.And you can’t fake that.
Walking Away
So I stepped away again.
Not because I’d failed—but because I knew forcing it wouldn’t bring it back.
Some things don’t need rebuilding.
They need rethinking.
The Reset
Then life stepped in and made the decision clearer.
Redundancy. A full reset.
No routine, no safety net—just time and one question:
What now?
What TGI Already Was
Looking back properly, TGI had already done what it set out to do.
It had:
- Grown from nothing into something real built a name worked with publishers and studios created opportunities most independent sites never get.
In its own way, it had already climbed its mountain.
There was nothing left to prove in reviewing.
A Different Direction
So instead of trying to rebuild what had already been…
I decided to build something new.
Not another review site.
Not chasing the same space again.
Something different.
Creating Instead of Reviewing
After years of breaking games down—understanding mechanics, systems, design decisions—the next step became obvious.
Build the games.
Take everything learned from reviewing, from analysing, from questioning…
…and turn it into something real.
Something playable.
Something that stands on its own.
And this time—
let someone else review it.
TGI, Now
This version of The Games Ingredients is different.
It’s not about reviewing from the outside anymore.
It’s about creating from the inside:
- Game design
- Development experiments
- Systems and mechanics
- Ideas becoming playable
It’s still about understanding games.
Just from the other side.
From Rubber Keys to New Worlds
This isn’t a new site.
It just looks like one.