Welcome to Ironside Raven & Riot: A New Home for an Old Passion

Ironside Raven & Riot may be a new name, but blogging isn’t new territory for us.

Long before IR&R existed, we were writing, creating, sharing stories, building audiences, and learning what makes people stop scrolling long enough to actually connect with something. Over the years, blogging has taken different forms and covered different chapters of life, but one thing has remained constant: we’ve always believed the best content has a real person behind it.

Now, we’re bringing that experience somewhere we’ve wanted to take it for a long time.

Gaming.

So, What Is Ironside Raven & Riot?

IR&R is an independent gaming media and creator brand built around something pretty simple: we fucking love games.

Not just playing them.

We love the anticipation before a release. The midnight sessions that accidentally become sunrise. The characters that somehow become emotionally important to us. The worlds we disappear into when the real one has demanded enough for the day. The incredible indie game you stumble across and immediately start telling everyone about.

And yes, we even love the spectacularly broken moments that leave you staring at the screen wondering what the hell just happened.

That’s gaming.

And that’s what we want to talk about.

Ironside Raven & Riot will cover gameplay, reviews, first impressions, new and upcoming releases, gaming news, indie titles, events, and creator opportunities.

But we're not interested in becoming another copy-and-paste gaming news feed.

There are plenty of places to find a release date or read patch notes.

We want to talk about the experience.

Blogging, Just With More Controllers

Our history with blogging taught us something important: people can tell when you're talking at them instead of talking with them.

That lesson is coming with us to IR&R.

When we review something, we're going to tell you what we genuinely thought about it. If we love a game, you're probably going to know exactly why. If something drives us absolutely insane, you'll probably hear about that too.

Receiving a review code, early access, invitation, or creator opportunity will never purchase an opinion.

That's not interesting content, and it's definitely not us.

We want developers and publishers to know they're getting an authentic perspective, and we want our community to know that when IR&R recommends something, we actually mean it.

Big Games, Little Studios & Everything Between

We absolutely want to talk about the releases everyone already has circled on their calendars.

But IR&R isn't only interested in the biggest names in gaming.

Some of the coolest ideas in this industry come from small studios and independent developers taking enormous creative swings. We want room for those games here too.

If something catches our attention, makes us curious, tells an incredible story, creates absolute chaos, or gives us that holy shit, you need to play this feeling—we want to talk about it.

AAA or indie doesn't matter.

Good gaming is good gaming.

We're Building More Than a Blog

This website is home base, but IR&R isn't meant to exist on one webpage.

We're building across social platforms, gaming communities, video content, gameplay, events, and wherever this thing takes us next.

Most importantly, we're building a community.

A place where gamers can discover something new, disagree about reviews, share recommendations, celebrate releases, laugh at ridiculous gameplay moments, and occasionally enable one another into buying yet another game we'll swear we're going to play after finishing the other 47 sitting in our backlog.

You know.

Responsible adult behavior.

Welcome to the Riot

We're at the beginning.

The website is going up. The socials are coming alive. The community is being built. The first pieces of content are hitting the internet.

And honestly?

That's one of the coolest parts.

Someday there will be years of IR&R posts sitting behind this one. Reviews, games, events, developers, ridiculous moments, unexpected opportunities, and stories we don't even know we're going to have yet.

But this is where it started.

So whether you're a gamer looking for your next obsession, an indie developer hoping someone notices what you've created, a publisher or PR team looking for creators, or you simply stumbled into our little corner of the gaming world:

Welcome to Ironside Raven & Riot.

Pull up a chair.

Grab a controller.

Just games, community, and a little bit of riot.

— Ironside Raven & Riot 🐦‍⬛🎮💜