Screenshot Quarterly
Games, framed
Plain terms for a publication that prints percentages and opinions and sells nothing at all.
Screenshot Quarterly
Games, framed
Plain terms for a publication that prints percentages and opinions and sells nothing at all.
Reading this site is unconditional and requires nothing from you. What follows describes what the material is, how far it can be relied upon, and what may be done with it.
Kept ratios, frame counts, focal-length breakdowns and concentration percentages all come from a log kept during play and reviewed exactly seven days later. They describe what one reviewer took and kept. They are not benchmarks and they are not reproducible in the way a technical measurement would be.
The criteria page sets out every procedure, including the two known distortions — experimentation inflating the denominator, and early-hours learning inflating it further. Anybody quoting a ratio should read that page first, because the number means something narrower than it appears to.
Tools out of ten is awarded against a fixed list of twelve controls with two weighted double, and is close to mechanical. World out of ten is a judgement about what a world supplies photographically, is awarded after the log is known, and is therefore arguable and slightly circular. Both facts are stated on the criteria page.
Neither score is a score for the game. Nothing here rates whether a game is good, and a game can be excellent with a four for world or poor with a nine.
Judgements in the reviews — that a lighting model is unfinished, that a camera is the best of the year, that a slider is nominal — are the reviewer's views, argued from the log. They are stated firmly because hedged criticism is useless, not because they are beyond dispute.
Where a general claim is made, both frames pieces name the specific evidence that would overturn it, and one of them has already been narrowed on exactly that basis.
Nothing here tells you whether to buy anything. A high kept ratio is not a purchase recommendation and a low one is not a warning; several games with poor figures here are excellent games and the reviews say so.
Purchasing decisions, refunds, hardware choices and anything else you do after reading these pages are entirely your own. This publication has no relationship with any storefront, publisher or studio.
Game titles, studio names and trade marks appear for identification, review and criticism only, and belong to their respective owners. Their appearance implies no endorsement, affiliation or sponsorship in either direction.
No game screenshots appear on this site. Every image published here is original artwork produced for the publication and depicts no real product; the frames discussed in the reviews are described in words rather than reproduced.
Short quotations for review, criticism, commentary or discussion are welcome without asking, provided the source is named and any figure quoted keeps the qualification it carries in the original. A kept ratio lifted away from its method is misleading, and that is the only misuse this publication actively minds.
Reproducing a review in full, translating one, or republishing the artwork elsewhere is not permitted. Linking to any page is always welcome and needs no permission.
Figures are transcribed by hand from a frame log and some will be wrong. Where an error is found, the figure is struck through with its replacement and the date beside it, so anybody who quoted the earlier version can see what changed.
Findings are handled differently. When a conclusion proves unsupported the previous position remains on the page with the reasoning that overturned it, because the reversal is usually more informative than the conclusion was.
These are static files and may be moved, rewritten, reorganised or withdrawn at any time without notice. No page is guaranteed to remain at its present address and nothing here should be treated as a permanent archive.
Everything on this site is provided as it is, without warranty of any kind. To the extent permitted by law, nobody connected with this publication is liable for any loss arising from use of it, including reliance on any figure, score or judgement published here.