About Mike & GameKyn

Hi. I'm Mike.

The short version: I've been playing games since a beige console showed up under a Christmas tree in 2001, and I started GameKyn because I got tired of reading gaming coverage that told me nothing useful.

The longer version is below, along with the rules I hold myself to — because a site that runs affiliate links owes you an explanation of how it decides what to recommend.

Why this site exists

Most gaming content falls into one of two buckets. There's press-release journalism — announcements rewritten with a screenshot attached, published in the first ten minutes so it ranks. And there's engagement content — outrage, speculation, and thumbnails with red arrows, optimized for clicks rather than for being right.

Both are fine as businesses. Neither helps you decide whether to spend forty hours and eighty dollars on something.

What I wanted was the thing a friend gives you over a headset: an honest read from someone who actually played it, including the parts that annoyed them. Someone who'll say "you'll bounce off this in an hour" instead of assigning it an 8 and moving on.

That's what GameKyn is trying to be. Sometimes I get it wrong — I publicly called Palworld a flash in the pan and I'm still hearing about it — and when I do, I say so in the article rather than quietly updating it.

How I actually cover things

I say when I haven't finished a game. If I've played a preview build, the piece says preview. A scored verdict on a game I haven't completed isn't a review, it's a guess with a number attached.

I separate confirmed from rumoured. Especially on big releases where speculation content vastly outnumbers reporting. If I can't trace something to the publisher or a first-party source, I label it as unconfirmed — my GTA 6 coverage is built entirely around that distinction.

I tell you when not to buy something. This is the important one. Recommendations only mean anything if I'm willing to make the opposite call — which is why my VPN guide opens by telling most readers they don't need one, on the article with the highest commission rate on this site.

I have opinions and I don't hide them. Neutrality is often just a way of avoiding responsibility for a judgement. If I think a design decision is bad, or a business practice is predatory, I'll say so plainly and explain why.

Things you won't find here

A few editorial lines I've drawn deliberately:

• No coverage of games built around paid random rewards. Paying money for a chance at an outcome is gambling structure applied to entertainment, and it's frequently aimed at people who aren't equipped to evaluate it. However good the gameplay is, it doesn't get a recommendation here. My monetization guide explains the full reasoning.
• No gambling or betting content. Not sponsored, not affiliate, not "just informational."
• No fake urgency. No countdown timers, no "last chance," no invented scarcity on digital products that have none.
• No inflated claims. If a product does something modest, I'll describe it modestly. Nothing here will promise you a competitive edge it can't deliver.

On money, honestly

GameKyn makes money through affiliate links. When you buy something through a link here, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.

I'd rather explain the incentive than pretend it doesn't exist. Affiliate revenue creates a pull toward recommending more things, more enthusiastically, more often. That's a real pressure and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or hasn't noticed it happening to them.

The way I manage it is straightforward: I write the assessment first and decide about links afterwards. If the honest verdict is "don't buy this," that's what gets published — and several articles here do exactly that. If a recommendation ever reads like it was written backwards from a commission, I've failed at the only thing that makes this site worth reading.

Full details are on the affiliate disclosure page, including which programs are involved and where the links appear.

What I actually play

For context on my biases, because everyone has them:

I'm primarily a PC player, and I build my own machines — which is why the hardware guides here come from someone who has personally made the expensive mistakes. I have a Switch 2 for the couch and a handheld for travel.

Genre-wise, I've lost more hours to strategy games than I'm willing to put in writing, and I'm still bad at all of them. I've played shooters since Halo, I have chronic roguelike fatigue that occasionally gets cured, and I have almost no patience for open-world checklists.

What that means for you: I'm probably a good guide for strategy, shooters, tactics, and hardware. I'm a less reliable guide for sports games, fighting games, and horror, and I'll tell you when a genre is outside my wheelhouse rather than bluffing.

Corrections

If something here is factually wrong, I want to know and I'll fix it. Corrections get noted in the article rather than silently patched — quietly editing a mistake out of existence is how outlets lose the right to be trusted.

Get in touch

Questions, corrections, disagreements, or a game you think I should look at — I read everything.

Contact: hello@gamekyn.com

Note for review requests: I don't guarantee coverage in exchange for access, and I disclose when a game was provided by a publisher. Access that comes with conditions attached gets declined.