It’s mad, in so many ways, to think that this humble website has been alive for ten years. It was on November 5th 2008 that we emerged into the world. Truly, we started from the bottom, now we’re here.

It was a humble start, with myself, Greg “Stalins Ghost” Wild, Phillip “The Poisoned Sponge” Cameron-Smith, Steve “SteveTheBlack” Peacock and DuBBle coming together from the Rock, Paper, Shotgun Steam group chat. Those were the days when Steam group chats were regularly used places. These days, everything takes place on Discord. Look, we even have our own Discord channel now!

Our initial focus was on covering all things in the PC world. We were all PC gamers, and fans of the writing style popularised in PC Gamer, and taken further with Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Part of our first mission statement was:

Here on The Reticule we want to avoid the easy task of just churning out the same news, there are thousands of other sites that can do that for us. Instead, we base our reputation on fine writing, intuitive thoughts and hell, maybe even some stuff that will cause riots. We do reviews, but we don’t call them that, for us they are our ‘Verdicts’

I like to think, as the site has evolved, that we try to keep those initial aims. Over the years, our news output has at times risen, and others, fallen away entirely, but it hasn’t ever been our focus as it is with places like Eurogamer or VG24/7.

Of course, the gaming world has changed over the years, with changing consumer habits having a massive impact across the board. Most recent was the news that GamesTM and GamesMaster are both coming to an end this month, while sites like Rock, Paper, Shotgun look to new methods of generating revenue with supporter programs. Other sites with a larger reach than our own have long since passed to the other side. Gaming Daily and Resolution were two great places, and I have the utmost respect for all of those who worked there. You might remember that The Reticule even came perilously close to disappearing in January 2011.

That closure was short-lived, and we returned on April 13 2011, and had suddenly transformed into a multiplatform site. Though whether the I made the right choice in hiving away the original site to a little corner, I’m none too sure. But we came back, some of the old guard returned, other new faces joined the crowd, and the site continues to rock and roll.

We take a rock and roll approach to our work these days. While features like Our Week in Games were, for a while, beloved, they were an intense time-sink for a world where personal lives take centre stage. We have a YouTube channel, which is very sparsely populated, while we certainly haven’t caught up with the whole streaming phenomenom which has taken over the world. We do this for the love of games, not for the money, or even especially for the review copies anymore (but they are nice!).

It’s been ten years of highs and lows. More highs though, for sure.

This is a thank you to everyone who has written for the site, and everyone who has read this place over the years. Where will we be this time next year? I know not. But let’s enjoy the ride.