Hi guys, this is Brandon, the founder and Editor-in-Chief here at Niche Gamer.
It’s been awhile since I’ve addressed you directly and in this way – but I wanted to celebrate our fifth anniversary in a very special way: with a brand new, exciting, and ultimately wonderful design of our mascot, Mika!
Mika-chan has gone through numerous changes with her two previous “main” or “official” designs, as well as lots and lots of seasonal or holiday-themed designs throughout the years.
We’re really happy with how much the fans have come to love her, and we really want to go all out with our branding and have her in more stuff! Naturally, we have plans for a merchandise store with t-shirts of Mika’s various designs, as well as a full calendar with tons of Mika’s designs, and more.
Without further ado, here’s Mika’s new 3.0 design, plus a little surprise:
That’s right, Mika finally has her own sidekick mascot! We’re in a bit of a pickle, however, because I actually completely forgot to name the cute little fuzz-ball during the conception phase all the way through its completion. To celebrate how much we’ve grown and how awesome our community is, I want you guys to suggest what its name is, here, in the comments.
We’ll pick only the best and silliest name a month from now, and yes, that will be Mika’s sidekick’s official name. I’ve been told by numerous people this is an absolutely awful idea and we’ll be sifting through hundreds of dumb or downright offensive suggestions, but I love the internet. I really do. Please don’t let me down and keep ’em coming!
Now, moving on to recapping our five years of operation and growth. Way back in July of 2013 I got tired of just sharing breaking gaming news onto social media, and I was equally tired of the mainstream gaming outlets that only covered certain games, and or had some kind of dumb, anti-consumer slant. I took things into my own hands and launched Niche Gamer.
In our five years we have grown tremendously since I started Niche Gamer as a blog way back when. I was in a very different life back then, many things have happened in my personal life and yet I made sure Niche Gamer kept moving ahead, regardless of what has happened. Because of our aggressive publishing of regular new content as well as our constant improving, we have succeeded.
I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of specific traffic numbers, but I can say that when I first started Niche Gamer five years ago, we had no real audience, nor big traffic. However, now, we get tens of thousands of users a day, as well as millions of views a month. Our biggest hurdle has been fairly monetizing advertisements, and of course – remaining 100% independent.
Our community is an organic, healthy, passionate, and invested bunch, and both myself and the Niche Gamer staff couldn’t be more proud. You guys come from literally all corners of the planet, all walks of life, and are into all genres of video games. It’s a wonderful and sometimes overwhelming smorgasbord that defies politics, cliques, and lame censorship.
We have been and are still building the premiere gaming journalism outlet on the internet, with the best community to match. When other sites double down on identity politics and censorship, we present a fair and fun take on games or topics in gaming, while welcoming all individuals with open arms. We’re the enthusiast gaming press of yore, reborn, while embracing free speech.
We couldn’t be doing what we’re doing, still, without your support and undying love. Seriously, we love you guys and we hope to be even better and make Niche Gamer even better than ever, moving forward. Please look forward to our new user features (blogs, game database, wikis, etc) and our sister sites (anime, asian culture, etc), in the future!
As always, if you haven’t backed us on Patreon, check us out! We also accept one time donations via our PayPal, over on our donation page. If you simply want to keep browsing the site for free, please consider whitelisting us so we can remain independent and keep the lights on.
