Reading Guide

You should always assume that this website gives incomplete information, as it is impossible to document every relevant information regarding a topic. Consider performing original research on sources other than this website.

Unless stated otherwise, the topics in this website only contain information that are considered relevant to the Philippines. For example, a topic about "Level Up!" will only discuss its commercial endeavors in the Philippines and not in India and Brazil.

In terms of international esports tournaments, information regarding the players and the placement of the Filipino teams are prioritized over other non-Philippine teams.

When visiting an article, image, or video page, you can see a timestamp on the top of the page, just below the title. This date represents when the page was last updated, and not when it was first created. This can help you judge whether the contents of an article are outdated or not.

You should take the last updated date into consideration when reading articles with developing news.

You should take into account a one-day margin of error in regards to dates, especially on pages that handle international topics. This is because the Philippines is on the UTC+8 timezone, while, for example, California in the United States is on the UTC-8 timezone. This can lead to date discrepancies, as this website takes into account news sources from around the world.

The massive time gap means that, in many cases, the dates in the Philippines are recorded one day earlier compared to Western countries and vice-versa. For example, an event that occurred in the Philippines on January 1, 2000, might be reported in the United States as having occurred on December 31, 1999.

The media coverage of the video gaming industry in the Philippines is limited. Some articles in this website contain information obtained from original, first-party research as opposed to referencing third-party publications.

Categories and tags are manually encoded metadata to help in navigation and website search.

At the moment, only articles have categories and tags. Images and videos do not implement them yet, making the filter function useless for images and videos in the search page.

Categories are used to categorize the article's subject. Categories provide the answer to questions like "is the article's subject a game? A person? An event?". Articles will usually have only one or two categories attached to them.

Tags are used to describe the articles. Articles can have an unlimited amount of tags.

For example, the article "Angel Locsin" is placed under the category "Person: Celebrity", while the article "Matteo Guidicelli's controversial PlayStation 4 unboxing video" is placed under the category "Controversy: Internet drama". The latter article, which discusses an event involving Matteo Guidicelli, does not fall under the "Person: Celebrity" category because the article's subject is the controversy itself and not Guidicelli. Both articles, however, have the "Filipino celebrity" tag.

Foreign companies (and Filipinos outside of Metro Manila) often use "Manila" as a shorthand for Metro Manila (also known as the National Capital Region) and not the Capital City of Manila.

"Manila" is also used for branding purposes on events in Metro Manila. For example, the Dota 2 tournament "ESL One Manila" was held in the City of Pasay, Metro Manila.

Unless stated otherwise in context, all non-branding, vague mentions of "Manila" in this website will refer to the City of Manila and not Metro Manila. Vague mentions will be avoided as much as possible.

Unless stated otherwise in context, all non-branding, vague mentions of "Cebu" in this website will refer to the province of Cebu and not Cebu City. Vague mentions will be avoided as much as possible.

"Games-as-a-service", commonly known as "live service games", is a term that was popularized in 2019. This website makes use of that term instead of referring to them as "online games". Be aware that third-party references used in this website, especially those that were made before 2019, call them and the industry as "online games" and the "online gaming industry", respectively.

Live service game publishers often set up brandings or trade names for their operations. For example, "Cognosphere Pte., Ltd." was established to operate the brand "HoYoverse". In some instances, the company name is registered after its branding, e.g., "Level Up! Inc." was registered to match the "Level Up!" brand.

A live service publisher operates (publishes) the server of a game. A live service distributor offers marketing services and payment options for a game that is operated by a publisher. A distributor acts as a proxy for purchases.

As an example, Blizzard Entertainment self-publishes the World of WarCraft MMORPG. Players can purchase subscription time directly from Blizzard. Any company other than Blizzard that offers subscription time for World of WarCraft is a distributor for that game.

Unless stated that the games being discussed are private servers, all mentions of live service games in this website are considered officially licensed servers.

Depending on the type of controversy you are reading, you should expect that some level of harassment and cyberbullying have occurred. These can range from simple harassment to the reporting of social media pages.

The [₱] symbol stands for the Philippine Peso, which is the official currency of the Philippines.

The launch prices for hardware and games in the Philippines are sometimes compared to the U.S. launch prices. This is done by converting the Philippine price into U.S. dollars. Unless stated otherwise in context, the conversion rate is based on the historical PHP:USD conversion rate at the date of the launch.

When comparing Philippine prices with U.S. prices (see "Converted launch prices" above), the U.S. prices will be rounded off to remove "charm pricing" (prices ending in 95 or 99). Instead of US$499, the price will be listed as US$500. Instead of US$59.99, it will be listed as US$60.

Any Philippine prices will be listed using their suggested retail prices (SRP), regardless of charm pricing.

The prices being discussed are the official prices set in the Philippines. Since products for the Philippines may launch at later dates than other countries, prices of early gray market products obtained via parallel imports are generally not listed unless they are part of important discussion points.

These are referenced texts from websites that are archived in this website. A reference item includes a text copy and a website screenshot that serve as "proof" of the reference.

A reference item can be from articles, documents, and even forum posts. Unlike Wikipedia with strict reference guidelines, this website is loose on its sources as the media coverage of the video gaming industry in the Philippines is limited.

These are added notes that give context to the referenced text. An example would be a correction, where a reference note would point out that the original author misreported a certain piece of fact.

Yes. On some occassions, edits are made to make the archived screenshot more presentable. This can be the deletion of advertisements, or the deletion of entire blocks that interferes with the screenshot process. In all cases, comment sections are removed digitally if they were saved in the screenshot.

The actual referenced articles and texts are never edited and are presented as-is, even if they contain typos.

Some screenshots are taken from archived websites in Archive.org. The archived websites are not always saved properly.

Unless stated otherwise in context, all mentions of the word "local", "native", and similar words mean relation to the Philippines, while "foreign" and similar words mean relation to countries other than the Philippines.

The Philippines is one of the few countries in the world that follows the [mm-dd-yy] format that is also used by the United States. To prevent confusion, all dates are written either in full, or in the ISO 8601 format of [yyyy-mm-dd].

No dates in this website are written in the [mm-dd-yyyy] nor the [dd-mm-yyyy] format.

All English text in this website are written in American English instead of British English.

Oxford comma is used to avoid any ambiguity in lists. Instead of [Item 1, Item 2 and Item 3], lists are written as [Item 1, Item 2, and Item 3].