Introducing Warp Point, a Web 1.0 gaming weblog listing constructed for 2026

In January 2024, just some weeks after I made a decision to ditch Substack over its unwillingness to kick Nazis off its platform, I jotted down this half-formed thought in a scratch pad:

What if we banded collectively and created a gaming webring?

Pretend there is a bunch of inspirational stuff right here. Togetherness is the trail ahead! Down with massive tech! Up with open supply! More considerate phrases!

At the time, I did not have the bandwidth to show this small pile of notes, which included one other header — “Bringing back 88×31 buttons” — into actuality. But I saved fascinated by it all through 2024. And 2025. And in 2026, I finished fascinated by it and began doing it. Meet Warp Point, a throwback to the times of directories and webrings, constructed solely for unbiased video games writing.

Warp Point

A curated record of gaming blogs that assist RSS.

Inspired by the extra communal Web 1.0 period and among the finest websites on the web, Ooh.listing, Warp Point is constructed round easy applied sciences like RSS with a easy premise: Helping writers join with individuals who like to examine video games, and with different individuals who love to jot down about them.

There aren’t any algorithms. No AI summaries. No paid promo slots or accounts meant to maintain you on the location. We need you to go away — by searching by means of the record of unbiased bloggers and essayists and e-newsletter writers and archivists, discovering one which pursuits you, and clicking on it. Hopefully you come again and do this many times.

In the communal spirit of outdated gaming fansites affiliate lists, Warp Point additionally encompasses a webring that our members can use to hyperlink to one another:

In the early 2000s I beloved discovering new websites by clicking one little 88×31 pixel button after one other, marveling at how massive the web appeared then. One fascinating, handcrafted web site may alwaus lead me to a different. Then there was a short interval the place it felt like we did not want these kinds of connections anymore as a result of Google had solved discoverability on the web. But years of Google pushing us in direction of a narrowing collection of excessive profile websites has confirmed that the alternative is true: the web feels lonelier than ever except we exit of our option to discover one another.

Recently bloggers on hosts like Neocities have taken it upon themselves to deliver again their very own webrings to maintain that Web 1.0 fireplace burning. That rocks. Our hope is that Warp Point can do the identical for a broader cross part of indie gaming websites, from scrappy upstart media corporations to essayists to trivia obsessives.

I say “our” as a result of I can solely take a bit of little bit of the credit score for Warp Point: Programmer and designer Matt Sayer has completed many of the work to truly construct the factor, and is as obsessed with this complete endeavor as I’m! Here’s Matt:

This announcement for Warp Point is simply the beginning. We’ve been quietly recruiting a primary wave of sign-ups as we obtained the location up and operating, however beginning right now anybody can submit their web site for inclusion, with just a few limitations as defined on our Submit web page. Every submission is manually reviewed, however the level of the listing is not curation, aside from ensuring we’re that includes writing by people, for people. (In the phrases of member web site ScrollBoss: No LLM BS.)

If this all reads like a little bit of a manifesto, that is as a result of I’ve remained mad as hell about Google’s poisoning of the web since final December, after I wrote in regards to the firm’s makes an attempt to switch the fantastic thing about the hyperlink with its AI search outcomes. Excuse me for quoting myself, however this was the inflection level after I totally internalized that Big Tech is simply going to maintain making the web worse:

Google’s obsession with killing off hyperlinks betrays what made the web nice

The greatest model of the web put hyperlinks first, however Google not needs you to go away its personal search pages.

Only after I made a aware effort for the primary time in a decade to refill an RSS reader with bloggers, critics, information sources, and even webcomics did I understand that I’d misplaced observe of the unique, primal pleasure of the web:

Clicking a hyperlink and discovering a complete new world unfurl earlier than me, as quick as my dial-up modem or DSL connection may load it in.

I suppose I began taking this expertise without any consideration sooner or later; as soon as all of us got here to know the web as an infinite repository for information, the plain aim grew to become accessing that information extra effectively. It’s not that I ever actually stopped clicking on hyperlinks. I simply stopped placing within the work of on the lookout for web sites by means of listing listings, like those I used to like searching on 

Yahoo.com for hours at a time (Home > Recreation > Games > Video Games > Emulation, anybody?).

I understand in hindsight that that was the actually magical half, not figuring out what I might get after I clicked. Finding a web site wholly born from the eagerness and character of somebody I’d by no means met was as a lot the purpose as the knowledge that web site contained.

The solely option to make a greater web is to construct it ourselves. If Warp Point manages to deliver again that have of discovery, discovering your new favourite web site buried six hyperlinks deep, for even just a few writers and readers, we’ll be pleased. (Maybe subsequent we must always direct our energies into bringing again guestbooks?)

Indie writers: Please be a part of Warp Point! And readers: Please unfold the phrase. Post about it the listing on social media, share a hyperlink in your Discords, textual content somebody you have not talked to in 15 years. Tell them BLOGGING LIVES.