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Shopboy Gaming is an independent platform for genuine gaming culture โ€” articles, quizzes, discovery, and community. No hype. Just good games.

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Test Your Knowledge

Gaming Quizzes

From classic trivia to personality match-ups โ€” find out where you stand in the gaming world.

Question 1 of 5 Genre Match

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Question 1 of 6 Classic Trivia

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Question 1 of 5 Indie Challenge

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Curated Selection

Featured Games to Discover

A hand-picked selection of games across genres โ€” each one worth your time for different reasons.

RPG fantasy landscape
RPG

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

A sprawling RPG that redefined storytelling in open-world games. Geralt of Rivia's final chapter remains a benchmark for narrative design.

2015 ยท CD Projekt Red 9.8
Indie game atmosphere
Indie

Hollow Knight

Team Cherry's underground epic is a masterclass in atmosphere and difficulty. Its hand-drawn world of Hallownest deserves every hour you give it.

2017 ยท Team Cherry 9.4
Strategy game grid
Strategy

Civilization VI

The series that has swallowed more weekends than any other. Leading a civilisation from the Stone Age to the Space Age never gets old.

2016 ยท Firaxis Games 9.2
Open world landscape
Open World

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar's magnum opus. The American frontier brought to life with extraordinary detail โ€” a story about loyalty, loss, and what it means to outlast your era.

2018 ยท Rockstar Games 9.7
Indie platformer screenshot
Indie

Celeste

A precision platformer that doubles as a heartfelt story about mental health. Madeline's climb is difficult by design, and that's precisely the point.

2018 ยท Maddy Makes Games 9.5
Multiplayer gaming
Multiplayer

Among Us

Few games have captured the social deception experience this well. Reading people, trusting badly, and arguing confidently about things you didn't see.

2018 ยท InnerSloth 8.0
What People Say

Community Voices

Real gamers, real opinions. Here's what our community has to say about their experience with Shopboy Gaming.

The People Behind It

Our Editorial Team

A small team of writers, editors, and enthusiasts who care more about gaming culture than traffic numbers.

Marcus Webb
Marcus Webb
Editor-in-Chief

Twenty years of gaming across every genre. Marcus founded Shopboy Gaming because he wanted a place that took the craft of games seriously without taking itself too seriously.

Sarah Donnelly
Sarah Donnelly
Senior Writer

Specialises in indie games and narrative design. Sarah has been playing and writing about games for a decade, with a particular love for titles that take storytelling risks.

Raj Patel
Raj Patel
Strategy & RPG Editor

Raj's natural habitat is a long turn-based campaign. He brings a methodical, deeply considered perspective to game coverage โ€” and genuinely good taste in build theory.

Chloe Marsh
Chloe Marsh
Community & Quiz Lead

Chloe runs our quiz content and community engagement. She has an encyclopaedic memory for gaming trivia and finds genuine delight in stumping people who think they know everything.

Editorial

Featured Articles

Long-form pieces on the games, trends, and history that shaped the industry we love.

Open world games

Best Open World Games That Shaped Modern Gaming

The open world genre didn't emerge fully formed. It evolved through dozens of design decisions, technical leaps, and a handful of pivotal games that changed what players expected from a virtual space.

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Indie game development

History of Indie Games and Their Impact on the Industry

Independent developers didn't just fill a gap in the market โ€” they challenged the assumptions of what a game needed to be, who could make one, and what stories were worth telling.

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Game design evolution

How Game Design Has Evolved Over the Last Three Decades

From text adventures to fully simulated worlds, the craft of game design has changed in ways that are both obvious and surprisingly subtle. This is the story of that evolution.

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History

Key Moments in Gaming History

The industry didn't become what it is overnight. Click any entry to learn more.

1972
Pong Changes Everything
Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful arcade game. A table tennis simulation with two paddles and a ball sparks an entire industry.
1985
Super Mario Bros. Saves Console Gaming
Following the North American video game crash of 1983, Nintendo releases Super Mario Bros. alongside the NES. The platformer sells 40 million copies and proves games can be a lasting medium.
1994
PlayStation Enters the Ring
Sony launches the PlayStation in Japan, bringing CD-ROM storage and 3D graphics to a mass audience. The console wars would never be the same again.
2004
World of Warcraft Redefines MMOs
Blizzard's massively multiplayer online RPG reaches 12 million subscribers at its peak. It defines a generation of online gaming and creates social experiences nobody had anticipated.
2008
The Indie Revolution Begins
Braid's release on Xbox Live Arcade proves indie developers can produce critically acclaimed, commercially successful games. The barriers begin to fall.
2017
Breath of the Wild Reimagines Open World
Zelda: Breath of the Wild launches alongside the Nintendo Switch. Its approach to player freedom and physics-based interaction becomes a reference point for a new generation of open world design.
Gaming Culture

Thoughts on Games