A historical record earns trust slowly and loses it quickly. The policies below decide what gets published, how it is phrased, and what happens when the evidence turns out to be weaker than the story everyone repeats.
How sources are ranked
Sources do not carry equal weight. Where accounts conflict, the higher tier generally prevails, and an entry resting only on the lower tiers is written more cautiously than one supported by a document.
- Museum and institutional archives, including collection records, curatorial research and oral history programs.
- Primary documents: patent filings, corporate registrations, regulatory and court records, published financial reports, and internal material that has been made public.
- Specialist books and peer-reviewed scholarship, where the author did original research and showed where the material came from.
- Contemporaneous press, including newspaper and trade coverage published at the time, read with an awareness that it often reprinted company claims unchecked.
- General reference works, used to orient the research and to find better sources, but never treated as sufficient support on their own.
Contested firsts
Almost every claimed first in this field is disputed by someone with a reasonable case, usually because the definition is doing the work. Whether a machine counts as the first video game depends on what counts as a game, as a screen and as a product. The archive avoids awarding titles. It describes what a machine or a release actually did, notes where it sat relative to the others, and prefers phrasing such as among the first when the record is genuinely open. Where the dispute is itself historically interesting, the entry explains the competing claims instead of quietly picking one.
Dates and how precise they are
A date is only as good as the document behind it. Entries state a day only where documentation supports the day. Otherwise they give a month or a year, and the record shows which precision is being claimed rather than manufacturing a false exactness. Staggered releases are common in this history, with a machine reaching Japan months or even years before North America or Europe, so entries say which market a date belongs to and mention the others.
Documented facts and repeated claims
Some of the best-known stories in video game history circulate because they are repeated, not because they were ever established. Sales figures with no filing behind them, dramatic quotes that first appear decades after the fact, and origin stories polished by later marketing are all common. The archive separates what a document supports from what the culture believes. Where a story is famous but thinly sourced, it is described as a widely repeated account, and the uncertainty is stated in the entry rather than buried at the bottom.
Neutrality toward companies
Companies in this history are treated as actors with interests, not as heroes or villains. Marketing language is never adopted as description. Rivalries are explained through what each side actually decided and what those decisions cost. Failures are described without mockery and successes without celebration, because both usually followed from ordinary judgments that looked reasonable at the time and only look obvious now.
People named in entries
People appear in the archive for their documented professional work: what they designed, built, financed, decided or argued in public. Private lives are out of scope. Allegations are included only where they are a matter of public record, such as litigation or regulatory action, and they are described as what the record shows rather than as conclusions. Living people who believe an entry misstates their work are invited to write to corrections@maticpayu.com, and a firsthand account that can be checked is treated as valuable evidence.
Images and artwork
The site publishes only original abstract artwork created for it. It reproduces no game screenshots, no box art, no characters, no company logos and no promotional imagery of any kind. The illustrations are compositions of color, shape and light meant to give a page atmosphere, and they never depict or imitate any company's material. This is a deliberate limit rather than an oversight: a history site does not need to reproduce other people's work in order to explain it.
Names, trademarks and independence
MaticPayu is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any company, console maker, publisher, museum, trade body or institution named on the site. Company names, product names, console names, game titles and character names appear for identification and historical commentary only. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners, and their use here implies no association with or approval by those owners.
Changes to this policy
These standards are revised whenever they prove unclear or insufficient in practice, and the date at the top of the page shows when the policy was last reviewed. Questions about the policy itself, including from teachers who want to walk a class through how sourcing works, are welcome at contact@maticpayu.com.