Hello once again! Another year has gone by, and damn, this one’s been pretty decent, all things considered. Despite some rough background IRL events, I managed to get a lot of crunching done on the queue, not quite finishing it out like I hoped, but catching up significantly and managing to be up to date on Xbox.
When the only things remaining are some big boy PS4 titles, some of my Switch stuff (which I did a lot of this month), and one steam game (Fuga 2 is literally neck and neck with this roundup, and it will be reviewed before the new year comes), all of which will likely be done next month or so, I think that’s pretty good progress for the month I crunched on. And that’s not even counting other, non queue reviews I did in my free time, all while continuing my full time work on weekdays per usual.
You know the usual drill here at SFG. Reflections, and the worst/best of 2023 list, and a final bonus part, which will cover my thoughts on the future of SFG in general, post queue. So, let’s get into the sort of stuff that happened! Consider this an extra status update of sorts, since I got into doing those more often. Speaking of…
Social Media Mess
2023 had the potential to be the roughest year I had since 2019. If it had gone that way, things would be very very bad and my mental state could have cratered again. It didn’t help that my big outlet for sharing content from here, Twitter completely cratered and became a cesspit. I’m pretty much just on Cohost now, but outside of really seeing fun retro game ads or finding cool new streamers, it’s pitiful for getting feedback on my work like I did on Twitter. As I noted before, I have zero care for joining other social media outlets.
In a way, I feel being a lot less on socials as of late (I pretty much just use cohost, Reddit, and Discord) has helped me mentally in so many ways, and it’s been a secret boon to my focus. Lots more time to get lots more work done without going down long twitter rabbit holes. Now if I do try to go down a rabbit hole, it’ll be a small one on reddit or a forum thread that dries up and I have to think of other things to do.
On the negative side, getting in touch with some devs now is much harder than it used to be, and I dunno how that’ll pan out once the queue is clear. I’m trying to wait until I finish a bunch of reviews at once before I mass update their publishers about their queued reviews finally being done. For most of them I have contacts, but some I just flat-out don’t. I’m hoping at the very least though if I reach out again, I’ll be able to explain myself. It also hurts not having easy access to JP dev people without Twitter, since that was what would have helped me for next year’s plans.
I also partly blame it for why my Shinichiro Tomie video, covering Pokemon Mystery Dungeon’s story writer did way worse in video form than the article I wrote for it, and why I’ve gotten next to no feedback on it. The other part, I feel, is because I’m not exactly a video guy in general and thus out of the typical poputuber cliches a lot of folk are in to get their stuff typically seen. Oh well. I retired from video making as of this month, so I have the means to focus on more writing, saving for translations and other fun stuff. As long as someone at Chunsoft sees my vid one day, I’ll be happy.
No Bonus for you
Usually when I write stuff for SFG, I eventually get sick of reviews and wanna try something bigger like an interview or an opinion piece. This year I pretty much abstained from that to focus on the queue, and I think I did a good job of mixing new and old.
I had a few chances to ask some devs about cool games, but I passed all of em up because I didn’t want to just half-ass an interview for the sake of an article. Nothing will be tomie-sized unless it has a huge epic tale to tell, but I want my interviews to feel well thought out and meaningful. People gave me actually good feedback and truly reached out to me well on not just tomie, but my David Turnbull interview from years ago too, which I occasionally still get comments about elsewhere.
But on that note, I definitely feel the site has aged and has made my dumb font color choices not-friendly for those older interviews, so I gotta revise and fix all of those colors. I’ll likely just change it to a basic bold but it’ll take a bit since I’m crunching on those last 2 reviews for the year as I’m typing this, one of which involves playing a game for dozens of hours in two days. Yeah I’m not letting Fuga 2 slide before Saturday’s GOTY, list barring I don’t get sick or something happens to me. Still, I’m hoping these four articles make up for the lack of my usual bonus article content this year and the two GOTY related stuff always gets my friends talking, which is good enough for me.
Lifestyle Evolutions
I try to keep my personal life out of SFG’s main site as much as possible, but I wanna at least briefly touch on some things I’m a bit happy with that made my productivity a bit better this year.
I’ve had health anxiety since a very young age. I didn’t know why until I became a teenager, but ever since my rough initial living situation until age 8 and almost dying, I’ve been pretty terrified of any little thing that could harm me, make me sick or put me in danger. When the 2020 pandemic started, I went and did major changes in my life such as eliminating my nail biting habit, washing my hands way more in general, and doing more walks and exercise. But I still had the habit of eating snacks (mainly good ol popcorn) too often, and drinking lots of sugar.
2021 rolls around, and I have Triglyceride issues, and have to pretty much start a sugar diet in hopes of turning it around. So I do, and it has slowly gotten better. But still very slow, and I have mostly diet drinks now and then if I want a soda of some kind. V8 Energy is pretty much my go-to morning boost now. But it was this year when I really took steps to evolve further, mostly for my own sanity and also to compliment my new space, and I have managed to do calorie limits and general weight loss, which led me to go from 228 pounds early in the summer, to a nice 204 right as I’m writing this. Wowza! Considering most of the extra weight was from stress eating post my 2019 losses, I feel like I’m back on the right track, and hope this life decision I made earlier continues to help me going forward, and I know since September I’ve been in a lot better headspace to focus and get stuff done; even weeks where I have off days I usually catch up pretty well at some point, and while I’m bummed I couldn’t get every switch/pc game reviewed by the end of the year as I hoped, I got a ton of them out, caught up on Xbox, and pretty much caught up on PC.
Like I said in the last update, I dont wanna give another ETA for finishing the queue, but I’m feeling more confident in my pace and being able to give these games the attention I feel they need for this sort of wait. Some stressors still pop up now and then, and unfortunately as a trauma victim I’ve had not-so-nice instances of that popping back up in my nightmares, but I’ve still managed to power through well enough to provide more content than I did in 2019. SFG site views are growing, people love the stuff I throw out on a whim like the Taito Super Pocket review, and I am all too happy to continue to work at it next year.
Limited Print, Stop. Seriously.
The best part about not having twitter anymore is not having to deal with all the stressors of limited print articles.
Yes! Would you believe me if I still told you people were still mad at me for old articles like these, back in early 2023? The negative to an evergreen article is that when new people find it and don’t like it, they’ll let you know, and on Twitter, that was done via silly people trying to block evade, subtweet me, or just get pissy about the fact I want boutique companies to improve their quality standards. (as my lone snide remark to LRG this season, I’ll note that a lot of people ordered in-hand products months ago and a lot of them have still not left their warehouse, all as the CEO continues to note how they plan to catch up “before the end of the year”. Somehow worse than me at my review queue.)
It also really didn’t help that a lot of gross transphobia got thrown at LRG for them begrudgingly agreeing (ie: Embracer made em do it) to fire someone who was not at all LGBT friendly despite selling plenty of LGBT indie games, which other devs I know can vouch having that person in that position was not a thing they were OK with either. Needless to say as I recently said elsewhere, i amended a bunch of my LRG articles to include links to pro LGBT foundations around the time the drama blew up, and certain people got mad at that too. I stood my ground though and it seems like more people are concerned about the actual issues like their warehouse disaster than LRG doing the bare freaking minimum to protect a minority community, so I digress. But yeah, the same old detractors, the same old headaches, and the same stresses I get when even uttering any of the companies names in the space for a hobby I used to love have just gotten so outta hand I’m still sticking to the fact i’m not doing these anymore.
Also, Stop asking me for Dispatch Games updates. Brian Schorr has gone to the wind and no I don’t know anything about his weird summer update posts. I went off tips I was emailed or dug up myself through very easy public sleuthing. I really tried y’all, but then a website I sent a news tip to ended up running a finding I made by crediting another website who properly credited me, as if they originally brought it to life, and when people pointed out in the comments it was me who found it they were met with crickets. It also explains why when I poked them about the whole First Press Games screwing over an indie dev situation, I got ghosted. So if you find anything interesting about dispatch, don’t ask me to write about it, because it’ll just be recycled without credit by a tabloid publication anyway. (and to those who did link my article in the comments, and to Delisted Games, who credited me properly from the getgo, you are really the MVPs that keep my sanity intact)
That whole FPG thing was worth a brief writeup of rage, since seeing a dev I literally covered a game for this year getting screwed like that was something I could just vent about without having to do any sort of deep analysis; it was clear as day, some of these companies prey on indies. Some of these companies prey of FOMO. Some of these companies just suck in general or are out of money, but don’t want to say they are. I wouldn’t even be shocked if certain limprints are looking for a buyer or prepping to release their final game. It’ll be interesting to see how the next Nintendo handheld treats this market; will it revive it, or will it just flop because the Switch is so oversaturated with games it’s impossible to full-set anymore? Will people stop treating video games as investments and attacking people who they blame for “crashing the value”? (Yes, I was actually accused of this once) Probably not.
Small but mighty Support
As much as I typically lament my articles not getting much comments here, (a lot of comments i get for SFG are spam and pretty much just get junked immediately, and if you do wanna leave a legit comment, don’t worry if it doesn’t show up, I just have to manually approve it) I have gotten thoughts on certain writeups and reviews elsewhere and it truly means a lot to me. It has gotten me through the more stressful parts of the year as I was having some trauma flashbacks and impostor syndrome at points. Before Twitter died, the Tomie article got crazy reception, lots of good feedback and even thumbs up from Tomie’s old Tecmo friend, so that made me immensely happy. Even now, I see views for it doing well and others mentioning Tomie-san by name in PMD conversations.
While it didn’t make him a Kamiya/Suda/Sakurai-tier name like I foolishly hoped my article would, I do at least think in time more people will appreciate the man who changed my life, and so many others. I’m still trying to get in touch with tomie for connecting Yamamoto san for an interview with him, but we’ve both been very busy lately. I just wish the video version I wrecked my health on last year did well, since I didn’t get much feedback on that, and I feel if I took my time, made it a side thing and maybe made it more casual people would be intrigued. But I’m used to being raw and honest, and that led to a pretty good video for PMD fans, I reckon.
Still, for anyone who reads and doesn’t comment but comes back daily or weekly for new content, or reads me on SwitchScores and Opencritic, I sincerely thank you. Enjoying my work even from a distance is enough to keep me writing these reviews, and I wouldn’t have even gotten my start if I wasn’t making these reviews for fun like I currently do. Videos are a lot more risky and thus while I have fun with em, they’re also in need of more support, so shifting to reviews is just more easy on my brain, especially if I see a cool retro port or indie I wanna cover.
To the person who emailed me about my Irem Collection interview to ask me questions, I thank you, even though I’ve been too hyper busy to answer of late. The fact I got any email at all (since I do kinda obscure it for spam prevention reasons) about my content is enough to make me feel like I made it. Doubly so for anyone who shares something I made on Reddit/Twitter/Facebook because they think it’s cool. (Just don’t be like a certain lifer website and forget to credit me/link here)
With all that out of the way, and with me slowly picking up the pieces from another stressor of a month, I bid you all a farewell for the night, and hope you tune in tomorrow for the worst of 2023 list. I gotta be harsh, but I also wanna put out some pointers and hope for how the things that disappointed me can be improved. Then we get to the GOTY list, which is exciting this year as there’s too many games to pick from, unlike last year. And on Sunday? Some future ideas…