Hey everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to wish you all a very merry Christmas! And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, then I wish you an awesome 25th of December. These days it seems fewer people have the Christmas cheer. I hope you’re holding onto the fun, the simple joy of the day, whether it’s an extravagant day full of presents and family or something quiet and chill.

As I write this I’ve got a new favourite Christmas movie on in the background: Violent Night. It’s a great time involving David Harbour playing Santa Claus as he is trapped in a situation where mysterious attackers have taken a rich family hostage. Stranded due to his reindeer running away, Santa has to battle the attackers in increasingly violent, bloody fights. it’s a really fun blend of comedy and action, and a dab of wholesome entertainment as Santa has to work with a young kid. Okay, maybe wholesome isn’t the right word because I’ve just watched Santa fill a sock with snooker balls and use it to beat the shit out of a guy. And then he stabbed him the eye with a Christmas star decoration before turning it on and electrocuting the poor bastard. Check it out if you can. It’s on Netflix. You’ll have a great time, as long as you aren’t looking for a wholesome Christmas family flick.

I can’t even begin to tell you how crazy the last year has been. It’s a long story but suffice to say it has involved connecting with a brother I had always assumed I would never get to know. And now he’s here and we’ve had that chance, it’s incredible how quickly he’s become part of my life. We’ve picked up Warhammer as a hobby which turns out is a very dangerous thing to do for your bank account. With his arrival also comes a shocking fact: being sociable and going outside is exhausting. I’m not a naturally extroverted creature, preferring mostly to hang out where the games and food are, but my brother has been dragging me out to eat, visit places and hang out. I don’t know how extroverts do this, man. I’m tired!

I’ll use this as a bit of a New Year wrap-up as well, shall I? Based purely on the views this has been the best year ever, drawing in about 290,000 visits. I know that’s not a lot compared to the big sites and Youtube channels, but it’s kind of a mind-boggling number to me. I’ve somehow written 454 posts this year, totalling 267,000 words. So basically I talk too god-damn much.

As for the website itself, it continues to trundle along. I admit that I still love writing about games there is a little current of frustration flowing throgh my veins at how I seem unable to grow the site properly. The amount of views and people that visit every day, week and month has gone. It’s good that it isn’t going down obviously and I’m immensely thankful for that, but at the same time it doesn’t grow. Except randomly when the magical math that powers the search engine’s bestow upon me some minor blessing, boosting up traffic for weeks or even a few months before it slowly goes back to normal. Why? Who knows! I don’t. It’s a mystery to me. You know how I said this was technicaly the most successful year? Well that’s mostly because of two random months where Google decided to send heaps of traffic my way. Without those, it would have been a static year. But as dar as I can tell, there was nothing different in those few months.

Whatever the reason, I’m left to ponder why I can’t grow the site; is it just because writing about games is a dying/dead artform, only really sustainable by the massive pe-existing sites? Or the more likely one, which is just that I’m not very good at it.

Enough of those dark musings though. I might be a tad annoyed, but I’m stll immensely thankful for everyone that keeps coming back and reading what I do. I still have great fun talking about games, and thanks to all of this *gestures broadly* I get to play a lot of games I wouldn’t normally be able to afford. That’s a very awesome situation to be in, and I’m extremely thankful for it. It’s all thanks to you wonderful people. Yes, even you, whoever you are reading this whom I’ve never met. You might not realise that your single visit, even if you never come again, does have an impact on my life. It makes it a little bit better. It lets me do cool shit. I dunno, I just find the idea of being able to have an effect on someone by doing something so seemingly inconsequential kind of cool, ya know?

And in the end, like I’ve said before, I’ll keep on writing even if there’s just one solitary soul reading, because it’s fun and keeps me sane. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to do better and make the site bigger though.

So enjoy your day, my friends. Enjoy good company, eat tasty food, play some cool games, watch terrible Christmas movies and love life. For those of you out there who maybe can’t do all those things,

Baden