The Words About Games Diaries

I was going to make this a video, before I decided to start using my blog as an actual blog. So now the video is a blog post. Which kinda sounds like “this meeting could have been an email”

I suppose if you’ve subscribed then this update is literally an email.

There’s not a great deal happening around these parts that’s different to what was happening last year. The biggest change is blogging, which I already talked about in a different post.

We’ve already recorded our first two podcast episodes for the year. The first of which, our most anticipated games of 2024 (but also a discussion about where we think 2024 is heading), will go live later today. It’s an atrocious podcast.

Not in terms of our discussions, but Discord has started to become really unreliable of late, and we had numerous freezes during the recording. I tried to edit them out as best as I could, but I eventually just started incorporating them into the episode in the form of jokes. It’s not great.

Next week’s episode will see myself and Vitz joined by the awesome Sadie Flayeh to talk about some games that were extremely important in our lives. It was an awesome discussion and also free from technical issues. We even fixed the problem with Vitz’s microphone sometimes cutting out.

After that will be our Fantasy Critic draft, and then we’ll be back to our regular episodes. Though we’re coming into 2024 with a new energy – focusing less on being a news reaction podcast and more on generally discussing what’s happening in and around video games.

A big thing I want to start doing in 2024 is digging into my backlog. I already started over our Christmas break by finishing Yakuza: Like A Dragon and almost finishing Prey. To accompany that I’ll probably start keeping a diary of games I’ve been playing here. I’ve already written a short (by my standards) companion piece to my Prey playthrough that will be live here at some point.

Though I’ll probably not be playing too much from my backlog for the next little while. For starters, both Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth are both due out in the next couple of months, which will keep me hella busy, as I’m more excited to play those games back to back than anything else right now.

But I’m also deep in the weeds on working on my next two video essays.

Currently, the lion’s share of my Words About Games time is going towards editing the next video: Credit Where It’s Due: The Messy History (And Present) Of Video Game Credits.

I’ve been researching and writing for this one for a few months now, as wouldn’t you know it the topic was far more dense and nuanced than I initially anticipated. But I finally recorded it just before Christmas and I have something like 90% of the footage I need for it.

I’d like to think I’ll have it done before Infinite Wealth launches (or at least before it’s downloaded and installed on my Xbox), but I’ve learned my lesson about even vaguely gesturing in the direction of promises. Editing videos takes ages. Who knew?

The video essay after that is a secret shared with only a few people, for now. Unlike the crediting video, the research for this one is basically playing a lot of games. I figured it would be a good idea to try and get as much of that portion of the work done before Infinite Wealth comes out. And I won’t be making diary entries for those games here because then I’m just stepping on my own toes and duplicating my workload.

It’s a video I’ve been wanting to make for a while and I finally found a hook. Or rather, it found me. I also need to get my hands on a working Xbox 360 and a copy of a game that is not available for purchase on the Xbox store, despite being backwards compatible. Luckily I’ve found someone willing to loan me the console, I just have to track down the game.

As for streaming on Twitch, I am planning on getting back to my Dark Souls Remastered playthrough at some point. Right now it’s just been difficult to find several uninterrupted hours in an evening to play. And when I do, my priority right now is getting the crediting video finished, because I want to be done with it so I can move onto something new.

Making things for YouTube and streaming on Twitch is a balancing act, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that sometimes I’m going to need to spend more time doing one over the other. While I’d love to set myself a schedule for streaming, it’s in both mine and your interests to not do that.

So yes – YouTube is rolling, Twitch will happen when it happens, and the website will get updates when I have something to update it with.

A few hundred words about Prey is coming at some point, and I also want to recommend a few YouTube channels. I’ve also been reading a book called Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol J. Clover. Which I might post about here if I feel like it. Or at the very least use as research for several future videos.

Oh, and if I remember I’ll try and post a sneak peek clip of the upcoming crediting video here at some point.