2023 was fun.
Memories...
Happy New Year everyone!
It’s an obvious choice but I’m Irish, I’m allowed. And I like U2 up until around 1993.
Just a short email today to say hello and wish you all the best. There are lots of places online to read about what a fantastic year 2023 ended up being for people who like to play video games while being a very difficult year for thousands of people who make those games. You’ve probably read them. PCGamer has a good article that tries to do both here. I would also recommend the Digital Foundry end of year article. Focusing on technical achievements and graphical power feels a little retro at this point, but the folks at Eurogamer can make it accessible like no one else.
I’m not doing a GOTY list really, but I will say there some absolutely stellar games this year, even for a guy like me who found himself struggling to keep up while also getting back into American Truck Simulator in a big way. I would personally recommend: Dredge, Dave the Diver, Alan Wake 2, and of course, Baldur’s Gate 3.
But I end the year (or start it, really… the end of the year was a little busy) with some gaming memories that made me happy this year. In no particular chronological or preferential order:
playing Dredge in a hotel room in San Antonio for hours on end
driving into Texas in American Truck Simulator
musical numbers in Alan Wake 2
the dawning realization that I was going to spend a LOT of time playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and I was not going to regret it
playing way too much Destiny 2 with my friends while complaining almost constantly about Destiny 2
watching my daughter play and adore playing Tchia
watching my son cackle his way through all kinds of fiendish dealings of death in games from TABS to Ravenfield
watching my son build a pretty impressive community of cutesy weirdos in Cult of the Lamb
playing Untitled Goose Game with my daughter (even though that game can be mentally taxing when your fellow player is yelling at you to do very difficult things, and is also six and easily frustrated)
dying hilariously or just badly in various co-op games with my friend Matt, perhaps most memorably in Hunt: Showdown
revisiting Dead Cells to try the Castlevania DLC (it’s really good!)
absolutely everything about Death Stranding, but particularly the beautiful, meditative, resonant final hours
watching Centre College Overwatch Gold win their first title!
Thank you as well for reading these emails in 2023. There will be more coming in 2024. I plan to return to the original idea of putting stuff out even if it’s short here and there. Hopefully that will be okay with everyone.
I should be writing again soon; our intensive January term starts on Wednesday and I am teaching “History and Video Games”. More about that to come, but for now you can toodle over here to have a look and get a sense of what the students are being introduced to this week.
Take care everyone!