There’s this argument that I have with myself every year around this time: when should I post my games of the year list. I’ll typically write it at the end of December, and publish it in the New Year. However, that’s not really the norm. The Game Awards, for better or worse, are happening later this week, and a bunch of other video game people have started publishing their lists. Heck, I just finished watching Jacob Geller’s video about his favourite games from 2024. On that basis, it would make some sense to publish my list now to mirror what other folks are doing.
There’s also the really obvious benefit of posting a Game of the Year article around TGA. Folks are actively thinking about that right now, and will be complaining all over social media when Shadow of the Erdtree inevitably claims the Game of the Year award. Ergo, there’s a bit of benefit in having a post ready to ride the swell of interest.
And let’s not forget about Winter sales. I don’t know if other folks also do this, but I’ll use the best games of X year lists that are published by my favourite video game content creators as a way to craft my holiday wishlist. It’s typically a really easy way to figure out what interesting games I missed from throughout the year, and allows me to grab said games for a cheaper price.
I’m not going to presume to think that anyone comes to me for recommendations on what games they should play, but if they do then it’d probably be preferred if I had said recommendations listed prior to the winter sales period.
However, there’s one major mental hurdle that I can’t get over with regard to posting the best of list early: the year isn’t actually over yet.
Now, you may be wondering: how many more games are you actually going to finish in 3 weeks? Good question. Unfortunately, I don’t have a firm answer to that. 3 weeks is quite a bit of gaming time, but it also overlaps with the holidays. That makes it really difficult to know how much more gaming I’ll truly get done between now, and the end of December.
That said, I did pick up a handful of really interesting titles during the Steam Autumn sale, which I’m working through right now. I don’t really want to exclude them because I haven’t made enough of a dent in any of them to have strong opinions yet. As such, I need that extra time to actually allow my thoughts, and feelings to really cement.
And before anyone accuses me of throwing shade here, that’s not my intention. I have a particular way of doing my best of lists, and, despite seeing some benefit in changing how I’ve handled them, I haven’t been able to bring myself to make that change. Moreover, other people are free to do whatever they want with their lists. That’s the beauty of making something yourself: you also get to make the rules.
Anyway, that’s where I’m at mentally with my games of 2024 list. With how things are going, I might end up not even starting to write it until after we’ve flopped over into the new year. That’d really let the dust settle, and would give me plenty of time to break down what games really stood out to me throughout 2024. These lists also lose relevance the longer you wait…maybe I should just wait until February.
I dunno. Does anyone else spend this much time thinking about really nebulous details of their blog? I feel like this was way too much thought for something that doesn’t really matter that much.
Either way, that’s all I wanted to ramble about today. Thank you for reading, and stay safe out there.
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Frostilyte Writes 
I definitely fight with this each year. I think I always end up wanting to do it in the new year rather. I think the Game Awards do their show too early. It really should be in the new year. So all the games have a chance to get played properly.
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Might be silly to say, but knowing someone else has a similar line of thinking to my own does give me some reassurance. Cheers!
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I think the process for me is, besides thinking about whether stick to the reliable text format or maybe try to jump the shark with making it a video, but I guess that in my case I still have enough time to think on what are the games I would pick here as I probably can take on some more until the last week…except that even in that scenario, trying to nitpick specific games when I have played so many and most have left a good impression is tough.
Probably the only thing I may have set in stone is the first place due to how it was THE only game I had been eagerly awaiting to release, dropped in April, and while my interest in it sometimes fluctuates recently, back when it dropped [as well as whenever I feel like playing it for long] it REALLY had my attention.
So even if it may be contentious in polish, those moments I could only get once with that game I still find so memorable on the context of my attention not being that easy to catch and keep for long still push it for me into a personal number one. And I say it like that because I have played some other more well known games that are still mighty great to this day and others would likely put above my one pick.
Which brings me to how many of the games I’ve played this year aren’t even new. Not that it matters to me, but you won’t see things like Wukong on my list because my PC was nowhere near able to handle that and many others…so they are completely out of my radar and I instead tend to focus on stuff I can emulate or can for sure run on my PC. And even then, there are a few that I still have to give a fair shot sooner or later [like Pseudoregalia and Celeste].
Will be interesting to see what I can come up with this year, as I actually had made a 2023 game awards on my Neocities – but only checking back at it now I saw I actually had written it in January 3rd 2024 instead of before the year ended…oh well, new challenge, new discoveries.
Cheers :]
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I do always wonder about if other bloggers face the same sort of…for lack of a better word challenges that I do. It seems they do, as you also put a lot of thought into how exactly you want to present your opinions every year whether it be what games to cover, how to cover them, or even the format for delivering that information (video vs text). Thank you for taking the time to share.
Also, very much looking forward to whatever you end up doing as I’m very curious about your number 1 for the year. I can’t even think about what came out in April, and I’m not really inclined to go check as I think it’ll make the surprise better to find out whenever you publish your own list.
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Happy new year!
I did try writing the games of 2024 thing a few days before the year ended…but I ended up overshooting anyways – between going over more detail than usual in most of the games I highlighted [mainly WHY I played them, how or what I thought made them cool]…and how I had started the draft with multiple categories about different kinds of games to mention them rather than just doing [Best X game of Y Category] to not specifically limit myself to that regard.
And yet, I wonder if that particular limitation [or rather, inspiration, cause 2023’s format was inspired by another writer] is what allowed me to put that together a bit faster, even if also belated to the year it was made for. I only ask that of myself right now because the word count has quite gone up a lot, and I’ve been now in the process of how to summarize most of thsoe thoughts I already wrote concisely in one page – not only as a refresher but also as a contingency plan when I know well that there is likely many people that may not bother reading EVERYTHING when I wrote so much lol
It was fun to let myself free writing though, more so when I did it through WordPress again and didn’t have to think about how to adapt the stuff I was writing to HTML at the same time for the Neocities site. But in any case, I’m still on the process of doing the last things it should have.
I was definitely going at it full steam two days ago, but now I think I may be overthinking again on whether all that I’m pouring it for it is even for anyone but myself.
But I definitely want to do more stuff this year – even if for myself, because I would feel happier about the year in retrospective once I look back at all what I’ve tried, even if some of it doesn’t work out.
I wish you luck on your own 2024 list too – I saw your Month in Review post but I can guess you’re still on the process of putting together the big list highlighting the whole year. Cheers :]
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And a very happy new year to you as well!
I feel like having an existing structure is always a good way to speed up the process of creating something. Not just a written article, or list of the best games you’ve played. Having a template to work off, or having a mental picture of what you want to create gives you a much clearer idea of where you’re going. And, knowing that, you can kind of plot your path out toward that goal a little more efficiently. At least, that’s been my experience with this sort of thing. If I don’t know where I’m going, or what points I even want to make in a written article, it generally takes me a lot longer than when I’ve got my points firmly planned out already.
I know exactly what you mean about looking at your year’s worth of work. I’ll occasionally look back at my work when I need a bit of a kick to get started on something new. It’s sorta like seeing all of what you’ve already done proves that you can do whatever it is that you’re currently stuck trying to finish.
Plus, it’s fairly important to have regular check-ins with oneself to acknowledge the work that went into the work you’ve been doing. There aren’t exactly prizes for finishing a particularly challenging blogging project. Never mind that the relative difficulty of a task is entirely dependent on the person attempting it.
Thank you! I have started working on it, but I’m in no rush to actually get it done. I already knew I wouldn’t be hitting anywhere near the calendar date rolling over to 2025, so I’ve been slowly chipping away at my list between writing other things that feel more immediately affecting.
By the way, where is your 2024 list hiding? I tried following the wordpress blog link you’ve got in your bio, but it goes to a website that does not appear to be setup yet. I’m curious to know what all grabbed your attention throughout 2024.
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I’m not sure exactly what link you happened to find…but I can tell you that at least right now, I still haven’t actually finished my list yet, whoops…
Maybe sooner or later I will go through giving it the last touches though, since as I had mentioned, there was a lot of the bulk written down but basically ended up taking a few days off it to be able to come back to it with a cooler head. I’ll let you know when it’s ready though :]
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I just realized what you meant with that uninitialized website…I had COMPLETELY forgot about that and I don’t know why I ever put it there when I haven’t used that in a LONG while.
Updated it with the one I actually have [https://arcadestrikerblog.wordpress.com/] – again, the post isin’t actually out yet but I’ll sure let you know when it is!
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I’m glad I’m not crazy. I genuinely didn’t know what to say, or what I was doing wrong when I clicked the older one and just…you know…didn’t see your current blog. Plus I spent some time going through your Neocities site, and couldn’t find anything blog-like there either.
Glad that’s sorted, and I’ve turned on notifications for your wordpress blog so I should get a bloop to my inbox when the article is out. Looking forward to it!
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It’s out :]
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Never had to think about this myself since I don’t think I’ve ever played enough new games to write a game of the year list, but I get that. As much as I don’t care for the Oscars, it makes sense for them to hold their awards show the year after just as it would for any awards show. At least I expect they’d allow games that came out after a certain cutoff period like December 1 or sometime into the next year’s show so nobody is left out.
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The volume of things I played from a given year has never stopped me, but I get what you mean. I think I’d feel a bit more weird about it if my list wasn’t always dominated by new releases, or games that featured substantial content updates throughout the year (read as: fighting games).
I’m pretty sure that they do allow December games from the previous year, but I can’t think of a single time where one was nominated or won. There’s definitely some recency bias at play there me thinks.
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