2024 – A Year in Review

(Intro)

Hello everyone. Hope you’re doing well. Today, we’ll just be going over 2024 and all that’s happened here on the channel. And there’s been a lot that has happened. Right out of the gate, 2024 was a very successful year for the channel. It’s grown quite a lot and I am so excited and happy that things are going well. So many new people have checked out the channel, which if you are from this year, glad to have you on board. Hope you are enjoying the videos. But in general, I’ve done this year in review for the past few years, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to sit down and just have a good chat with you about what’s happened and what to look forward to in 2025. This is very much going to be a more relaxed video; we’ll go over some fun statistics of the channel, some of the highs and lows that happened throughout and some potential goals for the next year. The background footage is just some raids from the recent Tarkov wipe that happened last week, plus maybe some other games. I’m not too sure. But let’s get into how this year has been and all that’s gone on.

(Numbers are fun)

In terms of number of videos made, I don’t have an exact number, because I would need to manually count one at a time from my channel page, but I have made at least over two-hundred and seventeen videos. Which is crazy to think about. As someone who isn’t and will never be a daily uploader, that’s a ton of work and I am very proud of that work. Personally speaking, I have seen tons of growth in terms of video pacing, formatting, thumbnails, title work; I’ve learned the most this year by a long shot. And I hope to continue that learning process in 2025; with new skills and designs to hopefully breath more new life into each video I make. There were over six-hundred and twenty-nine new subscribers to the channel, which again if you are one of those, hello and thank you so much for allowing me to be around during your free time. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but the almost 2500 subscribers on this channel are awesome. I couldn’t be happier with that number; literal dream come true stuff. I just hope to make interesting and engaging enough videos that more people find me worth their time. The channel over the span of the whole year had over half a million views; which that number blows me away. A large portion of that came from the best viewing video of the year which was the Elden Ring Seamless Coop video. Shadow of the Erdtree coming out in the summer brought a lot of new views to that video even though it’s over two years old, which hey I appreciate a ton; I love that video and the mod is amazing. I guess a lot of people seem to agree.

(The highs and lows)

While Tarkov is still my primary interest right now, especially with the newest wipe being released last week, I have taken the risk of talking about games and topics not about Tarkov. And for the most part, the reception has been very positive. Which honestly makes me so happy. I love Tarkov; despite the game state sometimes, especially right now, the general animosity from the community, and sometimes the topics we discuss related to Tarkov, I freaking love the game. However, I don’t want to just always be rambling on about that game. There’s plenty of other games, genres, mechanics, philosophies about games that I am interested in, and knowing that if I make something not related to Tarkov people will still be interested in it, gives me a confidence I didn’t think I’d ever have with this channel. I’m going to be honest; I always figured that any video not about EFT would just do so poorly, it would push me away from ever wanting to do it. But the two videos talking about Death Sprint 66 and DayZ showed me there is an audience out there that is interested in other games and what I might have to say about them. And that brings a sense of comfort knowing that we can deviate a little bit from time to time and have some fun with other games. I am so excited to continue pursuing that in 2025. Granted, not all of them landed as I had hoped, but that’s okay. A personal favorite of mine from this year was a video I made about when to gamers begin to get serious. It was an interesting talk about couch gaming from an era kind of forgotten, and how when people are playing with their friends and are about to lose, they’ll lock in to try and win. And I explored some reasons as to why that’s the case. It was a super fun video and I really want to do more stuff like that in future, even if they don’t so super well. They can’t all be huge hits, and that’s something I need to remind myself from time to time. For about two solid months, most videos I was putting out were hitting very good numbers in relation to the size of the channel, and the last couple that came out before the end of the year stumbled a little bit. And while I can easily sit here and just blame the algorithm for not pushing things out, there is always a reason as to why it doesn’t. So, in the end, it comes back to me. There is always room for improvement; whether that’s in the thumbnail, title, release time for the video. The Path of Exile 2 video and the Tarkov/Arena PvP video are two I struggled with. Hopefully we can get back on track to what things were like before, and this is just a little stumble with a lesson learned.

(Expectations for 2025)

In terms of what to expect from myself and the channel, for the time being, with the EFT wipe being so fresh, we’ll be going over a lot of stuff relating to that because this wipe has shaken the game up in considerable ways. So, that is my first priority. Other than that, more one-off videos about games I’ve enjoyed, or discussions about video game philosophies are also to be expected. I really, and I mean really want to learn a new editing software to try and add some extra flair to the videos, but for the time being that is just too much of a herculean task with the amount of stuff I currently want to cover. I said this last year too, and experimented a little bit, but wasn’t able to grasp the program I was testing to a point it made sense to switch. Maybe this year I will put in some more effort, even if it means not uploading for like a week or so. We’ll see, just my thoughts.

(Outro)

For all of you who have been around for potentially years, thank you. For anyone who has recently found the channel, whether you subscribed or not, thank you. It means the world to me that there are normal folk who are interested in hearing what this bumbling idiot has to say about a video game. It truly breaks my mind that people stick around for that. But I am eternally grateful. I finally feel like I hit a stride the second half of this year; things have improved so much and I couldn’t be happier. Whether you watch one video and move on, or stick around for each new upload, I am so happy people find what I say interesting enough to spend their valuable time watching and listening. It’s why I always end my videos with thanking you for taking the time out of your day to watch. All I hope to do is return that favor with more videos that tickle your fancy. Other than that, I wish you a running start to 2025. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to watch this video. I hope to see you in future ones.