Merry Christmas to all of you. A big thank you from the whole team here at XboxEra - you’ve helped make 2022 our biggest year yet in terms of growth and viewership.
The great news is, there’s so much more to come! 2023 is going to be absolutely mental, and the fact we get to do this with all of you in tow makes it all incredibly worthwhile.
It’s been a weird year for me, with a lot of personal upheaval and change, the sorts of things we never can plan for you. BUT, I am ending the year in good spirits, and feeling pretty great about it overall.
Highlights for me this year?
Record views/clicks and visits on ALL our content channels - YouTube, the main site, are all absolutely on fire!
The lovely @XboxP3 coming on the XboxEra Podcast. See you on episode 200 Phil!
Seeing the near final draft of the book over the last few days.
Launching Forgera for the Halo Community
Seeing a map I made be featured by 343 in their first official Forge video.
How about you folks? What’s been your gaming highlight of the year?
It’s been a strange year for me too. At the start of the year I got a new job, which suddenly turned into something much bigger than I could’ve ever anticipated. Sadly this also meant I didn’t have nearly as much time to play video games (or write reviews) than I did in previous years.
My gaming hightlight is a game I played when I just wanted to turn off from work, turn off from the world around me. It’s Timberborn.
Timber… WHAT!?
Timberborn is a city-builder where you build a colony of beavers, fighting an imminent drought that’s occuring every summer. You need to build dams, levees and master the water. A perfect game for a Dutchman like me!
Game Pass highlight for me was Two Point Campus. One of the few games I did review for XboxEra this year. Such a fun little simulator.
It’s been a pretty standard year for me, but with some much needed health improvements. After having visited many fysiotherapists I finally found out what was causing the random headaches that would appear and just stay all day, or week long. When we finally found the reason it was a huge, huge relief.
Without those damn headaches I can enjoy gaming so much more, can enjoy life in general much more. Gaming highlights for me have to be AI: The Somnium Files, loved that, the first one that is. Yet to check out the sequel. Tinykin was a big surprise too, as was Pentiment which I expected to not dig at all, but sure did! Got myself a fantastic new TV, which was highly unexpected, because the one I had was nothing to sneeze at. Spending tons of time with my dog, always.
I can’t deny that the news about Russia had me on edge too, that’s why I stopped watching the news altogether, and it sure has been for the better.
Here’s to 2023 where things hopefully will become a bit more normal again in the world, gotta stay positive, right? A year where we’re gonna slay some vampires with our friends, or solo! A year where we’ll finally get to experience Godd’s dream game, a year where we finally will see real results of all these acquisitions.
This year has been one of my favorite ever. I’ve never put in so much work yet had so much fun. I can’t wait to see what this site and community become in 2023.
In terms of buying games, I only bought one this year since it has been a slow year for me and the games I was looking forward to turned out not so great. I was also not working for a significant chunk, so I had to be more careful with spending but fortunately Game Pass was there to make sure I always have things to play.
Next year promises so much though, as I can spend more and there are way more games coming out that I am interested in.
Merry Christmas everyone! Honestly this year has kind of sucked with me not being able to walk for 7 months lol but that has helped me appreciate my health more now than ever and the time that I have to work on this awesome site with these great people. This also means that 2023 is going to kick ass by default in comparison, so I’m definitely excited for the future!
Been a pleasure watching all the team build something from nothing and grow it into what it is now. All the best to our wee community, team and everyone’s families.
Καλά Χριστούγεννα με υγεία, αγάπη και ευημερία σε @Shpeshal_Nick@Sikamikanico and the rest of the staff plus of course to the best gaming community on the internet!
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