In this edition of Year in Review, Dr. Potts and I decided to have a conversation, think podcast in written form. Here we discussed "stuff" from 2018 varying from our personal lives to actual content that we talk about here on a semi-regular basis. The article was written over the course of a month and-a-half, kind of as we each found time to add to its length. We decided to cut it off as the conversation could have gone on for much longer, which would have lead to an unwieldy article for all involved. So below, you will find Dr. Potts' words preceeded by a "D" and JWfW/JDub/Jaconian's preceded by a "J." Lastly, I want to apologize for the formatting as apparently switching back and forth between fonts can play merry hob with the spacing apparently. It is what it is I guess.
D: So many things that happened in 2018 were in my personal life. Got Engaged. Lost two step moms. Mom moved back to Sacramento Area. But there were plenty of fun things too. Books, movies and lots and lots of Magic TG.
J: Yeah, Conklederp and I had our own family tragedies to deal with during the beginning and end of the year. Coupled with the smokiness that we had up here during the summer kind of put a damper on 2018 being as fun as we were hoping it was going to be. But hearing about Dr. Potts and Jane's engagement was definitely one of the highlights. Plus, two (three if you count SimonsMom, as she did play a couple of times with our SoCal group, and Beardsnbourbon getting engaged too) separate groups in our local D&D group got engaged (they were already together before joining our group so I can't claim any matchmaking abilities).
In the books front, I definitely felt like I've been behind where I would have liked. So on that note Dr. Potts, what have you been reading? I've been reading compilations and switching between those (Poe, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Robert E. Howard), which is probably why I'm only finishing one book every couple of months.
J: Ah audio books. I feel like I have a love/inability with audio books. I did listen to two earlier this year when our office was significantly less populated, with "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy, "True Grit" by Charles Portis, and I started "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushie, but was unable to finish it when more employees moved into the office. I also finished E.K. Johnson's "Star Wars: Asohka" from a previous Audible subscription and have a few chapters into "Thrawn" by Timothy Zahn. For me, it's had to do anything else by pay attention to the story being told, which is kind of hard to do in an office environment. Also the time commitment can be something awful. How do you best listen to audio books?
J: On the video game front, 2018 was definitely dominated by my use of the Nintendo Switch, supplanting my Steam activities. I think the last Steam game I put 120+ hours into was either Morrowind or Skyrim, and those were in separate years. This year it was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Fortnite (for good or ill), and Dark Souls is quickly coming up on that with 52 hours already logged in with my current character.
J: I have the first Thrawn in audio book format, but it's the new Thrawn. I don't know how to explain it. It's the one that is now considered canon because it was after the fall of the Extended Universe. It's the one published in January 2018. Like, I kind of knew the name of the character Thrawn but nothing about him as he was never mentioned in any of the movies or any of the Star Wars games I played.
J: I do love the Switch and has become my platform of choice, usurping the 3DS (partly because it's still not working), but there are frequently Steam-level sales on games and there are a lot of indie titles that are making their way to the platform too. The last half of the month I ended up getting involved in #IndieXmas2018 which is/was an advertising campaign of sorts run by Twitter user IndieGamerChick in collaboration with a bunch of developers and publishers to get the word out on a lot of indie games. All of the ones that I played for on the Switch I had never heard of before, and only one out of the seven I thought was kind of meh. It's definitely re-energized me and playing indies on the Switch. Sorry, I interrupted you.
J: Spider-Verse was fantastically good wasn't it!? Again, I'm not as familiar with Spiderman lore as you are and had no idea, although it shouldn't really surprise me, that this concept was already in the comics since 2014. The art was great, the story was great, the voice acting was great. My only kind of "eh" was Spider-Ham who only seemed to exist to further showcase the ridiculousness of varying Spiderman universes. There was a little bit of Loony-Toons action that Spider-Ham enacted during the final fight, but I would have liked to have seen more of him. And maybe more crowd reaction shots or news footage (Jameson!?) of people catching glimpses of all of the different Spider-people.
J: Totally agree with the #IndieXmas2018. It has definitely gotten me more aware of indie developers and publishers that I was previously unaware of. Like now I know about Ratalaika Games, Sometimes You, All Those Moments, Thinice Games, and I know I'm missing some. I feel like it has also put me in a different mind set as far as playing games quickly, but still beating them, or at least most of them. Some of the puzzle games like Twin Robots: Ultimate Edition and TETRA's Escape I still have to finish, but what I love about those two in particular, is that I feel like I can pick them up to play a couple of levels then put them down when I get too flummoxed. Then the #DiscoverIndies that Indie Gamer Chick started which is a lot like the #IndieXmas2018 and #IndieSelect, but this time you buy the game.
Anyway, that was how my year ended, posting on Twitter a lot more in the last weeks of December than I felt I had all year. Plus it gave me a new appreciation for Twitter as a way of sharing information on indie games, which I like.
And for me, I think this is a decent place to call this article to a close, otherwise I feel like we could just end up having a running conversation that would end up never getting published. So I'm going to say "good bye" for now and I will be back with more indie games as the year goes on, as well a handful of Switch games as the year progresses.
D: Ah yes, that's a good reminder: I did get to play D&D this year for the first time in a long time, with some childhood friends of Jane's and my brother in law m_v_k. It was great to return to D&D and they were a good group.
I also read a great deal. Jane is a super-reader, and it's rubbed off a little bit. She requests lots of good ones, and has also gotten me into listening to Audiobooks. Highlights for the year include: "Eleanor Oliphant is perfectly fine" ; "Borne" ; "Ancillary Justice" and more. A recent favorite is "All Systems Red." I wish my library tracked what books I've checked out, as most of the books I read or listened to this year were from the Library, and there are definitely some I'm forgetting.
J: Ah audio books. I feel like I have a love/inability with audio books. I did listen to two earlier this year when our office was significantly less populated, with "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy, "True Grit" by Charles Portis, and I started "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushie, but was unable to finish it when more employees moved into the office. I also finished E.K. Johnson's "Star Wars: Asohka" from a previous Audible subscription and have a few chapters into "Thrawn" by Timothy Zahn. For me, it's had to do anything else by pay attention to the story being told, which is kind of hard to do in an office environment. Also the time commitment can be something awful. How do you best listen to audio books?
J: On the video game front, 2018 was definitely dominated by my use of the Nintendo Switch, supplanting my Steam activities. I think the last Steam game I put 120+ hours into was either Morrowind or Skyrim, and those were in separate years. This year it was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Fortnite (for good or ill), and Dark Souls is quickly coming up on that with 52 hours already logged in with my current character.
D: Thanks for asking! I love audiobooks, and I find my best times to listen is whenever I can! particularly when driving or performing mindless tasks. Sometimes I will eat my lunch really fast and then spend the rest of the hour just walking around listening to an audiobook. I seem to be able to listen to the story and have some mild distractions, so that helps me a lot. Incidentally, I listened to the Timothy Zhan Thrawn trilogy on Audio way back when.
J: I have the first Thrawn in audio book format, but it's the new Thrawn. I don't know how to explain it. It's the one that is now considered canon because it was after the fall of the Extended Universe. It's the one published in January 2018. Like, I kind of knew the name of the character Thrawn but nothing about him as he was never mentioned in any of the movies or any of the Star Wars games I played.
D: The Switch sounds really cool! I've noticed you've played lots of indies on it as well. I think I'm waiting for any kind of significant price drop before I pick one up. It wasn't that long ago I bought my Wii-U. It was an extremely slow year for me and video games. I put about 50 hours into Dragon Quest VIII before reaching a fetch quest before the like, third final iteration of the boss. I was pretty tired of it by then. I also played lots of Katamari: Damacy earlier in the year, and have had some fun playing 2 player games on my SNES classic. Overall, Video games have really fallen to the wayside, sadly. I'm not sure what it is.
J: I do love the Switch and has become my platform of choice, usurping the 3DS (partly because it's still not working), but there are frequently Steam-level sales on games and there are a lot of indie titles that are making their way to the platform too. The last half of the month I ended up getting involved in #IndieXmas2018 which is/was an advertising campaign of sorts run by Twitter user IndieGamerChick in collaboration with a bunch of developers and publishers to get the word out on a lot of indie games. All of the ones that I played for on the Switch I had never heard of before, and only one out of the seven I thought was kind of meh. It's definitely re-energized me and playing indies on the Switch. Sorry, I interrupted you.
D:Jane and I do watch lots of TV and quite a few movies at the theater. Latest of which was Into the Spiderverse, which was really good!
J: Spider-Verse was fantastically good wasn't it!? Again, I'm not as familiar with Spiderman lore as you are and had no idea, although it shouldn't really surprise me, that this concept was already in the comics since 2014. The art was great, the story was great, the voice acting was great. My only kind of "eh" was Spider-Ham who only seemed to exist to further showcase the ridiculousness of varying Spiderman universes. There was a little bit of Loony-Toons action that Spider-Ham enacted during the final fight, but I would have liked to have seen more of him. And maybe more crowd reaction shots or news footage (Jameson!?) of people catching glimpses of all of the different Spider-people.
D: It would have been great for J. Jonah Jameson to have been in the movie. But we did get Spiderman in sweatpants, so split the difference.
I noticed your retweets and references to IndieGamerChick, and have since picked up a few codes from her. I'm currently playing/tweeting about JonesOnFire, which has been a fun time. I plan to turn my tweets into an article at some point.
I really like what IndieGamerChick is doing, and I am feeling a bit energized by it as well. I don't want to spend the money, but I do think a Switch may be in my future. I love little indie games, and I'm really glad they're available on the system. I have been really 'off' of steam since I switched computers and never really got it running on my new system. And, of course.. there's Magic...
J: Totally agree with the #IndieXmas2018. It has definitely gotten me more aware of indie developers and publishers that I was previously unaware of. Like now I know about Ratalaika Games, Sometimes You, All Those Moments, Thinice Games, and I know I'm missing some. I feel like it has also put me in a different mind set as far as playing games quickly, but still beating them, or at least most of them. Some of the puzzle games like Twin Robots: Ultimate Edition and TETRA's Escape I still have to finish, but what I love about those two in particular, is that I feel like I can pick them up to play a couple of levels then put them down when I get too flummoxed. Then the #DiscoverIndies that Indie Gamer Chick started which is a lot like the #IndieXmas2018 and #IndieSelect, but this time you buy the game.
Anyway, that was how my year ended, posting on Twitter a lot more in the last weeks of December than I felt I had all year. Plus it gave me a new appreciation for Twitter as a way of sharing information on indie games, which I like.
And for me, I think this is a decent place to call this article to a close, otherwise I feel like we could just end up having a running conversation that would end up never getting published. So I'm going to say "good bye" for now and I will be back with more indie games as the year goes on, as well a handful of Switch games as the year progresses.
D: Yes, I'm feeling like this will run on and on. In general, I still have found it very challenging to sit down and write, edit and complete articles in general. Even monthly updates, which tend to be pretty easy. Maybe we can adopt this format as a monthly post, just a conversation that develops over the month. *and* if we both follow #IndieSelect, that is also a monthly format, so it might slot nicely into the conversation. Just a thought.
I'm trying to reprioritize to catch up on things I've let fall fallow. But, as with any year, I don't want to put too much stock in resolutions. I just want to keep it in mind. Looking forward to 2019, it should be a very different year.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian & Dr. Potts
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