I like cataloguing things. I like making lists. I also like writing down my thoughts and I also like trivia. That last part is not necessarily relevant, but that’s besides the point.

I initially saw a friend on Twitter make a list of games he had completed in a year, updating it as it went, so that he had something to look back at when the year’s end came around. I really liked the idea, so I set out to start making such threads of my own. I’ve been doing them for 3 years now I believe.

I like doing things by myself and that’s how much of my gaming growing up ended up being. However, and I’m not sure when, I developped a gnawing feeling that if no trace was recorded anywhere, it would be akin to having never done (or in this case, played) anything.

I tried remedying this in various ways; YouTube uploads or Twitch streams. Both required a lot of discipline and are basically nowadays careers in and of themselves. Not everyone can devote time to being a Streamer or Let’s Player or Vtuber or whatever is trendy right now.

So the thread was a great idea to record this. However as time went by I realized Twitter is not good for archival nor for what is essentially blogging. There is a lasting ephemeral feel to anything tweeted, and given the state of the site in recent years it feels validated.

Given this, I set out to try and come up with a more permanent answer. HowLongToBeat.com is good as a lasting catalogue of what I’ve beaten, but it is strictly a detail-oriented list. Cold and calculated. The few rentry.co pastebins I made were longer form, but as a basic pastebin website it also felt inadequate. The author also appears to be a bitcoin bro but that only slightly sours the taste.

After all this, I ended up finally acquiring a domain of my own and began learning how to use Hugo as a static site generator, alongside the Gokarna theme. I think I’m pretty happy with what I have going on here. As long as the domain is up and my hosting holds (which for now is very limited but I don’t expect this blog to get much traction where I need to get better hosting, at least for now), everything will remain where it is. And that feels great.

The work to be done now is to get my backlog of games completed posted on the blog, alongside my backlog of Steam Next Fest demos. For the Steam Next Fest posts I intend to write them as I look back at the various demos I’ve played and where they are now. Whenever a new Next Fest rolls by, I’ll be posting fresh new experiences then.

Sure, this blog will get even fewer eyes on it than my very modest Twitter account. But at the same time, once I have a flow going on, I expect to start linking it instead of making longform tweets about my various dealings. Kinda like a professional blogger linking their Substack.

Hope whoever sees this enjoys it as much as I do.