12,000 Milestone & Life After Yoshi

Oh yes, I did it or, oh no, I didn't? My Game Library collection has reached its 12,000th entry (12,013 at the time of posting to be precise). I thought I have slowed down a bit with inducting new games in, but it's easy for the library to continue to expand thanks to the plethora of free games being offered left and right these days on the Personal Computer platform between Amazon Prime gaming and Epic Games, and Steam has been good with those sales events despite it getting more and more difficult to find deals now that I have a lot of games on that particular platform. So, business as usual on the gaming front.

Some new arrivals from the current Steam Autumn Sale.

The Steam Awards 2024 Nominations

Here are my The Steam Awards 2024 nominees. Please share yours in the comments. Happy Thanksgiving to my readers who are in the United States. I hope there are plenty of reasons for you to be thankful for this season in the face of all the potential adversities and darkness out there in our lives.

I Love You, Yoshi

Yoshi became my little heart, the best girl ever, when I welcomed her to my home in 2012. We then became inseparable ever since. She would always be with me, almost all the time. My honey-bunny passed away yesterday morning, and I am devastated. I have never felt such loss in my life, and I have been struggling with the grieving process. Yoshi, I miss you so much.

Yoshi Childe Worthington
01/10/2010 - 10/12/2024

Will I Survive Another 14?

I made it for a month+ without participating in livestreaming. And it has been good. There were days when I questioned myself but for the most part, I was happy with my decision. Then, something happened. My guy happened. As you may have guessed, my guy is not a gamer. He's not interested in anything gaming. But he's interested in me. And he's interested in me as a gamer. I have talked to him about my plan to quit streaming but all this time, he thought that I was just saying that in jest. He knew about some of my frustrations involving livestreaming, and he thought it was just, cute. So, when I told him that I wanted to quit permanently, he really thought that I was just blowing off steam.

I tried to keep up with gameplay uploads from local recordings while away from livestreaming.

From Counting Games to Counting Calories

I've gained a lot weight over the past several years and despite my efforts with using video games to help, I have not seen much progress. This is because I have been struggling to commit to these "exercise" games. I really want something like Just Dance to just work but since that game doesn't really teach you how to dance, it's somewhat discouraging to spasm, twitch, and vibrate in front of the screen trying to mimic these professional dancers - even though just merely doing those crazy things is, in itself, a great form of exercise. I have a brief stint with non-gaming yoga programs, thanks to Amazon Prime, and these are easy on my aging body and quite effective. But Amazon got greedy and introduced commercials to their video offerings recently where you have to pay extra money to go commercial free: I stopped doing yoga because the commercials would interrupt the video in the middle of a freaking yoga pose. Just absolutely nasty! And no, I am not going to tell Amazon that it's okay to add this sudden tier of subscription just because they are greedy. The bad thing here is, of course, a lot of people probably did pay the extra cash - the same happened earlier in the video gaming world with the PlayStation Network and eventually, Nintendo's online access. If a majority of Amazon Prime users were more like Personal Computer gamers, Amazon would have cancelled the new subscription tier the same way that Microsoft cancelled paid X-Box Live subscription on the PC and made the service free.

This lady's yoga + HIIT fusion will kick your arse but it felt so good!

...And 14 Years Is Enough

I don't have a lot to show for it, but I am proud of my 14+ years' stint as a livestreaming gamer. Since June 10th of 2010, I have made sure that every single one of my gaming sessions is broadcasted to my streaming platform of choice. Since then, I have accumulated no loyal consistent viewers, and I have always thought that the situation was somewhat amusing. At the end of the day, the result of this lies solely on my shoulders. I stream not to do any kind of performative art; I just want to game and connect with like-minded people, which is something that is probably more sustainable during the earlier days of livestreaming. What kept me afloat in my streaming habit was the idea of archiving my gameplay since viewership has always been nonexistent. Well, I never knew that the day would come when I would sit down, reflect on the situation, and said to myself, "Yeah, it's time to stop."

Everything that begins must come to an end.

Am I Paying the Price of Gaming?

I have been gaming for a long time and until now, I haven't suffered from any kind of physical side effect from the hobby. It's funny actually because at one point, my index finger and thumb on my right hand were hurting and the doctor told me to ease up on performing the swiping motion on my smartphone - apparently, this was a common symptom when touchscreens started to become popular - and that actually worked. Well now, the wrist on my left arm is hurting. I am not 100% sure of course if this is gaming related because I had an incident in the garage a day before the pain started.

With old age comes old age problems?

Of Backlogs and Dust Collectors

Today is the start of Valve's Steam Summer Sale, which as the years go by has become less and less exciting to me because, well, I pretty much have a lot of these games already - outside of the fresh brand-new games that normally don't get a significant price drop anytime soon. Thus, I don't participate in them as heavily as I have done so in the past. Still, I always manage to find myself a bunch of games to induct into my Game Library when the prices are right. It is during these large sales event that the word "backlog" gets tossed around everywhere within the Steam community. Sure, there used to be a time, or two, when I had a differing opinion about this whole backlog thing in the past, but I'd like to share with you my thought about this concept nowadays.

What does that mean, exactly?

It's Been 14 Years...

I was talking to my guy today on our way back from the lake and we were chatting about a celebrity who recently started streaming on YouTube. He was impressed by my knowledge of streaming - mind you, he is a non-gamer, and though he likes watching shorts on YouTube, he doesn't partake in live chatting, and that includes my own Twitch channel (though he may stop by every once in a while). He was impressed by my knowledge of live streaming and asked me, "How do you know so much about this?" I told him I have been streaming since 2010 and even I had to check myself when I said that. It truly has been that long since I first started going live on the Internet, exposing myself to online strangers while I partake in my video gaming hobby.

I tried looking for my oldest possible livestream with a facecam and I found this from 10 years ago.

From Heroes to Just About Anything Else!

It's been a while, I know, and with my return, I have great news to share with you! I have been Heroes of the Storm free for close to a month! Yes, HotS... That dastardly delicious game that is so easy to get into and so hard to let go. To its defense, know that HotS is one of the best games I have ever played, but I have other games to play too you know, and I am not going to live forever - a fact that a lot of people just don't understand apparently since they are preoccupied with how others live their lives instead of focusing on their own. How did I manage this? Well, I am just sick and tired of getting matched against premade groups as a solo player. It's match after match after match after match in every mode. After dealing with this issue for a long, long time, I was just... Done. I sure hope that other solo players will follow suit so that the premades can finally get a taste of their own medicine. They only love the game when they are matched against solos, so when they have to actually work hard to win a game, it's over for them. Perhaps 5 years from now, us solo players can come back to the game to find that the premades have moved on to better things in their lives outside of circle-jerking each other raw day in and day out (even at the wee hours of the morning). But I really doubt that.

HotS is not listed in the last 7 stream categories on my twitch channel? What?!

COVID Is Sick

So, 4+ years after the start of the COVID19 pandemic, I finally caught the bastard. And yes, I am one of those people who would wear a mask everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Whenever I'm outside the house, I am wearing a mask because I really, really don't want to have anything to do with the virus. Every time I come back from the store and get to my car, I would immediately use my hand sanitizer. The guy I'm hanging around with is a little lax in his approach however - though he has never had COVID either, until now - so I am fairly certain that he's the source of my infection. After all, he got sick first. Well, not really, really, sick but he was seemingly coming down with a cold and started coughing. Whatever the case may be, I am here now, battling what I would describe as a nasty case of sore throat and cough.

Never thought that I would ever see this in my life.

Is It Time to Stop Streaming?

I was looking at my Twitch channel the other day and saw the following thumbnail for a recent livestream session. I think the universe is trying to tell me something. I mean, it's been a little tough to stream without interruptions recently since I have to deal with a medical situation, so maybe it's a good time to transition away from all of this.

I know. Just so that you are informed, I was merely yawning while scratching myself.

A Month Almost Entirely Without Gaming

It's almost the end of February, and this must have been the most unproductive gaming month in my whole gaming life. Many wouldn't consider gaming a productive activity, but those of you who are gamers out there should know what I mean. I had very little time to partake in the hobby this month and would continue down this path at least until early March. It's all due to medical reasons because well, life happens, or more appropriately, sometimes life doesn't want to continue happening, but you know, that's just the way it is.

Life of clamps and needles.

Living the 2024 Gamer Strat

After you have been on this planet for a while, the whole "New Year" thing doesn't seem that exciting anymore, or is it just me? The arrival of a new year just signifies a closer proximity towards the end of all existence to us as individuals. It's a scary thing, isn't it? The fact that we know not about the availability of existence before we get here, and now that we are experiencing it, we dread the fact that we will return to that state. Oh, don't get too depressed: there's always video gaming! Well, the new year is off to a mediocre start for me. For one, I thought that my love life was going to get really exciting but that had fizzled out as quickly as it presented itself to me. Still, there is much to celebrate with this new year cycle. With the ever-expanding Game Library, I have recently stepped on the brakes hard on getting new games. I didn't accumulate as many titles during the recent Christmas season compared to previous years because, well, I am all caught up pretty much and two, I also want to live that gamer millionaire life by truly enjoying the things that are already here. I have also come up with a game accumulation management strategy that I had been developing for the past couple of months and so far, I have benefited from its positive effects!

The key to my salvation.