Episode 021 - 2023 Wrap Up

The friends are discussing their year in review and the progress of their podcast. They talk about how the year flew by and how they are looking forward to the next season of the podcast. They also discuss their game library, purchases, and episode statistics. So dude, what's up dude? What's up man? Dude, happy new year. We're almost there. Happy new year dude. How was this year for you? How would you rate it just quickly, briefly? Long. It's been long? Dude, this year flew by for me. What part of the year flies by? Does any part specifically? You know, it's interesting because my youngest son is now just over a year old. So my whole beginning, my entire January was kind of like that difficult transition from parental leave to working again and traveling. So that transition was difficult. So I'd say from like January to April, I don't know what was happening. Yeah, it was just a blur. Yeah. I mean, like day to day, I don't know what I ate yesterday. Like it just, I don't know what was going on. You have early onset dementia. Probably. Yeah, I felt like the whole year just went by really, really fast while also feeling long because I have two children. So you had a fast paced, exhausting year. Yeah, it's been exhausting. But when I think about it, it's like, holy crap, 2023 is over. Yeah, man, that is the American dream right there, man. Just struggle quickly and drown slowly. What about you? Yeah, so this year flew by for me, dude. Last year was like there was a memorable part of it near the end of the year. I bought my wife a Nintendo Switch as a last minute present when I had already gotten her a lot of other presents. And we got Pokemon Snap because she just really wanted to play it that night. And I feel like that was two weeks ago and she just had her birthday again last month. So it's crazy, man. Lots of video games. You also had a birthday. I did have a birthday, yeah. It was good. I'm really looking forward to having another one. Forty's coming up quick, dude. Oh, don't even. Oh, that hurts. Did any new bones in your body start hurting this year? I'm pretty sure this joint, my left hand ring finger middle joint is broken. I think I broke it a while ago. I can't push that any further. It hurts like a motherfucker. I can crack everything else by pushing these down. You don't know how you did that? No idea. I think I jammed it or something. Like moving something. Put some ice on it, man. I think it jammed inward. So I think the knuckles fucked up. That wasn't really a good question to ask, man. I'm sorry. No, it's alright. It's really depressing. That wasn't the first one I could think of. Because all my bones hurt. All the time. Three. Two. One. Backward. This is getting a little bit great. So what are we here to talk about? Are we talking about any one game today? We're just kind of like doing a year-end thing, right? Yeah, it's a little 2023 wrap-up. I think we can confidently say this is the end of our first season. Yeah, I think so. I'm excited for this. I'm excited for the following year here coming up. Because I feel like Season 2 of the podcast is going to be better editing. We're a lot more organized. We're a lot better at this than we started out. I feel like people, when they start listening, if they listen to our introduction and our first couple episodes, there's a high chance that they're just going to delete. Or maybe not. I don't know. Well, dude, starting out bashing Wind Waker was rough. For anybody that likes Wind Waker. Oh, yeah. I did get some feedback about that, though. Yeah, so your brother actually asked me. Did he listen? He did. And he said that he's so glad that we didn't really like Wind Waker because he's always had that opinion of it. And he felt like he was alone. And I did, too. So three brothers, same opinion. You can't be wrong. Yeah, I'm sticking by it. I think it was good. I think we were just so excited to get started. I mean, in the first day, we knocked out three separate recordings, just trying to get those out. I feel like from when we talked about it and said, yeah, let's do it, to actually getting that first recording done, it felt like it was really vast. I feel like we jumped right in, which I think is great. Yeah, well, it was kind of like you're just sitting there with a gun in your hand, afraid to pull the trigger kind of thing. I don't know if that's like an end-of-the-year suicide reference that I shouldn't put in there. But, like, we didn't take a lot of time to just sit there and, like, plan everything out. It was just, let's get something going and we'll figure it out. Because I was very confident that we would develop our own style and everything like that. Yeah. Oh, you want to know one thing? One thing with our style that I really enjoyed is how we forget to introduce ourselves, like, all the time, including right now. I didn't forget. I did. I did, yeah. I fully did. So why don't we go ahead and get that recorded. Yeah. Just so it's a little bit more concise. Take the note, right? Welcome back to 321 Backlog. My name is James. This is my host, Alec, who is one of the founding members of the Harlem Globetrotters. This is a podcast where we talk about and discuss games from our backlog, but today is a very special episode. The year is over, and we're going to recap how it's went. 2023. How was it, man, being a Harlem Globetrotter? Was it rough getting started? That's how I broke my finger. That's what I thought. Yeah. So, yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about just kind of how the year went and just some little statistics, things we liked, things we didn't like, some of the challenges and tribulations, trials and tribulations we've gone through. And maybe things we're looking forward to that we're going to do in the future. I think it's going to be a similar format to our little halfway check-in we did. Yeah. Was that 4th of July? It was around then, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was definitely around then because I specifically remember. Yep. Barbecue simulator. What was the – it doesn't matter. It was like barbecue simulator what, bring all the boys or something? I don't remember. I think I have it. I should have Steam up while I – Always. Always. I should never not have it up. So, yeah, and I guess we'll talk about a couple of the things – yeah, we can talk about a few of the things that we do very poorly because I think I'm very bad at something, and I want everyone to know how bad I am at actually removing games from my backlog. Oh, man, I don't even want to know how much you're up to. Oh, we have to talk about it, right? Yeah, while we both wait for Steam to launch. So, in 2023, we have had, I think including this one – let me just make sure – yes, including this episode you are currently listening to, we have had 21 episodes open to the public, available to the public. We've had 10 Patreon-exclusive extended episodes, and one of those is going to be, I think, open to the public. We had a guest on talking about our Yotune game, so we actually have a little extra conversation between me and one of our guests on there as well, but that is free to everybody, whether you're a Patreon member or not. So definitely go check that out. Patreon.com slash 321backlog. Oh, what else? Let's see. So, I have 316 games in our combined library. Yeah, that's a little excessive, and that's only on Steam. Yeah, it is only on Steam, correct. Yeah, and that's one thing that we've done, so we've started pretty consistently. We get very excited and we check the Epic Store because they give out a free game. Anybody that listens and wants to build an obscene backlog, it's free. They give out a game or two every week. I swear, there was one week, I don't know if it was this year or last year, they did, I think it was three games in one week, all free. Yeah, man, we got Death Stranding for free. Yeah. That's a big game. It's a huge game. It's an excessively long game, some people would say. Fun fact, I was looking at our analytics, more people have listened to our episode 2 or part 2 of Death Stranding than they've listened to the part 1 episode. That's fucking insane. Isn't that interesting? That's insane. Yeah. Speaking of analytics, some further analytics, our most viewed episode for 2023 as of this recording is Little Nightmares. I resent that. Yeah? Kind of. I think it was good. I think it came out about the time they announced Little Nightmares 3. So it kind of makes sense, I think. Yeah, it's just that that game has such a big following and I don't get it. I still think you need to play the second one. They fixed a lot of stuff. I probably will. Yeah. If things keep going the way they have, tomorrow will be Halloween. It will approach that quickly and I'll just play it again. Yeah. Our least viewed so far has been Inside, which I was very surprised. Well, if you think about it, just the name alone probably makes it difficult to, like, recognize. It's not like a search term that makes sense if you're trying to, Inside game is going to bring up a lot of weird stuff. Very true. Well, that's all I have for really any of our statistics. Yeah. I just want to say that since we started the podcast, I've actually purchased, not gotten for free, but purchased 32 games on Steam. Okay. One, Jesus Christ. Thank you. Two, how do you check that? Because I don't buy them that often, nor do I go in with the proceeds. You go on home, you'll have your little picture in the top right, and when you click on it, you go to account details, and then it shows purchase history, and then you just have to manually count them like a fucking scrub. All right. Let's see. Where was it? All right. 2023. Okay. Wow. Sneaks up on you. Oh, man. Okay. Well, okay, are you going by when we started the podcast? Yep. We started a recording in April. So, wow. My first game that I purchased for the podcast directly was Limbo. That was March 9th. My first purchase in April after we started recording was Red Dead Redemption 2. I brought that one up real early. I didn't even know we had that. Okay. Yeah. So, let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31. Wow. I purchased 31 and a Steam Deck. Oh, yeah, that's true. And a DLC. And a Steam Deck was a big one. So, including the DLC. So, you combine that and that's 63 games that we've purchased. That's money we've spent. Yeah. And then we've gotten a ton of free games on the Steam and Epic both. Yeah. I think you got Half-Life for free pretty recently. Yes, yes. Yeah. It's crazy, man. It's a problem. So, we're not doing a very good job getting rid of the backlog. But guess what? That's more content for you slimy bugs. Man, I tell you what. There's actually a handful on here that I really want to have. Oh, there are so many I want to play. I wish we could do. I need more hours in my day so I could play more games. Yeah. Yeah. I tend to play a lot either if I take an entire day off of work and I have nothing to do or if I try to play at the end of my day. So, it's hard to. I have found it's pretty difficult to sit down and play. Just set time aside and play. It's like a fucking adult. Wow. So, that was our Backlog Builders segment. We should just add a segment. Oh, yeah. And we get a new game. A quick segment of Backlog Builders. What have you bought today, James? Oh, you know what would be kind of cool? What games have you acquired? You know what a cool idea is? We could post publicly what our backlogs are. Yeah. And let people kind of put some input if anyone's interested. Yeah. That's kind of an idea. I would love some community engagement, social media engagement. I'd love to know what would be the best place, what platform, since we're on all of them, which platform to use. I don't know which one's better for, like, polls and things. I feel like Twitter is probably good, but I don't. Yeah. Wait, what? I don't know. What was that? I've never heard of Twitter before. I read about it on Wikipedia. I think they call it X now. Yeah, I forgot. I think everybody still calls it Twitter, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah, on all of our stuff, any time I see something that uses X, it's like, X, formerly Twitter. So let's talk about it. You want to talk about some of our favorite games from this, like from this, all of this? Okay. Yes, I do. So you want to go first? We've played a lot of damn games. Yeah, man. I was going to go full joke mode. We happy few loved it. So as far as the actual gameplay goes, I really enjoyed God of War a lot, and I also really enjoyed Ori. Yeah. There's going to be some differing opinions there. I know. And, yeah, those are probably my, I would just say those are my two favorite games that we played out of all of this. And I want to say, I think, I don't know, man. I really enjoyed, like, some of the discussion. I would say the discussion I really enjoyed inside, and then some of the more recent ones we did. Yeah. The Brothers, A Tale of Two Sons, and Overcooked. I think they were just fun. I feel like we kind of hit a stride where we were being stupid. I think the full episode title of our episode 17 was A Tale of Two Sons and One Dumb Bitch. Something like that, probably. I remember when you sent me a text of that when you were editing, and I was like, that sounds like it's straight out of something I said, because I didn't remember saying it. But it's funny when, if you ever, if anybody's ever, like, listened to themselves talk and have a discussion, like, you become very predictable to yourself, because you know what you're going to, I know what I'm going to say before I say it, because it's the same thought that I would have based on the conversation. It's weird. Right. It's very strange. Yeah. So, yeah. Some dumb bitch. Oh, Spider-Man was good, too. Ooh, that leads me into my favorite games. You gave me two, I'll give you two. I think Spider-Man, Miles Morales, hands down, was my favorite game we played to discuss. What was your favorite game to discuss as well, as play? Well, sorry. It was my favorite game that we decided to do for the podcast. Loved it. It was absolutely amazing. I have not 100% of the game. I didn't platinum it for, like, those PlayStation achievement crazy people. I didn't do that, but, like, for the game, just the contained story and collectibles and all that, I 100% of it. Was there another game you 100% of, too? No. Okay. But, no, the Miles Morales, because I loved it so much, I immediately, after, like, credits rolling and getting, and starting on, like, getting the collectibles done, I immediately bought Spider-Man 2018, immediately, and played through that. Immediately. Like, yeah, I think you were still working on Miles Morales, and within, like, a week, maybe a week and a half, I'd say 10 days, I beat Spider-Man 2018 before we recorded, and it was just fantastic. Yeah. Man, those Sony studio games are good. Yeah. And my second, like, favorite game was Little Nightmares, and I say those two specifically because Little Nightmares I enjoyed so much, I immediately went back, bought the DLCs, played through them, and immediately bought Little Nightmares 2 and played through it. Like, the content spoke, so I spoke back with money. It was fantastic. So I really liked that. As far as discussion, I liked our discussion on Overcooked for sure because it was our first, like, multiplayer game. Oh, yeah. And it was kind of like finding our way around a different format for kind of a different style game. And the Yotune discussion I really liked. I think we were kind of, like, on it. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm saying, how I feel like we're in a little bit of a stride lately. You know, our discussions are they feel good, they look good. Yeah. Our discussions even taste good. Overcooked. Oh, man. But, yeah. Yeah, when I was looking, after I had already given my statement, I looked and I saw Overcooked on there and I thought about that too because that was unique. It was, you know, multiplayer. It was good. It was a good time. Oh, just this is out of order. But because we didn't talk about, we didn't look at our purchase history for other platforms. Oh, my God. But a little sneak peek into something else we're going to talk about later on. I made a purchase on my PS4 because I got impatient. Ragnarok. How nice. Has been purchased. That's good. I have a copy of that too. Fantastic. Yeah, we're all set, ready to go. I got the copy of that from, again, your brother. Nice. It was on sale. We got PS Plus. Okay. So. Yeah, he got a, I think he got like the special edition of it or something and it came with a code for a digital copy. Oh, nice. Awesome. And he gave it to me because he had a physical, so. Thanks, brother. Thanks, man. We all appreciate that, everybody. I was very thankful. His name is also James. Yep. What was your least favorite game? Well, it was one of your favorites. Fucking Ori. Okay, I'll put a huge caveat on that. I think it was my worst because I was in a bad spot to play it. Yeah. So my playing experience was bad because I had a lot of outside factors. That's what I would say on that. I did not at that time, and that's one of the reasons I think that it was one of my favorites. I just have fond memories of when I sat down and got to play it. Like, the weather was really nice at that time and all that, so. I think my actually, the game I enjoyed the least after playing it through and actually giving it a good, like, chance at playing it, I think my least favorite game was Devil May Cry. Okay. Because that style of game I'm not, I don't do well with. So what I did play through it, it was, it didn't capture my attention. So I think, and I'm trying to phrase this right because I can acknowledge it's a decent game, and there are some things I did like about it, but it didn't, like, once I stopped my play session, and I had nothing really that was preventing me from playing into it, I just didn't have any desire to pick the console back up to play it. Right. It didn't pull me back in. So I think that, because Ori, I would go back and play it. DMC, I don't think I would. Likewise, same. Even though I enjoyed DMC, I don't think I would ever play that game again unless somebody made me. Yeah. I hated We Happy Few. That was also a really bad game. Yeah. That was not a good game. It wasn't fun to play it. It wasn't, it was fun to discuss it, but I always have a good time, you know? Yeah. The discussion was leaps and bounds better than the game itself. Yeah. And Little Nightmares, I didn't enjoy. I've been very vocal about that, but the discussion sucked too. I like talking to you about it, though. Yeah. Yeah, it's been real fun. I mean, this isn't going to be a super long episode, so that was kind of 2023. We've got 2024 coming up. We're going to have a full year of games. We're going to have, like, a lot more in our, quote, unquote, Season 2 of this podcast. So where should we start in that? Do we want to talk about what we're most excited for? Yeah. I guess, yeah, whether it's games that we're excited about, maybe things that we're hoping to try to change or incorporate into the channel, without a timeline, of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All this is very fluid. For me and my wife, any big thing that we start, whether it be a new job or a new endeavor or hobby, whatever, something we really try to put effort towards, we try to give it a year. If we can do it for a year, after that, how's it going, right? Is it working? Is it no good? That's a long time. Yeah. I mean, you're not going to know. I mean, if we did, oh, yeah, we did 20 episodes, whatever. There's podcasts out there with thousands of episodes, you know, for them to really fine-tune their craft. So I think we need to really get into a handful more, a lot more to really get. I mean, we could do another 20 episodes and almost be to our year mark. Yeah. Roughly. So, yeah, I'm really, really looking forward to 2024. What I think would be fun is, because I gave you January as a, I gave you the first five episodes for a year. And I'm ruining your life with that. I can't wait. We've talked about a few. We've played one so far, but, man. What about, I'd say, if you want to incorporate them, fine, but what are your top three games that you know you're going to bring to the podcast this year in 2024? We're going to do Ragnarok. That's going to happen at some point. I don't know when, but obviously it's coming up. I think Crysis is going to go on there, because it'll be fun to see if a Steam Deck can run it, because that's the whole joke. Yep. And at some point I'm going to do, I've played it before, but Castle Crashers is going to go on there. Really? It's a co-op game, and I think you'll enjoy it a lot. I think it's goofy. Yeah. And I really enjoyed the co-op when we played it. Anytime we play co-op, it's always a good time. I agree. I want to get some more games that aren't what we typically have been going towards. Yeah, that went really well for you last game. Yeah. We do a lot of, like, you know, story-driven or action-y games with combat and they're fantasy mostly, or sci-fi or something like that. I wanted to get into something else. We do have an episode coming up that I will tease at, but we're going into more of a city manager game that will be coming up with a guest, so that will be fun. But I want to branch out into, like, other genres we haven't really messed with, because there's a lot of games that I like that aren't your typical, you know, God of War or platformer or whatever. You know, another thing I would like to do is it'd be cool to step away from PC gaming. Yeah. We have a large library of just, like, retro games. Like, our first episode, the first two, were not even PC games. That's true. That's true. And that was so, like, there's a lot out there, you know, but it's so easy to just go to the PC and stick with that, because the list is always in front of us. Well, maybe this January we're going to, yeah, this January I'm going to throw one in there and you're going to love it. We're going to do it. So my top three that I know I'm going to bring to the podcast this year, I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to give you a series and then two games, the Red Dead Redemption series. Oh, yeah. One and two. It's your first game for the podcast you bought. The one I wanted, yeah, like immediately that I bought. So that's definitely we're going to talk about both of them this year. Okay. That I'm actually really excited about. Let's see here. I actually didn't look ahead of time. Me neither. Just listen to your heart, dude. Well, I was going to say Ragnarok, but I already talked about that earlier, and I was going to say Crysis. I swear to God I was going to say Crysis, and you took it away. Ori and the Blind Forest 2, whatever. Oh, no. So there's a, I think it was 360. There's a game that I had and I picked up for the console years ago, and it was when I was more active, so I stopped playing because I went outside and whatever, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. It's called Thief. Ooh, I think I have that on Steam maybe. Yeah. So that one I tried playing it before, and I'm actually really excited to get another chance of playing it again. So that's definitely going to mine. And my last one that I'm going to bring for 2024, for sure, not the last ever, but, you know, what we're going to tease at is going to be Vampyr, or Vampire. I don't know how you say it. V-A-M-P-Y-R. I don't know anything about that game. That's a fairly new addition to my library, but I had seen it a couple years ago and kind of just forgotten about it, and something clued me in to find it again, and I really want to take a look at it. It looks real fun, a little dark. You know, you're a vampire, and I think, like, 19- actually, no, I don't know when. It's like Industrial Revolution aesthetic is what it looks like. So I don't exactly know the time frame, but it looks real fun. I don't know. I'm just taking a guess. I'm looking at a couple of pictures, and I would say London, 1918. There you go. From the perspective of a doctor who's also a vampire. It's just guessing based on the pictures only and not reading a description. So, yeah, those are the ones that I'm definitely going to be bringing a ton more. I mean, I could give you another 15 that I want to bring to the podcast. I'm very, very excited. We're also going to have-I've already got some guests lined up as well, so we're going to have some new voices sneaking into the channel and all that. So very excited. See if I can get in a verbal disagreement with a stranger. Always better. Yeah. Always better. So with that being said, is there anything you think we want to- like changes you'd like to implement into the podcast at all? Anything specific? Background stuff. This is more just peeking behind the curtain. There's some other editing software I'm going to give a try. Maybe clean up some of the weird audio at times. Sometimes I've got weird little things coming to the background like a fan or a chair click or something. Or a dog chewing on a toy. Or a dog chewing on a toy. So I have some new editing software I'm playing around with, so maybe we can just kind of spruce it up a little bit. I'm trying to each episode, when I go into editing mode, is just make little micro improvements. Like I personally, because I'm the one editing so I like how it sounds, I like when I'm able to get little sound bites and things here and there. I like those episodes. To me, and if I'm wrong, please 321 Backlog, hit us up, I think they sound better. They feel like they have the feeling of some more TLC. Yeah. So I definitely want to make that more consistent because there's been stretches. I tell you, I've had whole weekends where I'll edit four episodes at a time and it's just like a slog trying to get through. And maybe one or two out of that four, in this example, I'll make that extra effort to put some more stuff in. And then the others is like, well, I just want to get it done so I can check that off my to-do list. But I definitely want to go at each one of them and maybe kind of break it down, put the effort in, and really polish it up before we put it out. So that's something I want to make consistent, attempt very hard to make consistent through 2024. Yeah. But other than that, I really want to get some community engagement. I would love to have more people talking with us, like what are opinions that other people have about the game that we can maybe comment on or maybe open up. Like you and I use Discord just for talking you and I right now. I would love to maybe get some just community involvement, like find out what other people think about the games we pick. It would be great. Some of that might come with one of the things I'd like to improve on, social media. Yeah. I think if we can reach more of an audience too, I feel like there will be more opportunity for engagement and then discussion amongst those people. That will open things up a lot. I know I need to be a lot better on social media. I haven't really done much of any social media at all with this, and I've never been good at social media. It's hard. You do have a little more experience with it, yeah. But I think it's something that I'd like to do. I think I have a beautiful face for it. A face for radio? I think I have a beautiful face for radio. But, yeah, I feel like that would make it. It also gives people a little more insight to what they're listening to. Oh, for sure. If we can deal with that kind of stuff and see a little more of the background. And then it also helps people keep up, because if you don't have episodes automatically downloading and notifications on your phone, you probably don't think about it every single week. You don't wake up on Monday with a full erection. I mean, I do. Yeah, specifically for our podcast, though. I do. I do, too. Every other Monday I've got a full-on planned tame. But, yeah, I look forward to that. We do have 109 followers on TikTok. Damn, dude. We broke past 100. Let's see. What's our Instagram at? 80. That's a lot more than I expected. Yeah. I don't even know if I have X downloaded. I do. Every single one of them are just my mom. Yep. Let's see. Ooh, we have 18 followers on X. Thanks, guys. That's more than I would like to follow. Our 321 backlog account on X follows, like, 40 people. But it's like others. Oh, it's great. This is what everybody wanted to listen to. But, no, definitely, I echo that social media thing. We're millennials, right? Yeah, we fall in that age group. I don't know. I never figured out how to really utilize social media for what we are trying to utilize it for. I never wanted to. It's just, I don't know, man. It has a history of being a very disingenuine platform in general, and I don't want to add to that. But I know it's important, especially for what we're doing. And I think it will help us get more audience. And I think it will help us, you know, with the engagement thing, too. So it's coming for sure. You're going to catch me on the Internet one of these days. Also, something I want to do on my 321 backlog wish log, wish list for just activities and content things we can do, and this is more of like a thing I want to do, if you want to do it, too. Great. But I don't know how all these systems work. I kind of want to, like, stream some of the games I'm playing. Like if I'm going to play the next Ori, throw it up on Twitch while I'm trying to figure it out, you know. Or, you know, either do Twitch or record it and, like, throw it on YouTube or something. Like the actual gameplay while we're playing. That would be kind of fun. If you play games on PC, then that's a little easier to do. It's tough to do that on. I don't think you can do that on the deck, but. Yeah. That's my usual. That's my go-to. Yes. I actually spent a good hour and a half last weekend setting up OBS to, like, hook up to. We have a Twitch account. We don't do anything on it, but we have one. You know, actually getting it set up to where if I do start recording or streaming, we'll go to it and we'll go live. And kind of getting that set, I just hadn't. Once I got that situated, I didn't have anything. I didn't have enough time to sit down and play after that. I had to go to bed. So I spent all that time setting it up. So I'm kind of ready to do it. So I'd say keep an eye out. The 321 Backlog on Twitch exists. If you want to check it out, I can't guarantee there's going to be any content, but hopefully it'll come. Our episodes do filter over to YouTube automatically. It's just audio. So you can still listen to it on YouTube if you like. I think that's where my wife listens because she just uses YouTube Premium for all of her stuff. She's one of the 12 people that actually uses it. YouTube Premium? Yeah. Oh, dude, I pay for a family subscription, dude. There you go. Yeah, man. I love YouTube Premium. I don't know how peasants live without it. Yeah. There was a post pretty recently, I think it was like a Twitter post or something like that, where YouTube asked. They were like, you just sat down with a full plate of food after work and your laptop is open to YouTube. What are you going to watch? And they said, like, two unskippable 45-second ads was the response. I don't know how people deal with ads like that, man. It's insane. Yeah. I think because I also have YouTube Premium. My wife and I, some of our stuff is very linked and some of it isn't. And for whatever reason, our Google accounts are not linked in that way because I think Google owns YouTube now. I mean, anyway. Yeah. So we're both paying for Premium. Why not? But when I bought it, it was because I had a legitimate 30-minute advertisement that showed up. That's crazy. I think it became available after like a minute or two. It was 30 minutes. It was like an infomercial. I don't even remember what it was. But, yeah, I saw the time because I was like, oh, I'll just let it play. And I think I went to go get a drink or something, and I came back, and I'm like, it's still going? What is happening? And, yep, nope, I'll just pay the whatever it is. They keep jacking the price up, though. Yeah, they do. I want to say the family one is like over maybe almost 25 bucks a month, maybe more. That's crazy. I mean. It still is worth it at this current time. Yeah. I should make my other family members pay me. Yeah, there you go. They benefit. I like it. So why don't we bring this home to actually. On fucking topic. To stay on topic with the podcast and give a little, not give a little thing, but actually get into what we typically cover at the end of an episode, which is what are we playing next? Or are you asking me the game I've picked? Yeah, it's your pick. It'll be your first episode of 2024, your first of five picks, exclusively yours. What are we playing next, James? So I think we talked about this at the end of the last episode. I could remember. That's okay. But, I mean, it's worth mentioning. Yeah. Sea of Stars. I'm going with Sea of Stars. It's a turn-based RPG from a small studio of pretty talented people, some people would say. And, yeah, I watched that game. I was watching it before it came out. I bought it day one and very excited to play it. I know you are as well. Well, I mean, I would hope by now we've already played it because for our Patreon members, our XL episode comes out tomorrow. Yeah. So I hope you've already played it. I have. And that's why I said I know you're going to enjoy it. Oh, yes. It's probably going to be my favorite game of 2024. Yeah. So give it a listen if you're, I don't know, it's a big story game. It's got a lot of content to discuss. Oh, boy. And we're going to discuss it. Yep. Hard. Come hell or high water. Man, oh, man. That's fantastic. So, yes, Sea of Stars is next. Yep. Patreon members are going to have an XL version a week early tomorrow. It'll be out to the public January 8th at 6 a.m. Monday, as always. And, yeah, that's going to kick off. That's going to have us say farewell to 2023. So beautiful. And hello to 2024. I love it. I'm ready for it, dude. I'm ready for it, too, man. Let's get this. Let's go. Yeah, let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. Let's get this year fucking out. 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