A Very Merry Christmas (2019 Edition)

It’s Christmas! And with that in mind, there’s nothing too substantial coming up on the site today — there is an episode of Warriors Wednesday currently rendering, though, so please look forward to that.

It’s been a wonderful year for both MoeGamer and my YouTube channel, and I wanted to take the opportunity to thank each and every one of you reading this, because if you are reading this, chances are that on at least one occasion during the course of the last year, you’ve read something else on this site, watched a video or otherwise helped me out with one of my various creative projects. And for that, I’m massively grateful.

Since it’s obligatory to reflect on the year just passed and the upcoming year when doing this sort of thing, join me after the jump and we’ll do just that.

The Year Just Passed

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MoeGamer may not have grown quite as much as it did the previous couple of years, but that’s still growth. I often say that I’m not in this for the numbers and I’m really not — that said, it is still lovely to see those numbers go up, as it means that more and more people are coming along to see what I have to say about things.

One thing that is pretty interesting to me is the enormous disparity between the number of visitors (dark bar) and the number of page views (lighter bar). This suggests to me that people are coming along to look at the site and then sticking around to read a bunch of things, which is massively reassuring, and exactly what I want to happen.

MoeGamer has always been designed as a site that anyone can enjoy at any time; I try to keep news stories and topical opinion pieces to a minimum, because I want to focus on the games. It appears that this is working!

Over the course of the past few years, I’ve also established some great working relationships with various PR companies for titles that will be of interest to MoeGamer’s core audience. And this includes what I think of as some fairly “big names”, too; FAKKU! and Nutaku were kind enough to provide review copies of Honey Select Unlimited and Custom Order Maid 3D 2 respectively — and both have been consistently popular pages on the site ever since — and I’ve also had very positive experiences working with Inti Creates, Koei Tecmo and PQube as well as various other smaller companies.

So thank you to all the people who have either reached out with interesting things for me to cover, or who have been highly receptive and helpful when I approached them.

The Podcast

One of my favourite developments in the last year and a bit (technically it started in April of 2018) has been The MoeGamer Podcast. This, I feel, has really come into its own over the course of the last year in particular.

Those of you who have been following me for a few years will know that I used to be an active member of a now sadly defunct gaming enthusiast group known as The Squadron of Shame, and said group used to take great pride in having in-depth podcast-based discussions about overlooked and underappreciated games.

The MoeGamer Podcast has allowed me to recapture the joy of recording and editing episodes for that, and has helped me develop a close friendship that has become immensely valuable to me. A super-special thank-you to my podcasting buddy Chris Caskie, who has not only been a fantastic person to chat games with on the mic, but also an amazing friend during both good times and dark times. Love ya, man. You’re the best.

Atari A to Z

Earlier in the year, my parents were kind enough to offload a bunch of old Atari stuff they’d been storing in their loft on me. This included three models of Atari 8-bit, two models of Atari ST, disk drives, tape decks and a ton of software, both legitimate and pirated. (Piracy was an important part of home computing culture back in the ’80s; in some instances it was the only means of getting hold of certain pieces of software!)

When I saw all that stuff laid out on my table, I thought “I need to do something with this; all this is such an important part of my childhood and adolescence, I really need to celebrate this somehow.”

And so, Atari A to Z was born, initially with simple Let’s Play-style videos of Atari 8-bit games, and gradually expanding to what I do today, with pieces to camera explaining the history and context of the games as well as exploring the physical packaging where I have it to hand as well as the gameplay itself.

All my YouTube work has helped me develop my confidence enormously, but I think Atari A to Z has helped in this regard more than anything else. It’s a topic I’m passionate and knowledgeable about, and I’ve made some good friends through these series in particular. Retro computing is a wonderful hobby, and I feel like I have pretty much limitless potential for things to talk about on these series, so expect these to continue for a long time to come yet!

The Year to Come

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I have a bunch of plans ahead for 2020; mostly I’ll be continuing as is, but there are a few things I want to expand on. Probably most notably, I want to take the time to do more “scripted” videos on YouTube in the form of “readings” of articles from here on MoeGamer. This provides people who primarily follow me on YouTube the opportunity to enjoy some of the things I’ve written via the medium they prefer.

Related to this, I want to ensure I make a point of covering niche-interest games that don’t get a lot of attention on YouTube. I’ve covered a bunch of this stuff on MoeGamer, which is great, but it’d be even better to get some good quality videos up on YouTube on the subject of stuff that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. While doing more Let’s Plays would be fun, I’m not sure I have the time to fit more of those in at present — while they’re pretty easy to edit, they take time to record! — so this side of things will more likely be covered by the scripted videos.

I’ve invested in some new equipment, too; I have a proper ring light now, so this will make other types of videos such as unboxings more practical to do, so I’ll likely experiment with those at least a bit in the new year. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see “live”, do please let me know.

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On MoeGamer, you’ve probably noticed some of the Cover Game features have been upgraded with a “navigation bar” at the top of each chapter; this is something I want to retrospectively apply to all the previous Cover Game features to make navigating through them a bit easier — and it also makes it clear for those new to the site that a Cover Game feature is more than just a single article.

And aside from that, I think that’s about it! I hope it doesn’t sound too arrogant to say that I’m really proud of what I’ve created here, and I’m continually grateful and flattered that other people like to come along and read or watch what I’ve been doing. It really does mean a lot, so I say once again: thank you for all your support.

Plus an extra-special thank you to everyone who has pledged regular support via Patreon at https://patreon.com/petedavison or on a one-time basis via https://ko-fi.com/moegamer or https://paypal.me/pjedavison. Every little helps me make the site a bit better, whether it’s through new equipment, new games or simply paying for boring old expenses.

I hope everyone reading this has an absolutely wonderful Christmas and a restful holiday season, and I’ll see you very soon!

Love, Pete xx


The MoeGamer Compendium, Volume 1 is now available! Grab a copy today for a beautiful physical edition of the Cover Game features originally published in 2016.

Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed this article. I’ve been writing about games in one form or another since the days of the old Atari computers, with work published in Page 6/New Atari User, PC Zone, the UK Official Nintendo Magazine, GamePro, IGN, USgamer, Glixel and more over the years, and I love what I do.

If you’d like to support the site and my work on it, please consider becoming a Patron — click here or on the button below to find out more about how to do so. From just $1 a month, you can get access to daily personal blog updates and exclusive members’ wallpapers featuring the MoeGamer mascots.

If you want to show one-off support, you can also buy me a coffee using Ko-Fi or PayPal.

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2 thoughts on “A Very Merry Christmas (2019 Edition)”

  1. I’m happy to see that the year was so good to you, and I look forward to the next one in the hopes that it does the same. It was a tumultuous one for me, but that’s helped me learn a lot of things I otherwise wouldn’t have, so I’m glad for that at least.

    I’m super excited right now because I just learned that Duel Masters, an early 2000s MtG/Yugioh/Pokemon (kind of) hybrid CCG just had a Smart Phone game release in Japan a week ago, and I’m hoping against hope that it gets brought westward soon so that more people can experience it. Your positivity on Freedom Planet also convinced me to buy a copy for the Sonic fan in my life, so he’s going to get that as soon as we hang out next, and if he can get even half the enjoyment out of it that you did, that will be awesome.

    A very Merry Christmas to you and everyone that visits this site, and I hope you all have tons of fun with what’s left of 2019!

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