“Red’s 2021 Year in Review”

You say it’s your story, but it’s my story, too, you know?

-Yuna, Final Fantasy X

Change.

Upheaval.

Apotheosis slash Kafka-esque metamorphosis.

With the passage of time comes the changing of seasons, the changing of the guard, and the constant evolution of yourself as a person from one day to the next. For me, 2021 was all about change. Looking back on the past solar cycle for the sake of this Year in Review, I realized how much has changed from January of 2021 to January of 2022, for good and ill. Whether I ended up transforming in my bed into a monstrous vermin or shedding my skin to unveil a shimmering new coat of lustrous quetzalcoatlan scales remains to be seen, but what unfolds before you today, whoever you are reading this, is the tale of my 2021.

It’s a primal and emotional series of cutscenes soon to be adapted to live action by Netflix.

Impact on collecting

At the start of the year, I knew I was moving out of California. Financially, it was what was best for my family. What wasn’t best for my back was moving the collection I had amassed!

Lemme just say that I love collecting physical games. I consider myself unlike the stereotypical bibliophile I’ve encountered that loves the idea of books, collects books in huge quantities, but doesn’t actually read. Contrary to what my wife thinks, I plan to play just about every game that I buy. Buying “just to have it” doesn’t work for me, with minor exceptions, but packing all of those games into endless boxes to ship across the country… not fun.

365 favorite games

You know what is fun, though? Talking about video games! That’s still why I keep coming back for more. Having people to discuss a shared interest with has been vital, especially in a year defined by the severing of physical friendships, thanks in no small part to the pandemic and the move.

I started 2021 with the express intention of sharing my top 365 favorite games. Yes, it is possible to form such a list and it’s in descending order, too. It didn’t take that long to slap together! Unfortunately, all that upheaval I mentioned at the start of this open journal derailed the 365-day-long project. So I started it over again! Do crazy things.

Moving house

When it came time to actually suck it up, pack it up, and sell the house to somebody who told us he and his wife would retire there only to find out from former neighbors that he flipped the house (the jerk), I wound up with way too much stuff for the shipping container we’d rented. Then, miracle of miracles, the company calls me to say they were out of the small container I’d ordered and would it be alright if they could send over a larger one? OF COURSE DUH. And thus everything was neatly packed and with room to spare, although by then I’d happily given away some games or sold a selection or two.

Remember this, it’ll pop up again.

COVID combo

During the moving process, aka the worst possible time to get sick, I landed the double whammy of COVID plus pneumonia. I do not recommend driving for several days with your wife and a cat hauling a buncha junk with a severe respiratory debilitation. By the time I’d reached my destination, I was at its worst. We looked at a house but I don’t remember much of it. My wife was sick as well but she recovered while my oxygen levels kept going down and down. Trying to find a home, trying to unpack, trying to isolate myself in a bedroom at my brother’s house… all of it was the worst possible timing. I felt like I had worked so hard for this move only for it to fall apart.

When I checked into the ER, I was told that if I’d come a day later I might’ve been dead from this COVID/pneumonia combo. Almost a week at the hospital and I, fortunately, showed a lot of improvement, though I used a cane for dizziness and had to take oxygen with me for a while. People from all over the world showed up to share encouraging words and even pledged financial support to help with medical bills. Having just moved, I had no house, no doctor, no insurance, etc. I couldn’t be more appreciative of the show of support and love from old friends and new.

The downtime gave me pause to reevaluate my life and what I was doing with it. If I recovered, did I want to keep doing what I was doing? What pursuits and dreams would I still have after passing so close to death?

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones to the pandemic, to this sickness, to those who cavalierly spread it around or pretend it’s not real.

Rebrand of thewellredmage.com

Roundabout June-ish, our website relaunched as The Pixels with the tagline “Elemental Video Game Critiques”. Short and sweet. A few things informed this decision.

One, it was time to sort through a team of 60+ writers that had accumulated on the site since its inception, many of which were no longer active and had contributed between one and zero articles.

Two, the challenges and frustrations of the world bled into my online personage and I alienated former friends or they alienated themselves from me. More upheaval. I needed something that decisively said: “opinions are my own”.

Three, the site wasn’t about me. Sharing a title with it wasn’t equitable and as the site grew, it didn’t make sense anymore. Talking about how the site was a hub for games writers didn’t sound sincere when that hub was under the umbrella of the Well-Red Mage. But I still love that pun pen name that my wife came up with so I kept it even after we put to rest the mage monikers, the casual role-play, and the ubiquitous questions about whether we only covered JRPGs or not.

The Pixels, meanwhile, is about everyone and for everyone. Envision the humble pixel. A single incandescent speck of light on a 2-dimensional field of darkness. Is there any more appropriate digital analogy for the individual in the midst of society in the midst of the universe? Together, a group of pixels forms an image and that image is a vision. The vision is about the games themselves, establishing a community of like-minded individuals, and making criticism a dirty word no longer by distinguishing between the criticism of society and its subculture wars and the commercial art forms that we call video games.

Obviously, the site still needs work and it’s a work-in-progress. The old site grew from a trio of friends making a WordPress.com blog and the new site will find its own path through dangerous and unknown waters. Life is a journey without knowing where you’re really going to wind up.

There are a number of people who have really been essential to managing the new site’s devilry behind the scenes, and I have to mention @mattestesdesign for a lot of his help and mass encouragement upfront during the rebrand as well as @RetroGamingDev who absolutely got me through some dark times recently and pretty much singlehandedly stopped this place from going under. Thank you!

End of Story Mode

After all that time of reflection and specific pragmatic discussion with my co-hosts, I recognized it was time to excuse myself from the Story Mode podcast. I’m not interested in rehashing that entire story or even revealing juicy tidbits about why I left. No weaponizing, mobilizing, embarrassing, humiliating, vilifying sentiments here. Leaving in June was the culmination of an interest in returning to my own podcast after about a year’s time since first suggesting I needed to exit the Story stage left.

As I mentioned in my resignation, I wished my former co-hosts the best and hoped the show could continue, rebrand, or cast a new co-host. I still wish that for them and I’m happy to know that they rebounded with a new podcast 6 months later with a third co-host who I originally vouched for, as well. I also wish we could have maintained a working relationship, my biggest regret of the year, but as a wise man literally told me right before the end “life is too short”. If everyone winds up creative, successful, productive, and happy, then my wish came true. It turned out for the best. Everything else is water in a bridge somewhere.

Resurrecting Mage Cast

From October 2020 to July 2021, Mage Cast podcast had been effectively retired. I tried doing two podcasts. I really did. Part of my making that decision to stick with Story Mode and set aside my own show stemmed from a concern for disappointing others. But for me, Mage Cast is the first podcast. Well, it’s the first one I ever did. It got me interested in podcasting. It launched me into a realm of helping others launch podcasts. It’s the granddaddy of pods and it summarizes and crystallizes everything I love about what I do as the Well-Red Mage: talking to different people about different video games and learning more about both.

Mage Cast’s return to form made me realize how much I’d missed it. Like everything I’ve worked to build, it feels like a part of myself. It was returning home.

Since bringing the show back, I’ve been able to help conjure and cultivate amazing conversations about games like Cuphead, StarFox, Secret of Evermore, River City Girls, and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. I’ve assisted in the analysis of Home Improvement on SNES and why it doesn’t work. I’ve learned about the publishing of Maniac Mansion on NES. I’ve sat and listened to someone talk about playing Super Metroid for the first time ever. I got to deep dive into Final Fantasy VII Remake in a welcoming and mutually understanding setting. I even got to talk with an artist behind Metroid Prime. What a ride! And I look forward to much more in 2022 and I’m so grateful that listenership picked up right where I left off!

Chrono Trigger

Okay, maybe this wouldn’t be huge for you but it’s huge to me. Those that know me know that I frickin’ love Chrono Trigger. It’s the GOAT.

When I was a kid leaving my best friend behind in Hawaii when I moved to California, I gave that old friend my Chrono Trigger cartridge. So when a new friend gifted me… yes, gave me a copy of Chrono Trigger out of the blue… I was speechless. Definitely the highlight of a crazy year. I’ll never forget it, Joypad Lad!

Now LIVE

Streaming has been on my to-do list for a while. In July, I got started on my streaming adventure! Right from the get-go, I was floored by the generous assistance that people gave as I fought through the rampant technical issues of trying to stream on a Mac haha!

And people actually came out to watch… That’s something I hope I never take for granted. Streaming has been exactly what I wanted it to be: a chance to connect with an audience and community in a more immediate way. Podcasting, blogging, even social media and Discord, they’re not exactly like talking with everyone in real-time, face to face.

Plus there’s this sort of thing:

Further, it creates an all-new dynamic when discussing and analyzing video games as I experience them. I never realized how well it’d fit in with what I already enjoy doing. A few scheduling rearrangements and the activity fits my family’s schedule like a glove. The channel continues to grow and create new opportunities not just for me but for the community, giving back to the people who come out via giveaways.

Sponsorships

Speaking of, giveaways have come courtesy of two sponsors I picked up in the Fall: BiFrost Bridge Studios and the aforementioned Joypad Lad, utopian multimedia graphic novel development studio and online retail “good guy of retro gaming” shop, respectively. I can’t understate how much of a personal encouragement they are to me and my work after a year of, again, upheaval. They summarize the cooperative nature of the original Well-Red Mage concept perfectly.

BiFrost recently smashed their Kickstarter goals and they continue to support a weekly giveaway event that’ll be coming back in 2022: playing through Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster on Twitch and discussing artificial intelligence and the future in an effort to bring casual technical literacy to a wider audience.

I’m providing digital space on the site and on the stream, and audio space for promotions on Mage Cast podcast, so if you’re a brand or creator needing to get word out for your content, let me know!

Game music and the Olympic games

One of the pieces of content we brought back for a new lease on life is TWRM Radio, now known as Pixel Playlist, a series of mixes of music tracks from video games set to various themes. The series never quite took off or found its audience but ABXY held a gun to my head and here we are.

In all seriousness, he loves his music. We did manage to create a really successful mix based on the Olympics in Tokyo that featured video game music in the opening ceremony. You can look forward to a host of other mixes throughout 2022.

I also wanted to give a special mention to @ABXY_Reviews here because he has been really productive and a close confidant throughout the year!

Limiting what I collect

Remember that I mentioned moving impacted how I started thinking about collecting? Well, I didn’t move into a house with infinite space. I have the joy of setting a room apart for gaming, creating, streaming, and writing now, a quasi-office and game room, but it can’t hold an infinite number of games. I wound up recognizing I can’t care about collecting for every system. I just can’t, particularly if I plan to play everything I buy. I traded away the last of my Sega Genesis games and minimized my PS3 collection. I sold off other collections unrelated to video games and I homed in on a few key systems that I’m most interested in, NES and SNES and PS1 first and foremost.

Collecting physically is a ton of fun and connects me to relics from a bygone era in a manner that nothing else can, but I want to possess my possessions, not the other way around. I’m not planning to wind up buried alive in them like an episode of Hoarders. Now if only the retro gaming bubble could burst then everything would be peachy.

From console snob to PC snob

The last big change 2021 had in store for me, I bought a gaming rig. No, I didn’t build it myself. Stop asking me. Ain’t nobody got time for that! I even survived my first Steam sale, thanks in no small part to the fact that PC exclusives are few and far between. Or so I’ve been told.

I hadn’t bought a PC since, like, 2002. I relied a ton on recommendations and insider information from friends (you’re a lifesaver, @pz_coryg) and I love the computer I wound up with. It’s really sorted out a lot of the streaming issues I encountered and it’s facilitated creating content much more easily. Plus it has glowy lights! I’m told that glowy lights make it a more computery computer.

I’m still looking for recommendations but for now, I’m happily enjoying things I can’t elsewhere, like a good RTS.

Swords into plowshares

I feel like I’ve walked through the fire in my life, nearly dying several times, and 2021 was par for the course. But looking into 2022, I want to still think about changes. “New Year’s Resolutions” are kind of taboo now but I do suppose the change of the year is a good chance to invite reflection. I’m going to continue to do that and embrace change.

First of all, I plan to spend less time caring. What do I mean? Less time caring about what a crazed fandom wants to take umbrage with, for instance. Less time caring about some Twitter rando that wants to battle. Less time caring about what zealots say about someone willing to think critically about sacred cows. Less time fighting meaningless skirmishes on platforms that tyrannize you with their algorithms or frustrate you with their lack of support for nuanced conversation. Less time caring about what others think. Less time being worried about chronic wrist slappers and thought police. Less time on the battlefield. Less time trying to convince people it’s okay to laugh at the things we love, and ourselves.

More time creating what gets me out of bed every morning. More time with my kids who are growing up to love video games themselves. More time having the discussions worth having, playing and dissecting the games themselves, less time caring about all the noise and culture wars that gaming seems to want to obsess over.

And that neatly leads me to the capstone of our 2021 content here at The Pixels…

2021 Game of the Year

Last week, we invited our community to sound off on what they thought our Game of the Year 2021 should be, based on nominations the community itself submitted! I’m happy to announce that the winner (by somewhat of a landslide) is…

It wasn’t my nominee but it was the game I voted for. Congratulations to MercurySteam and Nintendo for daring to put out a 2D platformer into the AAA sphere in our modern times. Metroid Dread is The Pixels 2021 Game of the Year!

If you haven’t played it yet… take this as our community’s recommendation! And congratulations as well to Psychonauts and Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker for coming in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

The Road goes

So what’s next?

After a week off to spend time celebrating the holidays with my family as well as capturing the valuable opportunity to once again reflect, you bet your darn tootin’ I’m back in action and ready to hit the ground running in 2022!

More written content, critiques, reviews, editorials, and events. More Mage Cast podcast. More Magevision streams (I’m not calling it that). More conversation. More giveaways!

For a giveaway this week (on 1/5/22 @ 7pm Central) we’re finding a new home for a Super Retro-cade, Mystic Origins, and a Super Mario Bros. collector’s box gift set! More info on these coming soon. If you wanna hear about it first, join the Discord!

Patreon remains an important element of The Pixels with crowdfunding representing one of the strongest demonstrations of something truly priceless: encouragement. I’ve watched creators appear and disappear over the past few years and I think it really comes down to encouragement. Not finances. Encouragement has certainly kept this site’s concept going, a special thank you to @SanityCrypto, @NintendRog, and @agamerlooksat40 for their kind words!

If you’re still here, please consider supporting The Pixels at patreon.com/thepixels.

To end on a personal note, since this 2021 Year in Review is a kind of open diary of sorts, I was talking with my mom recently and she remembered a drawing I put together when I was 4 or 5 about how I wanted to be a paleontologist astronaut video game artist when I was a kid. None of that quite panned out in that exact combination but she was keen to remind me that I’m now currently living my dream. I get to do what I do full-time and it involves video games and artistry. I’m planning this year to never not be thankful for that.

Dare to live doing what you love.

It’s your story.

Life is too short.

Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage or Mage Cast.