It has been a long and strange year at Game Industry News. There have been a lot of ups and downs including having to deal with COVID-19. So, I decided to highlight some major events that happened to me over the past calendar year. I know this may not be game related, but I wanted to open the door and share some behind the scenes in the life of your… I don’t know… eighth favorite video game journalist.

Rebooted The GiN Lounge

When the year started, I didn’t think about rebooting the long running podcast. I don’t remember how it came up, but essentially, I talked to the powers-that-be into trying to modernize content. We decided to restart the GiN Lounge and I am lucky that I was able to get my longtime friend and Save State columnist Vincent Mahoney to help me. We started with basic stuff like complaining about how broken Cyberpunk 2077 was to interviewing various individuals like Bill Kara and Mark Vange. I can’t wait to see where the podcast goes next year!

Got COVID-19

I had to take about two months off from the aforementioned podcast because I caught COVID-19 while in West Virginia. On top of the COVID, I managed to catch severe bronchitis. I will be honest with you readers, it was bad enough I almost retired from GiN. While I am past the worst of it, there are still some breathing issues I have to work through. The point of this… COVID is bad and try not to catch it.

Getting Back To Reviews

I had taken a step back from reviews to focus on schoolwork. Now, I have been able to review games such as Dustwind, Apsulov, and Black Book. I will even be looking at Call of Duty: Vanguard. It has been nice to get back into the swing of reviews and nice not to review match three games. I hope to be able to start reviewing games on Twitch in the near future which means you guys can interact with me in real time.

Finished Graduate School

 I have been in college for the previous five years to try and better myself. Now, I have graduated West Virginia University’s master’s in Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination. This program, while incredible, was an absolute time vampire that affected my reviews and columns. Now that the program is complete, that will allow me to take on more games to review. Going forward, I want to start bringing more events to GiN.

Got Promoted

As I mentioned earlier in the podcast section, we at GiN are looking to modernize. This new philosophy allowed me to get promoted to Director of Media Development. The promotion was also a great way to celebrate a decade at GiN. I hope to develop awesome content in terms of Podcasts and Twitch streams to help everyone engage more.

I want to thank everyone who has provided comments over the years and have helped me develop as a writer. My first decade with GiN has been an odyssey, and I am looking forward to the next decade. Leave me a comment or join Vincent and myself on the GiN Lounge podcast.