State Of The Noob Address 2020 :: What A Year Eh?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Snake Plisskin

New Name. New Website Design. New writers. A lot has changed around here in the last year. 2020 has been a different kind of an year. The Last Of Us 2 came out and drove a wedge between its fans. Cyberpunk 2077 came out, and fell flat out on its face, CDPR tried to drag the corpse back-stage, but it lives forever in our zeitgeist now. Oh and there was also this small virus that infected a bunch of people, called the Corona virus, you might have heard of it.

Anyways, come hell or high water, or any number of highly anticipated disappointments, this long standing tradition of counting our chicken before the year end continues. So without further ado, let’s get down right to it.

Year on year, 2018 remains our best year in terms of views. In fact 2020 has lower number of total views than even 2019. That might sound a little depressing, but we will see it in context soon.

Monthly views show how we had a middling beginning of the year, and then we spent the rest of the year trying to come back from that. And as we finally settled in with the new name, the new website design, and then this COVID-19 lifestyle, we see the numbers reaching the place where we wanted to see them.

Another aim that we had set ourselves up for in 2020 was publishing 100+ reviews on the site. I would like to mention that we achieved that goal, and surpassed it, clocking around 125 Reviews on the website this year. This includes reviews like The Last Of Us 2, Spiderman Miles Morales and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Indies were truly our darlings this year as we reviewed games like El Hijo, Hades and Pathless.

This is without counting the 20+ previews that we did this year. And the interviews, ohh the interviews. Slowly they have become my favourite category on the site, because they provide such insight into the minds of the developers themselves.

This would not have been possible without a diverse set of writers that we were lucky to have on the team. Jay. Arkad, Sailesh and Me are familiar names. But people like Subhashish and Niranjan Raju all contributed immensely to writing/crafting those reviews without the process becoming mechanical.

Special mention should be made of Tanushri, who revitalized the dying Nintendo Switch genre on our site. On the video content creation front Biren was joined by Uphar and Manas , and this is where our number shone the best. We surpassed 500 subscribers on YT, and that’s something I thought would never have been possible, but here we are.

Finally Sushir, who has been instrumental in the success of our latest endeavour, The Press Start To Play podcast. A weekly download of what Manas, Sushir and I think of the video game in general. We crack jokes, we discuss news, and we dissect games in ways the written word wouldn’t allow. 

Our writing team has grown in the last year, and this time we had a lot more competition for the Editor Of The Year. Niranjan brought the old school IN insight back into reviews, Uphar and Biren both upped their game and brought us new viewers. Tanushree single-handedly kept our Switch section alive. Jay has slowly become one of the most respected and meme-able gaming journalist in India. And Manas, well Manas was Manas and that was enough. However for the sheer effort that he has put in both in front and behind the scene, Sushir Rahaman is Gameffine’s Editor of the year.

Now for the second part of our yearly awards. The PS2P Podcast was so successful infact, that we had our GOTY (Game Of The Year) discussion entirely on the podcast this time. It was the most fun and diverse discussion that we have had in a long time, and you can check out the first episode of the same below.

Bigger, better and loved. That is going to be our aim in 2021. While I take a step back as I become Dad squared two. Sushir, Manas and Jay will become the new triad who will lead Gameffine into the new decade. We have identified video content as our new avenue of work, and we have made some encouraging progress in that direction. We will continue to explore that, while we focus on even more reviews and interviews and insights on video games. Until then catch us in 2021, and good riddance 2020.