Happy New Year everyone, hope it's treating you well so far! Why yes it is February, but I don't put these out very often by design, now don't I?

New From Me
K-YOS completed its first year of regular episodes strong with the November 2023 re-cap, followed shortly thereafter by our end-of-year finale, where Azalea joined Dani and I to discuss our top 25 k-pop songs of the year. A few rules apply to make sure that our lists are varied and interesting, so I hope you'll check out that monster of an episode, and let me know some of your own faves! In other K-YOS news, the pod is now available to stream on all major podcasting services, including Apple, Pocket Casts, Spotify, YouTube, and via RSS.

And, as we announced at the end of that episode and all across our socials, Pressed Petals Creative Collective is finally here! Pressed Petals is one unified place for the creative efforts of Dani, Azalea, and I, across the many topics we enjoy. If you're already a Patron of mine, you'll notice that this is actually the same Patreon page; you don't need to sign up for another one or do anything new. In fact, my work will remain largely unchanged. You'll still get early access to my games videos, writing, special episodes of K-YOS, and more. Only now, you'll also get exclusive and early access to Dani's work, Azalea's work, and anything new that we choose to do, both together and apart. We all have big plans for 2024, and are super excited to "officially" be working together now.

Speaking of 2024, here are 24 (Indie) PC Games Coming in 2024! The latest video in my annual "20-something games for 2020-something" series is finally out, and I'm pretty happy with this one! I'm always a little worried when December rolls around that I won't have enough games to talk about, but this year, it hardly crossed my mind. The release schedule for 2024 is so stacked that I actually had to be pretty strict, resulting in maaaybe my favorite list thus far. It's only the games I, personally, am really, really excited for (as opposed to a bunch of games that I think look pretty cool, for a general audience), and that have an official release window of 2024. That doesn't happen often, y'know!

Song of the Newsletter
Picking a song of the newsletter was tough this time around, as the free time afforded to me by the Christmas-New Year's deadzone (including the 8-hour roundtrip I drove to see my dad) as well as end-of-year music list bingeing meant I was listening to even more music than usual. But at the end of the day, I had to pick my consistent fave of the past few months, “Bouncin” by Tinashe. It's the rare ass-shaking song you can shake your ass to at the precise pace you desire: slow n’ sensual, casual, earthquaking, the world is your oyster. It's an unbelievably catchy tune with its synthy, blippy, and utterly addictive instrumental. And the choreo is great too! They just don't make pop stars like Tinashe anymore.

News & Recommendations
Pixel A Day is back with an extra-long (and a tinch more personal) video essay; this one chiefly about the very narrow view and lacking imagination of the wider video games industry, including developers, critics, and gamers alike. Ms. Kat is, as always, a measured and hopeful critic, providing a list of overlooked video essays in part to illustrate some of her overall points and to contribute to the future of video games and games media she wants to see.

As your local social media professional with an expertise in indie games, I am once again asking you to get the fuck off of Twitter. This absolutely applies to the lurkers (those of us who use social media primarily to follow the creators we enjoy, and to talk to friends/family casually) in the interest of moving everyone off the site, but I say all this primarily to the developers and artists who use social media as a form of marketing and engagement. A lot of people apparently didn't know this, but Twitter, as far as advertising/marketing/discoverability is concerned, is dead and in my professional opinion has been dead for several years. Its engagement and conversion rates (particularly concerning links) have always been terrible. Advertising was more likely to get you blocked by your core audience than to reach a new one. Going viral on Twitter was great if you were trying to get your game or shop out there, but you know what'd be even better? Going half as viral on literally any other website.

In my personal opinion, Instagram is most worthy of your time in this regard; it's the only social media app I feel comfortable recommending to any type of creator with any amount of time to put into socials. Following IG, in order: TikTok (if you have a lot of time), tumblr (if your creations relate to some "niche" cultures of particular interest on tumblr, namely being queer and/or a furry; having a strong artistic element is also preferable, but not mandatory), and then YouTube (primarily YouTube Shorts, which you should use similarly to TikTok, but requires significantly less time). I love Cohost, but it's not very good for this sort of thing; it's just a nice place to be where you're likely to have/read some good discussions among smaller game developers and games media personalities. In other words, it can be very helpful for individual professional and personal development, but it's not really the place to "reach new fans."

As Jeff Gerstmann said in his reply to the post(s) that spurred this section of the newsletter: "You might have a lot of followers [on Twitter], but they ain't clicking on your links. Go somewhere else!... Spread yourself out. It's a hassle, but what else are you going to do? Keep hanging out with the porn and crypto bots that spam replies on Twitter?"