Finally managed to get around to doing this one. I used to do a lot more Minecraft videos, both for my own channels and also for other companies, so it was great to have an excuse to make something more cinematic in Minecraft again.

The best thing to do is know how to act when you have no audience to engage with and how to keep the show going. Viewer interactions of course make up a large portion of most bigger streams, however it's important to learn how to improvise or use that time for other things. If there is no one watching, or maybe just one person if you are lucky, don't do anything that would require that interaction, or even say things like "what do you think chat?" as the silence will just lead to this dissonance in the stream.

Also invest in good gear from the start, a good mic, camera, and stream in as high quality as you can. Twitch is obviously the worst when it comes to quality as it maxes out at 5kbps, but on YouTube you can go as far as your internet connection allows really, so you can streaming in 1440p or even 4k. That will go a long way in differentiating your streams.

We're gonna see a steep decline in how much companies talk about AI, at least to the average consumer. In enterprise, I think it will still be going strong, but at least in terms of consumer products it won't be as in your face as it is right now, as I think the market clearly shown that most people don't care about AI gimmicks in most of their products, and it's just yet another marketing buzzword, like "gaming" or "smart".

Definitely Subnautica 2. The original and Below Zero are some of my favourite games ever due to their exploration, atmosphere, and a just big enough bit of horror. While Below Zero didn't feel like this next big evolution, and more like this addon DLC, a whole new entry with a fresh new identity, and of course the power of UE5, will be huge. It's especially going to come in helpful to make the game more immersive and breathtaking, but of course that's just one half of it. The other is just the creative designs of the environments, creatures, etc. so hoping they will also be able to surprise us there.

So it's been over a year now since I've been part of Just About, after getting invited back in October 2023, and it's insane how much the platform has changed since them, from all the new communities, to all the nice UI changes.

While it's of course nice to have a place to post your ramblings and opinions on stuff, or just nerd out about things you personally find really interesting, obviously the money from it all is nice as well, and in my case, has been downright essential, and there's so much I wouldn't have been able to do this year if not for the payouts here. Thing is, my YouTube channel and the company around it is my whole job, and I don't really take a salary out of it, and I have no other source of income, so Just About has really helped make several new projects on my channel actually possible thanks to that leeway it gave me in 2024.

Because of how closely-knitted it is, especially with a lot of the OG members, it's great feeling like the stuff I posted on here in 2024 actually got seen as well.

So here's to an even cooler 2025.

On Nvidia cards Alt+F10 is great as it gets you an instant replay of the last several minutes. No need to have OBS up, no worrying about missing something cool happening, and no performance penalty either.

In Poland, we go crazy for ski jumping, where it's almost a national sport for us, given for how for most of the 2000s Poland dominated in it. Not so much nowadays, hence why it's dropping in popularity, but still very much enjoyed.

It's fairly simple, a guy slides down and jumps on a snowy ramp and goes flying hundreds of meters away (I have no idea how they have the guts to do that). There's an even more extreme version called sky flying, with even longer ramps, and even more airtime as a result, with the largest recorded jump being a whopping 253 and a half meters.

Even though distance matters a lot, the jump is still scored out of 20 anyway by a panel of judges by the end. If you want to watch it yourself, I have no idea if TV stations air it beyond just the ones of nations that take part (mostly Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and Japan), but it is in the Winter Olympics, so you can watch it live when that is on.

Seeing how much people have been hyping it up, rumours of Half-Life 3, and what not, I knew to keep my expectations low, and to be fair even I was disappointed. When I saw that the only big real announcement people on Twitter were talking about the next day (I didn't watch it live because time zones) was the Witcher 4, I thought I missed something, as I saw people talking about several big reveals. Granted, I love CDPR and I am way too hyped for this game, so that does in some way make up for it.

But that's just the reveal side of the show. Apart from that, the awards were about what you expect in terms of the winners. Astrobot feels a bit weird as GOTY, but it wasn't a standout year for any game really.

I liked some of the overall presentation though, and by far the highlights of the whole show was Statler and Waldforf, the irreverent self-roast of the event that gave it some much needed edge. Just before the event I finished making a video retrospective about the TGA predecessor, the Spike VGAs, and one think I was constantly talking about is how the show is so bland now, but those two certainly made it a lot better.

For me the biggest thing will be hopefully finally having the channel grow and act like a normal channel. Even after 11 years it struggled so much to get a decent viewership and consistent large audience but hopefully 2025 may be the year that finally happens (I've been telling myself that every year). The big things to help with that will just be all of the new opportunities to help hopefully create far-reaching content, between going to CES in Las Vegas, Computex in Taipei, and IFA in Berlin, as well as anything else that pops up. I hope to finally also bring in some staff next year, who will be able to breath some fresh air into the content or suggest things I've never even thought of.