A Video Game Thanksgiving: What We’re Thankful For In 2024

Thank you readers, viewers, and community members for making 2024 such a memorable year for us at Epilogue Gaming. To show our gratitude, we have compiled a list of video game things we are thankful for. Let us know in the comments or the Epilogue Gaming Discord what has made you thankful in the year 2024!

Ben Vollmer

In times like these, I’m so thankful for connection. Video games have helped me find community, whether it was Minecraft, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, or games like Valorant and Fortnite this year. Getting a chance to play video games and share in these worlds with friends feels more crucial to my own well-being than ever. 

Though, the one thing I don’t want to take for granted this year is the vast history of video games being celebrated in 2024. From UFO 50, a tremendous ode to the history of design and development, to something like Astro Bot, which I think has taken a somewhat sterile history of Playstation icons and mascots and made them feel alive, nostalgic, and beautifully important – as they deserve to be thought of. Sometimes I fear that the things these games celebrate is part of a bygone era, but I’m so relieved to see the reception of each being met with enthusiasm among players. 

Lastly, I want to mention being thankful for video game hardware. Earlier this year, I began collecting 4K blurays and physical copies of video games that I love. With the announcement of the PS5 Pro and its lack of a disc drive, I worry that we may actually be at the end of an era that I took for granted. Having things that I can hold in my hand and feeling like they are mine, both an indicator of the work I’ve done to buy it and as an appreciation of the work that went into its development, is something I want to cherish for a little longer. And so I will – I hope that in 2025 I can check back in on this and be thankful for indicators that the physical media industry has found its niche in the modern consumer world. 

Thanks to all of our readers, viewers and community members for making this project something we all love to do. See you around! 

Flora Merigold

2024 is yet another chasmous step back for my video gaming life, but I still feel as in love with the medium as ever. Like a Thanksgiving plate that won’t fit everything you want to eat, my 2024 was a year of coming back for seconds as often as I could. My favorite gaming series, Like a Dragon, released the juggernaut Infinite Wealth, taking an genre-redefining concept for the series to new momentous heights over its 100-hour span. At the beginning of the summer, the already massive Elden Ring dropped the staggering Shadow of the Erdtree DLC that carried me for weeks at a time – realizing only later that I left practically half of the content untouched, unexplored. There was no room left on my plate whatsoever, yet I still made time to jam in gargantuan offerings like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Metaphor: ReFantazio. We’ll call 2025 the year of the food-coma.

Some of my favorite side dishes this year took the form of indie games, like the years-awaited Little Kitty Big City and Tchia, as well as some of my unfinished 2023 wishlist entries like Venba and Wildmender. As always, my wishlist only grew in size this year, while games that were on my radar remained untouched, like Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Neva, Kind Words 2, and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II. And I was lucky enough to receive review copies of highly anticipated games like Phoenix Springs, Disney Dreamlight Valley, and Squirrel With a Gun – I will just have to tackle them next year, outside of the review window. Even still, full as I am from this year’s offerings, I approach the cozy winter months looking forward to Fretless and Date Everything! as some lovely post-2024 dessert.

Above all, however, this year was capped off by 1000xRESIST – as I described in my recent article, “the first time since NieR: Automata that caused me to genuinely question my favorite game of all time.” I cannot overstate the tsunami of existentialism that washed over me during September when I spent every waking moment in deep contemplation about this game. 1000xRESIST is the rare one-in-a-thousand game that only gets better with time, the more you talk to people about it, the more you read. Thank the gods for my Steam Deck, between flights to PAX East and Florida, allowing me respite as I snuck in spare hours for this game that utterly obsessed me – and still does. I am most grateful for games that twist so deep into your brain that they change who you are. 1000xRESIST is that conceptual screw for me, and remains my greatest gratitude of 2024. Eat up, if you haven’t already.

Andy Webb

In the last few years, I’ve transitioned from game-gobbling goblin to barely a hobbyist, favoring my bread and butter like shooters and RPGs but not playing them often. There’s an inerasable imprint on my soul for competition and narrative, and frequently the two combine in unsuspecting ways. Tournaments have storylines, players have histories, and everybody plays to win. There are villains and heroes. I stew myself in it as much as I can.

What lingers, always, when the game is over or the tournament ends, is a feeling. Of resolution, or perhaps dissatisfaction, but always something that sticks to the heart and the mind, affecting the body physically like a rejuvenation or malaise. An ending, resting for now but ready to prepare for the next. Or a call to action to heal and rise again.

In many ways I have traded one medium for another. I spend much of my time gaming on a tabletop now. Maybe still a game-gobbling goblin, but in a different sense. Regardless, one feature of these make-believe worlds we inhabit is affixed to the core of my being and permeates my essence. In the weave of gaming, in everything from quiet night questing to once in a lifetime losers bracket runs to improv at a table with friends, I remain ever grateful for stories.

Nina Salenius

I would like to echo Ben in talking about connection, but also disconnection. For a while now I’ve been stuck in a rut of disconnection. Life has been throwing some curveballs and I’ve focused on managing my day to day life, consisting of working, eating and sleeping. I felt I didn’t have time or energy for anything else. I have taken a long break from streaming, which in turn has caused me to become somewhat distant from EG and many of my friends. This year however, I started to realize that choosing to stay disconnected from my friends and my favorite hobby, playing video games, was actually making me more tired, more sad, more depressed. So I said fuck it, and reached out to my old friends to play games again.

And that brings me to connection. Having silly online video games, like Lethal Company and Smite, have helped me reconnect with those people I have known and played games with for 10 years now. I am so thankful for video games giving me a chance and a medium to do that. In fact, without video games, I would never have connected with some of my best friends or the EG community..

I am also thankful for video games giving me the opportunity to connect with strangers. One of the games that helped me actually sit down and turn on the dusty PC again was Kind Words. It is so incredibly simple, but there is something so beautiful about being surrounded by uplifting messages and letters from complete strangers. I think the anonymity of it helped, there is no pressure to perform or be something great, you just get to share positivity and encouragement.

Strangely, having grown up with video games and keeping it as a hobby into adulthood has helped me at work in unexpected ways. The kids I work with are often slow to trust adults and the generational gap makes it even harder to get to know them. A shared interest in video games has probably been one of the best ice breakers I have discovered. It’s so cool to see a teenager’s eyes light up when they realize you understand when they talk about their favorite games. I’m so happy to see the love for video games continue into future generations.

To summarize my ramble, I am so incredibly grateful for video games existing and keeping us all connected to people, friends and strangers alike.

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