Believe it or not, this issue marks a year of Pushing Buttons. However long you’ve been a subscriber, I wanted to say thank you so much for reading. Whether I’ve been chewing over the week’s gaming news, philosophising over what games can offer us in times of crisis or just writing (again) about how brilliantly creepy Zelda: Majora’s Mask is, putting this newsletter together has consistently been a highlight of my working week. I try to bring you a balance of analysis, opinion, reminiscence, recommendations and good old-fashioned journalistic storytelling, but if you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see more of in this newsletter, hit reply and tell me. And if there are any guest writers you’d like to see in your inbox in 2023, let me know who they are and I’ll try to make it happen.
When the first issue went out, the world was still emerging tentatively from Covid-19 lockdowns, when video games had been a vital social lifeline for millions. The effects of the pandemic continue to be felt in the games world; 2022 was full of games that were delayed as studios scrambled to adapt to remote working, and I played more than one big-budget game this year that bore the unmistakeable signs of a rush to the finish. The industry also made less money this year, after unsustainably rapid pandemic-fuelled growth in 2020. In other ways, though, it’s been a slow return to business as usual, as the industry hype machine stirred back to life.
