2016 Recap/Look Ahead to 2017

So. 2016.

Having gotten a second job near the end of 2015, combined with the utter lack of organization in the leadup to AGDQ2016, I was pretty sure I was done with streaming/speedrunning/etc. And I'm still very much retired from "proper" speedrunning. I do enjoy randomizers and occasionally race them, but the skillset and what you do in a randomizer race is almost antithetical to "traditional" speedrunning--you're expected to actually roll with and respond to bad luck instead of just going "Oops, I only gained 9 strength instead of 10, that'll cost me half a second in this 5-hour speedrun, better reset." like most people would in a speedrun.

The more interesting thing to me is that, as a goof, I started streaming again, and enjoyed it to the point I'd like to do more of it next year. To be more accurate, on US election night, I decided people could use a politics-free place to get away for a few hours and chill. However, I intentionally decided to stream Dragon Warrior II, one of the most un-chill JRPGs in existence (Even in its easier Game Boy Color form), for this stream. Well, people seemed to enjoy it, and I enjoyed (re)playing it. I've loved RPGs of all sorts since I was a kid, which gave me an idea. I could resurrect my stream on a semi-regular basis (The second job's schedule changes often enough that I can't count on a given night off from week to week), but doing casual RPG playthroughs instead of speedrunning stuff.

To that end, I've started alternating between "JRPGs" and "Dungeon Crawlers" (The distinction between them being an unwritten kind of I-know-it-when-I-see-it thus far), polling people online to determine what I should play next out of a list of 4 games. This has given me a chance to finish games I hadn't done before for whatever reason, like Robotrek, and is encouraging me to look through my library for other games I might like. While the criteria is always subject to change--I still need to figure out where "hybrids" of these two genres like the original Phantasy Star fit in--right now I'm liking this formula, and I feel like the polls are a way to involve what's left of my audience in the stream planning.

Speaking of which, I've found I actually really like streaming this way/these games, even though not as many people watch the streams as watched me when I was speedrunning. I've even considered getting a high-def capture card to allow me to properly stream Xbox 360 and Wii U stuff, to further increase the potential RPG pool. I can stream those systems in standard definition at the moment, as I have composite wires for both, but that strikes me as a suboptimal solution. I'm not exactly a stickler for 60FPS/4K resolution or whatever, but if I'm going to stream those systems, I figured I should at least try and make them look as good as I can.

Other things: Thanks to the two jobs thing, the end of 2016 has my financial situation as, if not "good" per se, at least "stable and slowly improving". So that's a plus. I'd like to get back on board the exercise train at some point too, though having two jobs makes that hard. I'll try and at least walk more if I can, though.

In all, in terms of my gaming for the next year, I'm actually quite excited about it. For the rest of the stuff, my 2016 wasn't as bad as it was for others, and hopefully it'll get even better in 2017.