Hello!
It's a been a while since I've done a proper big catch up. So - hi, hello, how are you? How's the world treating ya?
So, as you probably know by now I've had the biggest life change of all time this year - becoming a dad. My son has been here for 12 weeks now and it's been a wonderful, challenging, emotional, joyful, exhausting three months.
For the most part we've been extremely fortunate. He's an easy going baby: he sleeps well, rarely cries, he smiles and giggles, hits his milestones perfectly, and so on. But even still - it's a non-stop, 24/7 job. No breaks, no weekends, no sick leave. Just go go go.
Now in a lot of traditional family set ups, it's down to the mum to look after the baby most of the time - and for the dad to get straight back to work. But we've been extremely fortunate to be able to buck that trend. I didn't work at all for the first two months, and only now I've started to very gradually ease back into my role.
For now this means working reduced hours, and fewer days per week. But it's actually not slowing me down as much as I expected.
And that's for a couple reasons. One, as proponents of the four day week will tell you: if you work fewer hours you don't do less work, you just procrastinate less. When I only have three or four hours to work that day... I just work for three or four hours straight, instead of wasting time on Reddit and Discord and walking to the fridge for the 15th time "just to have a look".
And also - I have spent the last few years working on my video-making workflow to speed things up. It wasn't actually with a baby in mind, I've just always enjoyed using tech to improve my productivity. So I've made it faster to record my voice, edit the video together, pick out music, and so on - all without impacting the creative vision (and - crucially - without involving any generative AI slop!).
So while I still won't be quite as productive as before - I'm feeling confident about making some top notch videos this year. Starting with my first of 2026: a big video about how Nintendo changed its Zelda design philosophy, and how it's probably never going to go back.
It was fun to try and find every single interview the team has given on the three latest Zelda games (Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and Echoes of Wisdom) and pick out key quotes to explain their process and current thinking. And I hope I did a good job of explaining exactly what has changed in this new era of Zelda games.
In terms of actually playing games... that's been a little less successful. If my baby has one downside, it's that he loves to "contact nap". Which means, during the day, he won't fall asleep unless he's lying on someone. Which means for a lot of the day, either my wife or I will be trapped in a chair with a snoring baby in our arms. Which isn't particularly conducive to playing a video game.
I mean, sometimes you can wriggle your arms free. Or sometimes my wife will have the baby and I don't need to shop, cook, clean, or shower. And so in those rare moments: gaming is on the table! And that is why it took me all month to play the relatively short, 10 hour campaign of Resident Evil Requiem. I got there in the end!
This was a really fun game. It's great to see them mix up all three eras of the Resi franchise: the lock-and-key shenanigans of the early games, the action set-pieces of 4 through 6, and the first-person spookiness of 7 and Village. It makes for a game that hits a lot of different horror notes - and keeps changing tone and pace, long before you've gotten bored of any one aspect.
There's also a story that is as knotty, campy, silly, and self-referential. To be honest this series is starting to creep into Metal Gear Solid territory with bad guys who look and act like completely different bad guys, meta callbacks to other games, winking in-jokes, and spaghetti plotting that I can't follow any more. Something to do with Umbrella, I guess?
I'm also making a mental list of games I hope to catch up on when I get a chance. The rock climbing game Cairn, cat roguelike Mewgenics (which I lent my voice to, for one of the cats!), goofy life sim Pokopia, and Inkle's new archive-hunting mystery game TR-49. The backlog is growing!
However, not all is lost. Because while it's been tricky to fit in video games, there are other hobbies I can easily do while my son sleeps on me.
For starters, I've been listening to audiobooks. I'm currently near the end of a novel called Daemon. This is fun: it's a book about a video game designer who unleashed a murderous, world-dominating computer virus after his death. It's a book about artificial intelligence, hacking, and online gaming.
But the thing I like the most is that it was written in 2006. So all of the technology, terminology, and ideas are just adorably quaint. This is pre-iPhone, pre-ChatGPT, pre-social media, pre-everything. It feels like it was written in the bronze age. And so on top of it just being a pretty engrossing story, it's also a fun historical nostalgia trip.
I've also been watching endless movies. I've already watched 37 so far this year! Most mornings I have a little routine where I feed my son, play with him for a bit, he falls asleep on me, and then "we" watch a movie "together".
It's been an eclectic mix. Classic movies, cult movies, indie movies, and bang-up-to-date movies.
Some favourites include: Deliverance: a film from the 70s about four middle aged dudes going on a white water rafting trip together, before it goes horribly wrong. Election: a political satire about picking a class president, from Alexander Payne. Bird: a magical realist film about growing up poor in London, which almost feels like a live action Studio Ghibli movie. Road House: an absurd cult favourite from the 80s which reimagines mythic cowboys as nightclub bouncers.
Also, It Was Just an Accident: an Iranian movie made in secret, by a director banned from making films. Paris, Texas: a haunting road movie about a dad who chooses to wander through the desert without speaking. And Monster: a beautiful, tender, crushing story about two schoolboys in Japan. That films' director, Hirokazu Kore-eda, is one of my favourites - his movies are all so sweet, so gentle, so focused on small relationships and moments.
Overall, life is good. At the start of the year, when my baby was first born, it felt like life was impossible. How would I ever work again? Play games again? Leave the house again? Have a shower again? It felt all consuming and overwhelming. But things have gotten easier and easier. I'm now working, enjoying my hobbies, exercising, and living my life. There is compromise - but it's worth it.
In fact: the first time my son gave out a big, hearty, gasping-for-air giggle over some silly dance I was doing? Well, I'd give up anything and everything to hear that over and over again.
Hope you're doing well. Chat soon
Mark