While it was not the year I had in mind. There were some interesting and fun things throughout it. While I’ll be going over in details things like game development and progress on many projects on @Enjargames. There are a few things to cover on this account as well.
The Home Bar
Last year my New Year resolution was to expand my home bar. I will say that mission has been accomplished in a bit of a different fashion than I was thinking it would be.
The home bar has expanded to the point I no longer have space to keep it all in one spot. I ended up having a liquor table now. The old place I was keeping everything has become home to the glassware, bar utensils, and the blender.
The blender ended up adding a lot of utility to my setup. Being able to crush ice and mix things well has become a staple during the summertime pool months and staying a couple of days at casinos.
You might notice in the photo above there is a decent amount of Pina Colada mix and Malibu rum. Pina Coladas during the summer run like a river here. While that won’t be enough to get through a full summer it will be a decent start.
The bar was able to expand like it did as people brought different liquors to meetups or gave them to me as gifts. I don’t drink alone so it has been nice to share and get back more than you started with. There might be some unopened bottles at the moment but in the coming months, they will get used and possibly even replaced by other stuff.
While you will sometimes get those greedy people that just want to drink your entire supply and not replace more than they drink. For the most part, those kinds of people are seldom welcomed to enjoy. Besides those kinds of people are the ones to complain that you did not pour copious amounts of booze into their mixed drink. Expecting you to pour 10 times the normal amount of booze. That would make this unstainable and frankly not as fun or sociable.
There have been quite some fun moments. I took an entire suitcase and backpack full of booze and other supplies to the casino. I was making mudslides which was a goal I had for the year along with some other drinks during a two-day stay. I even lucked out and was a door away from the ice machine. A mistake they won’t make again!
No photos other than the wins on slots survived. At least that is what I’m told.
Content
While the bulk of my content this year has been about gaming. It was a wider mix of content that I was doing in my earlier years here as far as gaming goes. You had things like reviews, guides, and stuff about game development. While I had many posts that I enjoyed one stood out the most.
Something quite a few people seem to struggle with on Hive is the fact that content lives past the earning window. One piece of content I have written month after month was topping page views it was getting on PeakD over a lot of my content and others as well.
The best thing about that piece of outperforming content is I did not even write it in 2021. No, 2021 is when it started to take off. I wrote Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord | Level 300 Smithing Guide back in April of 2020. For this week alone it's over 30 views on PeakD and it’s had better and worse weeks over the year.
The best of it all though is that piece only had a payout of 22.40. That is right I got a share of 11.855 in rewards for writing something that is still getting views over a year later.
I rarely write content like that as it was over 100 hours invested into creating it. Its pieces like that are created out of a labor of love for them than anything else. As it’s just not sustainable for me, in the long run, to do that to myself.
While in the grand scheme of things that many views in a week outside of Hive are nothing. It’s the fact that I can create content here that starts to perform from outside readership well after it has paid out and been forgotten about from within.
It’s also not my only piece of content that is performing like that either. I recall a few times during the year my freshest content was not even breaking my top 5 viewed posts for a given week. Some games I’ve written about in the past would go on sale or pop off and the views would come in as my content climbed rankings.
I can also see from my best-performing pages that crypto gaming is starting to pick up. It was fun throughout the year watching stuff like Review | League Of Kingdoms that was another piece of content I wrote in 2020 go up in readership for a few months when that game exploded for a while.
While I did play a few blockchain games in 2021 I rarely wrote about them. A lot of times games were far from being something I wanted to create content on. Other times there were just things I could not talk about yet.
In 2022 I’ll more than likely be looking to write a few posts about blockchain games again. The issue is usually cost, access, and getting set up on a particular blockchain. Quite a few popular blockchain games that I’ve not covered or talked about much can cost thousands to get into which ends up not being worth the risk for me. Others locked away behind $500 beta key buys.
I won’t be shocked in 2022 if many pieces of content I’ve written in 2021 started to take off. There are several blockchain games that I’ve written about that are starting to pick up momentum over time. As I write content about a particular thing I tend to link back to the best similar content I can. Which slowly but surely seems to be working out.
2022
In most upcoming years I’m rather optimistic about having a fresh start and a new year coming into my life. 2020 was not that great. 2021 was even worse. 2022 not looking that great but I am working on some games which at least should be fun to make.
Over the years I’ve watched quite a few content creators have to call it quits and toss in the towel for the most part. They usually start by posting less until one day it’s been months and only someone like me even notices and checks in. So every year I find it rather shocking I’m still holding in there and posting.
I’m involved in quite a few projects now. While some of them are on Hive and I’ll post updates on their accounts when I can if I’m the one making the content. Not all of them are or will be. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to enjoy some games and write about them from time to time.
Last year my goal was aiming for 2 or 3 posts a week. There were some weeks of nothing. There were also many weeks of five posts a week. While I’ll be aiming for around the same amount of content in the coming year some changes more than likely will need to be made.
Final Thoughts
Hive has continued to be a bright spot in my life in 2021. Things are looking up for Hive and hopefully, I’ll be able to keep making time for it and enjoying what this place has to offer. Thank you to everyone that has supported me over the years. All of this has been quite an interesting experience as the years go by.
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Content written and Photos taken by @Enjar.
