State of the Stack 2026
It’s time for some reflection. Yes, the Nerd Central State of the Stack is here. This is the time where I get to look back and be honest about how my Substack newsletter is doing and talk about what I plan to do in the next year. Last year was the first year of doing this but I quickly realized I would like to perform this exercise every single year.
A REMINDER: if you enjoy my free content, you may enjoy my paid content! In my paid posts, I write about gaming nitpicks that irk me, my personal video game collection and I also write about the origins of certain video games and how they were developed.
Firstly, I want to talk about some things I did differently last year in 2025.
I Tried to Use AI
Last year I tried to create some posts using AI. Specifically, I made a category of posts called AI Artwork in which I took well known video games and video game characters and tried to see how well AI could re-create them. It was a fun little experiment and I had some fun trying to work around ChatGPT’s copyright and intellectual property restrictions. Ultimately though, I grew bored with creating those and I haven’t done another one in a while. So, at least in this sense, AI is dead to me. Don’t tell them I said that.
I Wrote a Series on Health
I wouldn’t say I’m a perfectly healthy person. There are plenty of unhealthy things that I do, from eating to sitting on my bum too much. But I feel like I have been more conscious about my health in the past 5 years than I ever have been. So I decided to write a series on “Being a Healthy Nerd”, an overview of my personal health journey along with some things that I personally do to try and stay in good health. It was not meant to be a “you should do this or else” but more of a list of supplements and routines and practices that I do and have seen results with. I don’t know if anyone else enjoyed these, they are definitely not very related to video games. But I enjoyed writing them and if it gives even one person motivation to try and change their lifestyle, then that’s a win in my book.
I Got Nitpicky
Most of the games I write about have issues one way or another. After all, nothing is perfect. There have been very few games in the approximately 70 Game Thoughts posts I’ve written where the What I Didn’t Like section had very little to nothing in it. But there have been many times that the things I didn’t like boil down to nitpicks: something minor I took issue with that didn’t take away from the overall experience and could have even been something that I personally had a problem with but maybe others didn’t. So I made a series out of it in 2025. It allows me to talk about the most glaring problems I have with games overall and maybe I’ll eventually get more granular and rant about a specific problem in a single game, who knows?
Games Games Games
I got through 31 games in 2025 and there’s no sign of slowing down. You can check out my Top 10 list of 2025 if you missed it below. Rest assured, 2026 will be more games played and more games written about.
Next, let’s dig into some statistics!
STATISTICS!
As of the moment of this writing I have:
5 Paid Subscribers: That’s an increase of 1 from last year and that’s fantastic in my book. As I said last year, I am eternally grateful to anyone who would be willing to pay for my ramblings and bumblings. Every new paid subscriber makes me want to provide more value and gives me renewed interest in this whole endeavor. So, thank you guys so much! You know who you are.
182 Free Subscribers: This is up from 127 around this time last year. Just, wow. Every single one of my game thoughts posts go out to free subscribers and that is how this newsletter began. That will never change. I love journaling about the games I play. It provides benefit for me personally, it is fun and it seems that hopefully 182 of you out there enjoy it as well. I did not double my subscribers this year like last year, but 55 new subscribers ain’t too shabby. Thank you all!! I would love to get to 200 subscribers in 2026.
310 Followers: Last year, I had 185 followers…. so 125 new followers in 2025?!? Insanity! Thank you to everyone who is following me. This was a huge jump and to be honest, I didn’t realize until I started writing this that my follower count had jumped up so much. These are either people who subscribe to my content and also follow me OR they are people who do not subscribe but are interested enough to follow and read the Notes I post from time to time. Thank you to all my followers, you are appreciated!
Looking at traffic for 2025, the trend is pretty steady. My most popular day for the year was January 20, 2025 with 215 total views. November 3 was also a high point with 183 views.
What does this mean?
To me this means my Substack newsletter is HEALTHY. I am continually gaining subscribers and followers, my view count is holding steady, I’m getting views from varied sources like email, Google and directly from the Substack app. I have a group of folks on here who consistently restack, comment on or like my posts. Thank you guys so much! I feel like, despite there STILL in 2026 being no Video Game category on Substack, we have carved out a little game community here and that is so cool. Nothing like doing the work that Substack should be doing for us, am I right? I’m certainly not the most popular writer on here who writes about video games, but I at love being part of the group in some small way.
Where to go from here?
Firstly, it will be more of the same from me generally. I will keep releasing a new post every Monday morning at 8:30am CT. I will alternate between a free post that is usually a Game Thoughts post and a Paid Subscriber only post that is more random in nature (but hopefully still enjoyable to read!).
Interviews
I am fascinated by the video game industry. As a programmer myself, when I play games, I am constantly thinking about what it took to implement the combat system or the unique game mechanic or the narrative that is seen in video games. To that end, I really want to try and conduct interviews from people in the industry in 2026. So, if you are a person in the industry or you know someone who is and would be willing to, at minimum, fill out an interview questionnaire, please let me know!
Finally, a Poll
I hope everyone has a great 2026. I’ll end this post with a poll. Gotta have a poll in the State of the Stack, right? Here it is: