Time to Loot is seven years old. Eeesh.
It actually turned seven on January 20th — but for whatever reason, corner me on a street and ask me without the ability for me to look it up, and I’d tell you January 27th.
Noooo idea why. But that date has stuck really hard.
In typical Nait style though, I’m late to my own party. I took conscious note of the fact the date was swiftly arising somewhere around the 25th Jan, but… You know… Games!
“But… You Know… Games!” pretty well sums up the last several years around here. This last month in particular though feels like it reached something of a fever pitch. Or perhaps I was just more conscious of it, given I still opted to play over post.
Possibly though this also signals changing the stage of the cycle. As I do tend to find these things quite circular.
By The Numbers
| Year | Total posts | Total comments | Avg comments per post | Total likes | Avg likes per post | Total words | Avg words per post |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 201 | 682 | 3.4 | 848 | 4.2 | 162,251 | 807 |
| 2020 | 152 | 704 | 4.6 | 1,260 | 8.3 | 143,051 | 941 |
| 2021 | 158 | 599 | 3.8 | 1,038 | 6.6 | 142,006 | 899 |
| 2022 | 93 | 241 | 2.6 | 701 | 7.5 | 92,827 | 998 |
| 2023 | 68 | 148 | 2.2 | 405 | 6.0 | 58,171 | 856 |
| 2024 | 64 | 183 | 2.9 | 347 | 5.4 | 51,885 | 811 |
| 2025 | 56 | 184 | 3.3 | 331 | 5.9 | 47,826 | 854 |
| 2026 | 2 | 2 | 1.0 | 15 | 7.5 | 2,567 | 1,284 |
The July spike in traffic last year surprised me a little. Taking a dig into it — it doesn’t appear to be any single particular post getting a big link or anything, but rather a few taking off, including what looks like a resurgence of post-launch interest in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as my Rolling Credits post on it had a resurgence in views.
Plans and Hopes for 2026?
Last year I opened this section with hopes for Monster Hunter Wilds. Here at the far end of 2025, I’m not super sure how I feel that one panned out.
I wrote up a Rolling Credits for Wilds, and I think I was a bit on the fence then, too. I didn’t have any of the performance issues thanks to the raw power of the 4090, but I did feel like it might’ve erred a little on the easy side and the story… Zzzzzzz…
I think it might be one I decide upon as a total package once the expansion is out.
For 2026 the game that takes that, ‘Oh lordy, I really hope it’s amazing’ spot for me has to be Crimson Desert.
March 19th will be when we find out.
As for plans for Time to Loot?
None.
None at all.
I think my ‘plan’ will be to just ride out the cycles of interest I go through, with the hope that things rebalance a little more in favour of blogging somewhere along the way.
There have been signs that this changing of the cycle might be imminent, even, but we’ll have to see!
Super congrats on the blogiversary! That’s quite a lucky number! :)
Thanks Aywren! And true, lucky number indeed!!
Congrats on your seventh year done!
Thanks Wil! It is somewhat weird to me, how depending on the moment the starting out days can feel like either just yesterday or ancient history. :)
Congratulations on the blog anniversary!
Thank-you, Rakuno! :D Any itch to make a return yourself? :)
Oh my gosh what a milestone!! Congrats on the big 7!
Thanks Meghan! Still seems a bit surreal to me given all previous blog projects before this one I started didn’t tend to live to the 1 year mark, hah.
Congrats on 7 years!
Somewhat related – very curious those stats that you’ve included from across your blog’s lifetime. Mostly because I also had a massive traffic spike in July of last year. Do you have anything that you can tie that back to, or was it completely random like it was for me?
Again, congrats on the 7 years, but I just couldn’t help asking about the stats because I’m a weirdo hahaha
Thanks Frosti!
The July spike of 2025 is definitely tougher to pin down to anything specific. There are a few posts that appeared to pull above their usual weight, such as the Clair Obscur one, which makes some degree of sense — but the others? Not so much. e.g., one of the others which contributed heavily to that number for July is one on Favourite Games of the Passing Decade… from near the end of 2019.
No major new linking source, Google Search engine appearing as the major jump in traffic source. And given I saw some news the other day that Perplexity was caught redhanded spoofing its AI scraping crawler as Google to bypass potential blocks… Well, I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just that.
Because where the other abnormally big spikes occurred, even the one from the year prior, I know exactly what they are.
Congrats, mate!
Thanks Mailvaltar! :D
Congratulations! That’s no small number, and I hope you’re very proud of all you’ve written here!
Thank-you! I will say, definitely fairly proud of many of the posts here, although — no doubt at least to some extent a function of volume — mostly from the early years! Definitely been ones I’ve liked each year even since my more sedate posting paces kicked in though. :)
I think you should be proud of the recent ones, too – as well as the consistent posting you’ve managed to keep up. It’s no small feat! It’s a proper gaming journal. :D