One of the podcast ideas we had for the end of the year was “game of the year,” but since Waypoint had approached the concept differently each year, there’s always room to improvise. When I walked into the office a few hours before we were due to start podcasting, Cado asked me what the plan was, and I stared forward with a blank look. “Um, make it up?”

Through the rest of December and into early January, we're going into hibernation. But every day, we'll have a new podcast for you to listen to, and sometimes, an article to read. You can keep track of everything we're talking about to look back on the past year (and decade) right here.

I was serious, too. The idea was simple: get into a room as a group and talk through our game of the year lists, our individual top 10 lists, in real-time. We didn’t have to come to a conclusion the list in the moment because these podcasts are being recorded weeks before our actual lists need to be published, but it felt like a good way to come up with a rough draft.

So that’s what we did!

Every year, I keep a note on my phone featuring every game I spent meaningful time with, listed in chronological order. That gave us a good foundation on how to start talking through the year that was 2019, with the rest of the group throwing out other suggestions along the way.

One of the early games we talked about was, of course, Kingdom Hearts III. Besides being the foundation for one of the best things we did all year, Lore Reasons, Kingdom Hearts III is a game we have so many opinions about. What does it mean to call it one of your favorites, even if you didn’t enjoy playing it? Can you put it on a list if you watched only the cutscenes?

Austin: What else did a lot of us play this year?

Patrick: Kingdom Hearts III.

Cado: [cackles]

Austin: It’s on my list but not high for me because I didn’t play it, but it was important.

Patrick: If it ends up on my list, it will be because not because I enjoyed the game. I think the game was mostly trash. But what I enjoyed—