Welcome all, and thanks for reading my YEAR IN REVIEW for 2025!

OOC

I hope you all had a good year. Mine was... hectic. I can't say that I enjoyed it much, in-that I didn't really have much of a chance to "stop and smell the roses" so-to-speak. 2025 seemed to be "all gas, no brake", which is probably not a good thing, and it seems to have gone past in a blur. So now, I'm sitting down to think on it, and record some thoughts.

These "in review" journals are supposed to be a reflection of the year... at the end of the year. The fact that its almost April and I'm only-now writing the "2025 Year In Review" is a testament to how pedal-to-the-metal things have been for me iRL. And for that, I apologize. You may have also noticed a lack of regular uploads from me in 2025, and now you know why. I keep hoping that life will calm down a bit and allow me to relax, but that never seems to come about. Someday...


Anyway, lets chat about 2025!

ETHERAS ACHIEVEMENTS
Pretty much going to be a copy-paste of last year's.
So, Etheras...
.... uploaded a bunch of art!
... conquered a bunch of planets!
... subjugated some subjects!
... and all that business. ;)


IRL PERSONAL NEWS
Kinda empty, TBH. I guess I'm just working too much? Wow it feels really sad that a whole year happened and I can't think of a single major personal event to write about. I suppose that "no news is good news", but... good news is even-better news. And I don't really have anything to discuss there either.


FURRY FANDOM NEWS
A continuation of trends that I've noted in the past. Immersive media (animation especially) is growing, interest in regular "still" art seems to be diminishing. AI seems to be getting better every day, and that makes me worried for all the artists out there. They put a happy face on it, that AI can't really do what they do - which I agree-with. But I do think that, as social media gets filled with low-effort slop, discoverability is going to become an issue. Even myself, with a (once) fairly famous furry character, I'm not getting anywhere near the engagement that I once did. To a large degree, I think that's my own fault, pivoting more towards straight art (I think there are fewer amazonian characters out there looking for cute femboys to bully than big characters looking for a femboy to powerbottom them), but I've always kinda commissioned what I want, rather than what others want me to post. I guess our interests are simply diverging slowly over time.

I've also noticed a weird resurgence of interest on Twitter/X. Recently, I posted some art and got more interaction on Twitter/X than on FA, which is weird because FA has always been the strongest place for engagement with furry fans (for me, anyway). I'm expecting this to be a one-off, but... its still strange.

I also finally got off my lazy butt and signed up for BlueSky, but for me, its been a total graveyard of interaction. I'm not sure why its so dead. Maybe just not enough furs have discovered me there yet, or maybe its just much more insular than other platforms. Or maybe... (and I feel like this is the most likely scenario...) femboy fennecs just aren't fashionable anymore. I feel like there's a lot of hyper-stimulation out there, with completely over-the-top characters, and Etheras is just a little too mundane for the newer generations of furries. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll see.


IN THE WORLD
Wars everywhere, tensions rising, it's not looking great. Clearly something has to give, but I'm not sure what that "something" is.

Inflation still feels like a problem to me, though its not skyrocketing like it was at the end of 2024. I feel like the economy is still a mess, and has-been for some time. It all feels very artificial. The government says that the economy is strong, but... I just don't see it. Certainly not in my own finances, and not in the finances of my friends either. I'm not sure where they think this "growth" or "strength" is. Maybe in the size of the portfolios of hedge funds? But that's not the real economy. What I see is that more people have less disposable income, and that companies are locking down, trying to reduce risk, as if they're battoning-down the hatches for a storm that they see coming - and that has me very worried.


IN TECHNOLOGY
AI is getting put into everything, which is really annoying to me. Like, why does Gmail feel the need to summarize a 2 line conversation about an email discussing furry art? Why do I need AI in Acrobat Reader? I have a FIND button already. AI is feeling a lot like the dot-com bubble, where they're doing AI-everything because investors want to be in on the ground-floor on AI, but the ship has already sailed, and a lot of people are going to lose everything when the bubble bursts. And a few companies will survive and become the Amazon.coms of AI, but I think that most will be gone in 5 years. And hopefully it won't take the global economy down with it.

I'm not going to pretend to know where AI is going long-term, but color me a skeptic. I just don't see how using enough electricity to power a small African village to deepfake a trailcam of deer on a trampoline where its clearly AI because the deer are like ... splitting and merging like goop in a lava lamp... is going to be sustainable. Nobody wants to pay for AI (except the government, it seems) so these are very expensive ventures that generate no revenue. The bubble will need to pop eventually, and I suspect it won't take long.

Its also somewhat interesting that nobody really talks about Crypto anymore. I feel like Crypto is probably dead, and maybe Bitcoin will survive, but the whole "blockchain everything / Web3" thing was a pipe dream.


IN MOVIES AND SHOWS
Its been a dead year for movies and shows. I can't think of anything new that I could recommend. I've mostly been watching old stuff myself. Any suggestions? Please comment below! I'd be happy to hear about anything new that's fun and exciting!

For right now, I'm really just looking forward to Edgerunners Season 2 and hoping that they don't bork it up!


IN GAMING
The video game industry (where I work), has been decimated since the crunch that started in 2023. And it still seems to be crunching. However, my industry sources are saying that financing (publisher investment and such) is starting to open back up. AAA seems doomed. AAA is just making safe and mostly irrelevent content with enormous budgets, which has resulted in a series of high profile flops. Meanwhile Indie seems to be taking over (Expedition33, Silksong, Slay the Spire2, Schedule I, just to name a few...) which is good for me, having a small indie studio of my own. But I just don't know how AAA is going to be able to complete going-forward. They're just too big, bloated, inflexible, and expensive. I guess only time will tell.

What have I been playing? Expedition33, some other small management-type games. Helldivers on Fridays with my gaming crew, though we're kinda getting bored of that and we have started to explore other things.

The big release that just came out is Crimson Desert, which seems to be getting fairly "mid" reviews. I feel like its shouldering a lot of baggage from its MMO roots, with a lot of grindy content to force players to waste time (and thereby keep players playing - something very important for MMOs, but streamlining would be better for single-player). I do agree with Pearl Abyss (the makers of "Crimson Desert") that the age of the MMO is probably over. The money folks keep looking at the successes of games like Fortnite and Roblox and think that they can get a piece of that pie, but... frankly... they probably can't. Smart money RN, I think, is on short, deep, single-player experiences, or short, cheap, 4 player co-op sandbox type games that you play with your friends.

But that's just what I am seeing from my perspective in the industry. The people who play WarZone or Fortnite just aren't likely to switch to something else. Those are the types of games that a certain type of gamer picks up and plays for years. They get very good at it, and that's "their thing". And there's a network effect there too. But, those types of players are limited, and they've mostly found "their thing". So I think that that niche is full and should be avoided for at least 5 years. And yet, greedy executives keep thinking that their slight variation will be the one to break the mold, and it never does.


UNREACHED ACHIEVEMENTS
... still haven't launched those games, but getting close on a few.
... didn't start any new YouTube channels (this may have been a pipedream anyway. I barely have the time for 1!)
... definitely still haven't reached that "peace and calm" that I was seeking last year.


GOALS FOR 2026
... launch 4 games (up from last year. This is because a few are almost ready!)
... learn Blender (I have a working knowledge, but I'm not "good" at it)
... maybe just be more mindful and at-peace. Continue to organize my life, so that I can be more effective in the future.


CONCLUSION
I hope you liked my "YEAR IN REVIEW" for 2025. Here's to another year, another opportunity, and hopefully many great things! And thank you all, once again, for listening to my yammering, and for enjoying my lil fennec prince again this year. ^.^


Cheers,
~ Etheras