Happy Thanksgiving! Here's Seven Things We're Thankful For (You're One of Them)

If you’re a long-time reader then you’re probably thinking: “What the poo? You guys are all tea drinking, scone scoffing English people, why you bothering with Thanksgiving?!” It’s a fair question, too. However, due to the intricate technology that we’ve got running behind the scenes (it’s actually little more than an app of sorts) we know that roughly 30% of our readers are from America and that 62.7% of you read our site on a mobile device, most likely while on the toilet. It seems fitting, then, that we run a little feature about what we’re thankful for in the world of gaming. Of course, this list is only related to gaming, but we’re not robots and we are thankful for more thanks-worthy essentials like food, having a home/cabin, family etc.

Here’s what we’re thankful for in the world of gaming. Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving y’all! (Yuck, that was so un-British…)

1. Wireless Controllers

To think that we used to play our games with controllers that needed to be directly plugged into the console with some annoying piece of wire seems almost barbaric, doesn’t it? But that’s how we all used to roll. Countless consoles died unfair deaths due to the idiotic actions of others who couldn’t avoid the dangling wire, so they walked straight into it and brought many a console crashing to the ground. Wired controllers were still pretty common with the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation, but we’ve finally hit a point in time where we can safely play our games without the dog throttling itself every time it walks past the TV. We’re thankful for wireless controllers. They. Are. Boss.

2. Online Multiplayer

Alright, I’m not the biggest fan of playing games online with others, but you probably already know that from my Halo 5 and Call of Duty: Black Ops III reviews. I’m just not all that bothered about playing the latest hyped-up game online for a couple of months before it fades into obscurity, but I do see the appeal and on occasion, I’m partial to the odd game now and then. I’m actually a big Awesomenauts player on the PS4, but before that I’d sunk around 400 hours or so into the Steam release. The fact is that online multiplayer is a great way to extend the life of mediocre games. That’s as nice as I’ll be about it, and the only reason it’s on this list at all is because one of the other guys wanted it on. So there. You’ve had your way. Happy now? Prick.

3. The Mystical Cloud

Have you ever had a power cut during a play session? Perhaps your arsehole father thought he’d be oh-so-hilarious and press the reset button on the SEGA just as you started the final level of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Or maybe your wanker of a friend borrowed your PS2 memory card and never remembered to return it. All are valid reasons to commit heinous crimes against humanity, but these days we needn’t go all Gitmo on anybody over lost saves; The Cloud has our backs. Save games are stored in the mysterious great beyond in the sky, ready to be plucked from the heavens on a whim. What a great time to be alive. Well, it’s great when the PSN and Xbox Live services aren’t dragging themselves off the floor…

4. The Ability to Record Your Fails and Heroics

Back in the day, when you wanted to watch someone do something stupid, you’d have to watch the ITV classic ‘You’ve Been Framed’ or the North American equivalent. They were typically really crap home videos that usually consisted of kids either hitting their dad in the bollocks, or hitting their siblings while the parents looked on and laughed. Alright, it wasn’t that bad. We gamers always thought that it’d be cool to transfer that same concept to games. How many times did you do something utterly ridiculous in a game, only to have no way of showing your mates? These days it’s as simple as pressing a button, pressing another button, then maybe tapping one more, because why not, and then it’s out on YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook for the world to see. Thanks gaming technology maker wizard people, you’ve done us a great service. Cheers.

5. Nice Public Relations People That Aren’t Total Meanies

One thing that we’ve been missing out on over the recent years is press releases. It’s been a bitter fight to get the bigger companies to take note, and even though it’s something relatively simple, many just don’t take us on board and add us to their list of approved vendors who can receive press releases. What gives, man? Thankfully, we’re now receiving them on a daily basis thanks to the human PR staff at said companies. It’s not a massive thing, but we’re thankful because it means we can get the latest news out to you, the readers, in a more timely fashion than ever before. We can give you the extra screenshots, the extra insight, and more. It’s our job, and now we have the means to do it better and to serve you better. We should all be thankful. Cheers PR dudes/dudettes!

6. Clickbait Headlines

No, not from us, though we have succumbed to the hyperbolic headlines in the past, we’re much more mature these days. Did you know it’s been more than a year since Driveclub released? Is there any need to have “PS4 Exclusive” in a headline about Driveclub these days? No, none. That’s why we don’t do such things. Maybe in the early days of a game’s life when people aren’t sure, but a year on? It’s pathetic, as is the raping of adjectives to big-up games. Why are we thankful, then? Well, when other sites do it, they look like idiots, and rightly so. Remember The Order: 1886? It was a damp squib to say the least (still alright, but nothing amazing) but before its release, every website and their hosting company was hyping the game to hell and back. Then it released and received mediocre reviews, and those sites that spent weeks crafting crappy headlines for hits looked like idiots, then people started to ignore the sensationalism and opted for better sites, sites like The Games Cabin that produce stories that aren’t just a bunch of copied and pasted tweets. Sites like The Games Cabin that put a bit of effort into writing something that is at least the tiny bit enjoyable to read. Nothing that’ll have you slapping your knees, but enough humour to have you maybe breathe a bit of extra air from your nostrils. Cheers guys, and, well, cheers crap sites, too!

7. You, Our Digital Mates!

Alright yoons?! We’re grateful for a lot of things, but above all (at least in the world of gaming, sorry, but family is OG) we’re thankful for every single reader that happens across our humble little site. Did you know that The Games Cabin was born on a tiny notebook computer in a hotel apartment in France? Chambery, to be precise. Lovely town. I, Chris, started the site with absolutely zero experience in the field, but with a bottle of wine in hand and a cigarette hanging out of my mouth (seriously, I embraced France like no other) I started churning out news posts related to the gaming industry. That was in October 2012. In fact, the first ever post on The Games Cabin was a review of LittleBigPlanet Vita. You can read that here, but be warned: I wasn’t as good a writer back then as I am now, and even now I consider myself to be exceptionally average in every aspect.

Back when the site was still growing I was happy to see 100 hits a week. I’d be jubilant to the point I’d crack open another bottle of win (no, really, I friggin’ loved being French) and declare the week a success. Back then I was pretty much a one man show, and that’s not really changed in the subsequent years, though recently a few new guys have joined The Games Cabin, so we’re growing on the inside. Philosophical, yo.

These days we’re hitting well over 150,000 readers a month. Yeah. The site has come a long way since the days when 100 hits a week was considered a good week… And it’s only because of you, our lovely readers. Sure, some of you visit us due to links posted on news aggregate sites like reddit, n4g, and the n4g alternative site GameWires etc etc, but a growing number of you are knocking on the homepage door everyday, which means you’re coming directly to the site. For this we, the entire team, are extremely thankful. By way of thanks, we’d like to offer one of you the opportunity to win a £10/$10 Amazon gift card. All you need to do is hit up the comments and tell us what you’re thankful for. It could be anything gaming related, or it could be something a bit closer to home. The winner be selected at random, so don’t go spinning some sob story to try to win; it won’t bloody work.