We made it to 2023, and this year is a huge milestone year for both me and the channel. Let’s talk about why!

First up let’s talk M4J. For those of you who don't know, M4J (or M4J3FFR135 as it was known back then) started on 22nd July 2013, meaning this year will mark the channel’s 10th anniversary. This would normally be the part where I’d announce a week long streaming extravaganza to celebrate the occasion, but considering my partner’s birthday just happens to be the day after, I think I’ll be spending that weekend with her instead! I will come up with some ideas for how to celebrate M4J reaching 10 closer to the time, but by all means feel free to suggest your own ideas either below or on the Discord and we’ll see what happens.

2023 is also a big year for me personally, as I finally hit the big 3-0 this month. For the record, I don’t feel much different now I’m out of my 20’s, but I do get very angry at kids playing loud music. Just turn it down you young ‘uns! It’s a total coincidence that I share my major milestones now with the channel, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to combine both me being 30 and M4J reaching double digits into some form of live stream celebration at some point this year. Once I’ve woken up from my old man nap I’ll have a think about that one.

Now to talk content. The secret’s finally out of the bag that I’ve been working on a new city in Cities: Skylines. with the first episode of Blue Vale dropping last week. Silly editor forgot to include the map in the edit, so I’ll post the city plan here for you all to see, and hopefully this time the city will continue to grow.

Onto Transport Fever 2 now, and things are really picking up. The next few episodes will see the freight network continue to grow, before the dawn of electrification arrives and changes the future of certain mainlines. I’m really loving this game now, it just feels so much better than when I first started playing, and with the big update due in the next few months it’ll only get even better!

As for OpenTTD, the New M4J Network hasn’t gone away yet, I’ve just been busy working on my JGR tutorials to help out never players. The response to these videos has been amazing, with them almost single-handedly pushing the channel to all new heights, and I can’t thank you all enough for watching, commenting and sharing each episode. As usual I’m still on the lookout for subjects you’d like to see covered, so feel free to once again comment below or join the Discord and get suggesting!

Finally we have the other series and games. I do want to go back to Planet Zoo at some point and get Wild Realms back up and running. The stumbling block was my PC not behaving itself when the game was running but hopefully that can be fixed and we’ll finally get to see the boat ride and rivers complete. You may have also noticed no Football Manager this year. Maybe one day Hatfield Town will return, but I just fancied a year off to enjoy the game, practice some tactics and explore some other clubs for a bit. Considering I’m in 2031 in my current save and I’m stuck in the National League South still so… that’s gone well… There are plenty of other games I’m keeping an eye on, either for full series or one-off streams, so I’m going to post a list below and, as always, feel free to say which ones you’d like to see or just add some ideas of your own.

Railroads Online (especially with the newest updates)
Prison Architect (futuristic prison anyone?)
F1 Manager (either 22 or 23 when it’s out to get my race fix on)
F1 22 or 23 (refer to above)
Minecraft (either vanilla or attempt to get Gardcity back online)

The channel is in a good place right now, with viewing figures up way higher than I thought possible and making content feeling like fun again. The schedule may reduce a little further over the next few weeks as things change a bit career-wise, but I’ll save that for a future post when I know about what’s happening.

For now, thank you everyone for watching & reading. I hope you all have a great rest of your day, and until next time I will see you soon!