Running a Patron-Funded Gaming Outlet with MinnMax's Ben Hanson｜Noclip Crewcast

hello friends and welcome to episode 218 of the noclip podcast it's not a crew cast today we have we have let the boys take the week off they're off enjoying enjoying themselves playing some video games god knows what they're doing I have no clue what they're doing but I know what Ben Hanson is doing Ben Hanson from min max he's here with me to have our I guess let's call call it a Patreon manager reunion or support group.

I'm not quite sure.

Support group, I think, is the key way to phrase it.

I feel like there needs to be more of this because the couple of times we have talked, it feels like you can just go on forever about everything that's stressing you out, everything that's wonderful, the entire world of Patreon.

It's a fun whirlwind, man.

Exactly. So why not do it in public?

That's what I say. Absolutely.

Honestly, every time we have a private conversation, I'm like, this is a waste.

What a waste of time just looking at each other's faces.

is we could be sharing this information with the world and come across like weird paranoid weirdos to the public and the masses you know it's funny i was talking i think it was jesse last week was was making a joke about um i think it was on one of the most recent min max uh podcaster videos where they were talking about oh we should just you guys were talking about oh we should just get together and play a game and then you were like well we'll have to like record it why wouldn't to be recording, we've got to make content.

We have to make content.

You don't want to be that person.

You never want to be the person in the room saying this could be content.

But I think what's tough is like you got to always remember that weird idea of like, OK, there's a lot of people supporting us on Patreon and it's nice to keep them in the loop.

You don't want to get, you know, too bizarre on the parasocial front.

But every time like I'm getting lunch or breakfast or dinner with somebody from the Midmax crew, it's like, you know, if we just set a recorder out right now this conversation would be 95 the same and isn't it a shame not to invite those people who are in theory enjoying our interactions and that's the type of brain worm that you can't get rid of you know yes that's why we have this support group i feel exactly uh that way as well so we're going to talk about a bunch of stuff today we're going to talk about min max the past five years coming up on is it five and a half yeah yeah five and a half

yeah um we're going to to talk about the games uh coverage world i guess it's it's interesting uh situation we find ourselves in um and a bunch of other stuff too but for folks who don't know minmax i feel like the the venn diagrams on noclip and minmax are probably pretty close but uh for folks who don't know what minmax is what's your little elevator pitch when you're trying to when you're at thanksgiving and your cousin's new uh boyfriend turns up and you have to tell them what you do do for a living what do you say yeah uh podcast about video games and then they say oh i'm really into slay

the spire and then i'll try and pretend that i can dive in the weeds on every specific video game and then they're always disappointed by how little i know about the game that they're specifically obsessed with you know but for the elevator pitch min max is a place about games friends and getting better uh formed in 2019 so um i was at game informer before that starting in 2010 at game informer nine years right yeah yeah yeah as uh their first video producer and then And Jason A.

Stryker came on as the video editor like a year after I started on that fun stuff.

But yeah, so I was there at Game Informer for nine years.

And then in 2019, there were some brutal layoffs from GameStop.

And at that point, I was like, you know what?

I'm going to leave. I feel safer trying to go the independent path and trying to piece something together than staying under this roof and waiting for GameStop to collapse in on us.

And then the joke was on me because Game Informer lasted until 2014 – or sorry, 2024.

24. So, you know, it went on so much longer than I expected.

And it was amazing what that team was able to, to put together and, you know, put out there in the world.

Um, so then we launched the Patreon min max with two N's in honor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, I guess, which is where we're based out of because of the game informer connection.

And so got together some folks who were let go from game informer in those layoffs.

And then we've been kind of slowly growing ever since.

And the overall idea is to create an outlet that's smaller, smarter, and more sustainable, something that's that's built to last for the future and you say growing i mean you've been growing in in pretty much any every feasible way i mean growing in terms of the amount of content you guys produce you just launched pew pew bang i think a week or two ago um the latest podcast with all the uh the ladies who work for minmax or at least a bunch of them yep um yeah the crew's gotten bigger and the amount of people who are who in the amount of mouths to feed that's that's That's where my brain goes,

the stress of making sure that everyone's doing okay.

Yeah, and like I said, sorry, your Patreon numbers as well.

I think we talked privately about this a couple of months ago, but it's super inspiring to see the type of growth you have. It's like steady and upwards, which is, I think, the dream of any Patreon creator, and it's been hard fought and hard earned too.

That's very sweet. Thank you.

you. Yeah. It's, it is weird how much I look at that graph tree on graph and just watch it and be like, okay, every time I'm stressed out, every time there's a little stress on the home front and I feel like I should be spending more time with friends and family.

It's like, Oh, it's all just for the sake of watching this graph.

It's just in no other industry.

Well, there's probably some other comparisons, but it's just so bizarre to be like, Oh, the last five and a half years of my life, here's a graph representing every good or bad decision and how much effort you've put put into it.

It's kind of gross in a way, but yeah, we've been super, super lucky since launching.

Yeah. We've just been consistently climbing.

Um, and it's, you know, it's like, we've talked about it.

It's such a scary feeling because people are dropping out all the time from Patreon.

Right. And just, I have this feeling of like, okay, if I could just lock it in where we're at right now, I would do that for the next 10 years.

No problem. I'm not one of these people who's hell bent on growth, but at the same time, if you're not constantly pushing a little bit to try and grow, you'll start collapsing in on yourself like a black hole and the community will eat itself alive and that'll be the end of it.

And so it is just this weird feeling of, I guess we have to keep pushing.

And that's the tension then of keep pushing, keep creating exciting things, but at the same time, not just getting into that trap of let's do more and more and more.

Let's set up a bunch of other treadmills for us to run in place on and create more content, create more like, you know, audience expectations.

And then we're going to burn ourselves out and And we're all going to end up hating each other.

So like, what is that right level of how much the community needs to stay excited, feel like that the support of this outlet is worthwhile, but at the same time, making sure the team is happy and always reminding ourselves that like we can we can slow down a bit above all else, the community wants us to stay sustainable.

And if we do six podcasts a week and we end up being bitter about it, that's terrible.

So we can't do that.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

And I think like I take similar sort of lessons from the folks around us or the folks who've come before us as well, you know, where, you know, you some of our favorite sites or favorite, you know, communities where either too much work happened or people split off and did their own thing.

And it's it's you don't want to.

That's one of the fears I always have is that I always want to make sure that everyone who did any work for Noclip over the years feels good about the the time they spent working on noclip stuff um which is uh you know its own sort of uh its balancing act do you do the thing i mean you must do where you like go look at everyone else's graftrons all the time oh my god if i feel like most people are scared of the google searches getting out there for some you know devious porn or something like that yeah right for me it's just if you knew how much i was searching giant bomb subreddit easy allies

graftron i mean that is just my entire life it's just okay what are people saying about kind of funny's patreon updates dates like that, it's totally, it's maybe sick, but it's fascinating.

Like whenever an outlet comes out with that post, like, you know, Kit and Chris are just having a recently of like, here's how we're changing our Patreon posts.

Here's how we're changing the content.

That is catnip above like any other content on the internet.

I am just obsessed with that.

It's so fascinating just to peer over the fence and be like, what, what are you guys doing?

How is it working for you?

What, what seems like, Ooh, that's a good idea versus like, you're promising too much. That's going to backfire.

Don't do that. You know, it's just so fun to try and figure out.

it's weird it's having it's like having a brick and mortar shop and having access to everyone else's like pnl or something right and see you can see like yeah like when you you know a second wind for instance right they launched recently and you're like holy and they have the sort of like there's this thing that happens sometimes where you get the the over subscription where people sort of like people maybe who aren't going to be in for the long haul necessarily necessarily maybe they're not patreon people who want to do that stuff they come in really so you end up having this like this incredibly

like sort of beyond what you were expecting success yeah yes exactly it happened with jeff happened with uh with uh vinnie and the guys like where you have this big launch and then it starts going down and the perception is because people you know patreon people also look at graftrion you know what i mean like like you said on the giant bomb i'm subreddit or whatever so they're all sharing that stuff too not all of them but enough of them are yeah and so you and this perception then comes in they're like oh the content's not good enough and then it has this like sort of or i mean it can also be true

i'm not saying it's not true for for any any any patrons out there but yeah it's it's its own sort of phenomenon i feel like you get as well whereas like you know some some some people keep that consistently as well which is a good place to be in.

Yeah, and it's got to be really tough.

I mean, it's the challenge of community funded outlets like this is what do you base the budget off of?

And I think Second Wind is doing a lot of great work.

I assume you watched their Animal Well documentary recently.

I did, yeah, I really enjoyed it.

It's really well shot, actually.

I like the camera work on it was really sweet.

It's different to our style, but I really liked it.

Yeah, I'm glad there's more folks getting that game out there.

And so maybe you hate it secretly.

You're allowed to keep that private if you want.

You want to be the only documentary crew in town.

I get how it goes. but i feel can i answer that honestly i thought more people would do this after we started and at the start i was maybe a bit and i mean that there's a history there as well right because nick calandra ran gameumentary prior to the escapist um and they were doing stuff sort of more in the noclip style i feel like back then and i was we always promoted their stuff and i i was really glad that people were doing it i was actually more glad that independent people like them were doing it rather than um in a way when game spot started doing it again i felt a little bit about that because i

was like well that was my it's emotional then i get it but but but then the people who were doing it were my mates so i was like i didn't you know and and i didn't invent talking to developers you know i didn't even invent video game documentaries like i didn't even like the concept of doing all this existed long before like the reason i wanted to do is because i'd watched building the bastion or the old stuff on game spot back in the day or indie the movie so who the fuck am i to be saying like i control this turf but um but it does like i prefer having competition because it makes you like get

better and reevaluate what you're doing so when i saw the second when we're doing one it was like first of all i'm happy that it's not something we're already covering yep um and i like that about even the game you entry stuff they did kingdom calm they did a bunch of um stuff that was really cool um but like there's but the roi on this stuff is dog shit right so like whenever i see people doing it i'm like i hope you have money to burn because this this is net everyone has tried this type like you can make stuff that's retrospective or you can interview developers and you can make stuff that's

worthwhile but like for the style of thing that we do like i've i'm we're almost finished a three year production on dwarf fortress like what the fuck like like it's gonna be cool but it's like i don't know if you've noticed there's a weird rebounding you can do and it's hopefully not to to the degree of, uh, begging in a way that, that feels gross, but I've noticed there's an interesting effect of if you do some in theory, great work or work that you're proud of, and it doesn't do that well on views wise or something, there's almost a rebound of people being like, well, now I really need to support

this because if YouTube can't support the people for this, then I need to actually check it out.

Like, you know, we did, um, we had an interview a while ago with the co -founder of ready at dawn.

Uh, yes. And it was his real chance, you know, for for the first time getting to open up about the meta acquisition everything that went wrong there the full history of ready at dawn all that stuff uh andrea passino over there and um great great interview he's an interesting dude as well i remember he he was most known at e3 as being the buffest motherfucker you've ever seen yes like it's yeah he's it's my favorite type of guy i guess the guy that could snap you like a twig but you can tell that he's never considered that once in his life you know he's just a complete teddy bear from what i can tell

from the outside at least yeah also cares about game documentaries him he worked on the the journey um soundtrack behind the scene remember they put out that that vinyl a couple of years ago right but they did a mini doc on that they actually talked to us about putting it on noclip but i was like we don't do third -party ones and i helped i helped connect them with ign and that's where it eventually went up yeah so sorry you're saying no it's all good but we did uh that interview and then i made i think i posted about it maybe on blue sky or talked about on the podcast i'm just like, I think it's,

again, hopefully it doesn't feel gross, but I think it's just worth informing the audience of like, Hey, we did this interview is picked up by dozens and dozens of other news sites.

Uh, and based on the backend on YouTube at this point, the interview has made us $23 total, you know, in that first week.

Um, and so many people, I mean, I mean, I say so many, probably 15 people supported us on Patreon and then said for the reason why is the like, well, I just felt bad that that interview was really good and no one checked it out.

And I realized that my support of five bucks a month is you know right a quarter of what you're making from YouTube from this I just I think a lot of people assume that YouTube and ads are supporting kind of independent creators a lot more than they really are whereas yeah I always say it but you know jumping in even at that two dollar tier for us on Patreon just for one month is literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times more helpful than just watching our stuff on YouTube like it's really it's slivers of a penny versus two bucks doesn't seem like much but it's a huge boost for us

yeah um i'm totally with you it's and we we talked a bunch about you do some great like work to make people feel involved i mean your discord is terrific the um i know you do a lot of like reaching out to people and asking like why they why they got involved and stuff like that and i've started adopting that um since we spoke last and it's been like genuinely eye -opening i think yeah the the answers people give are like so oh really like you know oh it's i listened to of the podcast all the time i don't even watch the documentaries or like you covered this thing years ago and i really appreciated

it and i now have the means to do it like and you're like wow because of the doc we've released four years ago you're like that's crazy you just you don't i'm always because you're i'm always thinking about because our ship turns so slowly that i'm always thinking about like what's i want we put out the work that we want to work on but i'm always interested in like is this thing going to bring in more patrons like i don't know like is it is Is a four part series on Dwarf Fortress going to bring in people?

Maybe the four part on Disco Elysium might.

But like, you know, I don't know if it'll happen that way.

But yeah, it's I've been fascinated by the reasons that people give you.

It really helps pull you out of your own head.

Yeah, I think I think it's really important.

So yeah, every new supporter we have on Patreon since I think maybe like three months after we started or so in 2019 is when I started doing this.

But just message every new supporters to be like, hey, how'd you find us?

Why did you choose to support us?

Why did you choose the tier that you chose?

And like that just constant survey running in my head.

First of all, it's very flattering and kind of gross to start every morning reading those messages because so many of them are like, oh, man, you made this joke on the Game Informer Show podcast back in 2016.

And I was always a big fan of you or you made a reference to loving the band AFI.

And I love them, too.

And you made that reference back in 2017.

So it's just like this.

They're like, oh, I used to watch your AFI review show on the MinMax channel before you guys rebranded it.

Well, that was seeding the ground to try and claim that.

It's a long story. But yeah, check out A Fire Inside Out, the greatest AFI podcast out there.

And the Twilight Highlight Zone as well.

Wow, you're really going and sorting by oldest on Minmax's channel, I can see.

Good job. I'm no Sean Evans here.

But it's fascinating to see that.

that. But then also I think the big takeaway from messaging all these people for why'd you choose to support us is, I mean, 85 % are just people saying like, Hey, I like the, I like the vibes.

You all seem to be positive in a pretty negative internet space.

You all seem to like games.

You seem to like each other.

And I want to support that.

And I think that is an interesting message for a lot of other patrons out there who are trying to recruit more people into the Patreon on by making more treadmills, by making more shows and doing all this stuff where it's like, if you are on the conservative end of content, focusing on sustainability, and you just make sure that that goodwill is maintained.

And I'm very thankful that so far we've been, you know, we've kept a positive community.

But if you just keep that community feeling good in selective kind of sniper shot ways that feels to be a more sustainable way and a better way to recruit people in rather than I was thinking about it recently maybe don't read too much into this let's say it was an example pulled out of thin air but I was thinking about Assassin's Creed Shadows and thinking about god that's probably going to be a huge game and that they're trying to get the pre -order bonus with like hey we're going to give you this exclusive quest if you pre -order the game it's like the last thing people want from a huge Assassin's

Creed RPG is like one more quest like if only if I could have one more quest in Assassin's Creed Valhalla and I think some outlets are kind of like that of like they're creating so much content out there in yeah in the games coverage space and then it's like hey if you join our patreon we'll give you five extra minutes a month of us talking it's like you know what yeah everybody in the world has too much content at this point so if you try and just be more selective take bigger swings i think that's a much more convincing sell than a lot of patrons out there realize yeah i i remember we'll talk

about when we talk about the future of games coverage but But I'm with you in that same way is like sticking out from the noise seems more and more like, you know, you look at people like, you know, H.

Bomber guy or whatever, who releases basically at this stage is like a video a year.

Yeah. I mean, like some of my favorite video essayists.

That's that's how long it takes to do those investigations.

But also it's like it's a moment then, you know, my problem is that I'm like I'm I when this is done, whether or not I the Internet explodes or I die or whatever it is.

but whenever this is done i want to have done as much as i could right like and that's more of an artistic sort of desire than anything else and i think it gets me in trouble sometimes like you know we had so much fun if we could afford to and had the time continuous to do more no clip crew stuff um i'd love to like i miss working at game spot and giant bomb and doing that stuff like i watch what you guys do and i i definitely have that envy but then i look at my my my premiere year and I'm like well I have you know 18 hours of documentary and four months to do it I better hurry up you know like

I've so much work to do on this side um and it's hard to manage all that stuff at the same time but yeah it's it's a it's a it's a fear to like that you're right like you gotta you gotta temper the faucet a bit so that people are excited for what's coming out but I just I'd love making shit man I just can't stop making shit you know yeah and it's not to put put down, you know, the average, you know, podcast and stuff like that.

But when you look back on your career, do you think you're going to think of, you know, those kind of smaller podcast discussions and kind of the, the grand sphere of your work, or are we just going to remember like the biggest swings, the biggest documentaries, you know, or do you see it all as kind of the same?

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm, I'm, I'm very, uh, grateful that like Jeremy, Jesse and Frank come on the pod and talk every week like that's by the way I love the podcast not saying it's trash it's just it's just a feeling of like what do you what do you what is an accomplishment you look back on your career you know how much how many little things how many marvel spoiler casts do you wish you would have done you know is the shorthand of saying it I guess it's a that's a fair point I guess yeah I'll I'll be happy I'll on my deathbed I'll think about that outer wilds documentary and say that was like that was a good one

that was a good one the half -life ones will get me through a lot but they're not they're not officially no clip work so i can't i can't necessarily say that right it is interesting though to think of just and this is kind of the whole kit and caboodle of trying to figure out what is going to compel people to support on patreon and i i think it's really hard you know we have some amazing people in max crew and i still think it's really hard to like choose to support a patreon because of a let's play you know like Like how funny or how interesting would that video have to be for someone to go out

of their way? And then again, it's just kind of my very narrow vision for all this.

And by the way, for all this stuff, don't think I have huge answers.

Everyone kind of gets so lasered in on their own world that they're missing a larger perspective.

And there's what, the RKG folks?

There are folks out there who do just Let's Plays and they have a huge amount of support for it.

So I should probably stop talking.

But I found just from our messages that it is typically the bigger swings that will get people to jump in.

And so if you're creating stuff that people are normally getting on YouTube for free anyway, the idea of connecting that with supporting on Patreon I don't think is there.

You need to do something that is a little bit different that stands out a little bit and makes somebody turn their head not a full 180 degrees but just a six degree head turn is the best you can do I think on YouTube to make somebody go like, wait, what is this?

Who are these people?

That seems cool. I'm going to support an outlet that's doing weird stuff like this.

yeah i think that's i in a way like i i kind of like the current world of coverage because it's like you said you have to stick your head out of the pulpit a bit to to get noticed like no clip was it was a version of that where it was like oh we're going to focus on this very particular thing totally and and you know see see how long it takes us but um what is your version of that jumping out of planes doing ice plunges and to say nothing of you know stuff like Like, you know, Pew Pew Bang, unfortunately is a not novel thing.

Like it's it's sad that it is, you know, you know, in a way.

But like, yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, I suppose. So, yeah.

So Pew Pew Bang is a podcast that.

Yeah, so it's Kelsey Loon and Sarah Pazorski and Haley McLean and Jenna Garcia started who are kind of the women of min mags, I suppose.

And it was a couple of months ago.

is a interesting message where Kelsey just reached out out of the blue, maybe after a certain election, who can say?

And she's like, I just feel like I need to do something.

And I want to find more of our people.

I'm looking for just, we want to find just quote unquote gamer girls that don't fall into that kind of gross marketing bucket of gamer girls, I suppose.

The frag dolls of the, who I think never existed.

Like, you know, the frog dolls were for man, I guess I should, i should right you know assert or boys maybe is a better way of putting it so yeah so they're like hey we want to start this podcast and that's like the the dream of having an outlet like min max is like hey you all do your own thing come up with an idea let me know what it is by the end and by the time they were pitching it man by the time they were pitching it to me like yep we have the name we have the show it's gonna be like a video game slumber party episodes come out every other week we got the logo all arranged i was like this is amazing

and it's really it's refreshing just to To be able to stand back and be like, whatever you guys want to do, by all means run with it.

And yeah, the PPUBANG podcast, which is a standalone podcast. It's not a Patreon exclusive or anything.

But yeah, it's kicking butt.

It was hitting number one on the podcast charts and stuff.

It's super exciting to see that team kind of feel like, God, we want to create something new and then to have it take off like that.

It's been great. We talked a lot about a Patreon.

Can we do a shout out to our patrons?

I'm not that interested, Danny.

We've got to keep talking to ourselves, please.

There might be some funny names in there.

Of course. No, I love it.

These people are the reason this exists.

Maybe you'll mispronounce some.

Ben has very kindly, before we went on air, said that he would read out our patrons.

Patreon .com slash Noclip are incredible battle pass holders.

They pay the wonderful price of $69 .99 for this honor.

Ben Hansen, take it away.

Yeah. These are all new supporters?

What's the arena here?

No, these are all our top tier supporters.

these are the the the whales of the noclip community if you will okay get your whale calls ready everybody because we're calling out to anthony thomas nico passateri itsami ferraro penelope hayes oh is that bad ferraro ferraro it's a me ferrario i'm gonna blow it penelope hayes senator armstrong from metal gear rising oh is that who that was i thought that yeah i've never put two and two in my head that's who that person is but i've never actually confirmed it I hope it is him on the other side of the keyboard. Iman Slattery, Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Richard Matherson, almost the name of a Twilight

Zone writer. I'll be damned.

Matt Pearson, James Brown.

Look at this celebrity cast. You have Mark Rojas, Tucker Morgan, David Begari, Sven Huster.

Apologies. Pez, Uint Nate, Tim Robinson, Forrest Pruitt, Jonathan Kreeman, Eric Hamilton Schneider, Christophe Fatui.

Let me hold you for a second.

the next one you really have to give some gusto to cameron ladd or the one before that no that one that one yeah why what's what's so special okay it's just the thing they're just yeah cameron ladd hero among people uh zachary snader alex gushay george tis tizzy or cotas jacob god serve and then again tother tilliev and recent reken god i was feeling confident out of the gate and it fell apart by the end this is like ranked by difficulty or something i feel like i wonder if ours has a more european slant perhaps that could be we might we might be getting there's a couple more greeks than usually

get maybe and cypriots yeah absolutely throwing in there no thank you dude absolutely round of applause great work please round of applause for these folks that's that's very sweet they support you in a big way absolutely love it how have you been doing with you seem like somebody who uh you know works a lot puts in a decent amount of effort and you welcomed a beautiful baby into the world last year how are you uh doing how have you balanced your responsibilities at home and at home uh it's been a challenge um yeah it's it's amazing i don't want to turn into the the standard old parenting podcast,

you know, but like, you know, not to take anything away from that incredible experience of just I was thinking about the other day.

It's like I think having a kid is just getting two emotional gut punches at least every day, just a punch gut of love.

Just it's oh, God, it hits you so hard. And so that's been amazing.

It's definitely freaked me out on the work front.

And I'm sure you've had many of these same emotions of just it feels like, all right, i'm used to running two miles a day or whatever the hell it is it's like what why am i not even getting to a mile and i'm out of energy and it's not a matter of energy for me but just a matter of time and it's just that confusing feeling of like why do i feel like i'm getting just a sliver of stuff done i crunched the numbers i should be able to do this and so that freaks me out and it is a weird source of pride and i don't mean to send this out into the world and get it started but it's a weird source of pride

that I haven't seen too many pissy Reddit threads about like, ever since Ben had his baby, Minmax has really gone downhill.

Like it seems like people are still just getting happier and happier with us as an outlet.

And so it's like, oh, thank God that there's not, in my mind, it's very clear to have this dividing line of like before kid after kid.

And I'm glad that the community hasn't been able to feel that.

I feel like hopefully that's a sign of success.

And as long as my wife is happy, then everything is okay.

Yeah, I think I think the hardest time that I had was probably just from a workload perspective or time management or whatever was from when my daughter was born until maybe she was two or something like that, because like it's hard. It's hard. It's hard to like, you don't want to be the deadbeat dad, right?

You don't want to be like, I don't, I'm not around.

I'm not co -parenting well enough.

I'm not, you know, I'm not there for the quiet moments, not just the loud moments where I need to be there.

Like it was really important for me to be like available and around and stuff like that.

Um, but then also for the longest time, I liked having a place to work where I could focus.

Like I would, once COVID chilled chilled out again, I got a studio, you know, or before COVID went wrong, I got a studio.

Once COVID chilled out, I got, just so I could go and be there and then leave and come home and not work weekends, not work evenings as much as is possible, even though 25 % of my brain is probably similar to yours, constantly thinking about what, what to do next or what we're doing.

Um, but yeah, but I, uh, but I had, I had a similar thing where the only thing that made me feel better was going through that two years of it and then looking back and going, oh everything was fine huh i didn't maybe needs to be killing myself as hard as i was before or something like that on the work front on the work front yeah is there a sick part of you though that kind of gets a thrill out of the eras in your life where you were sprinting like a madman and i know it's it it teeters maybe on unhealthy crunch culture and i'm doing great at the same time i do look back you know thankfully as

minmax has continued to grow i've been able to kind of offload some duties of like okay hayley mclean you host our patreon exclusive podcast every monday now leo vader now you can edit our new show plus series and stuff like that and then everyone's trying to look back just on a couple years ago and it's like god i was doing all of this and also running a deepest dive and hosting trivia tower and all these things before i had started to really delegate and there's a part of me that's weirdly into that idea of like it is fun when you have those pockets those days yeah where you look back on and be

like holy cow i've gotten a lot done there's something romantic about it in a gross way 100 no like when i think about like you know i'm with you i think like crunch culture as it is you know if it's something that is dictated from the top down that's not good but if you are if you're in the zone and dedicating yourself to your like when i broke into game spot in the uk that's all i was for like two years like i just worked and went home and they used to kick me out chris my boss and chris boma my boss us in the UK would when he was leaving he was like we're going because he knew that I would stay

there all night so he was like no you got to go you're not you're not allowed to be here after five o 'clock and you hated that message I respected him for doing it to me and I appreciate even at the time I kind of went no you're right and but but I would go home have dinner and then work at home because I was you know it's like oh I finally broke into the industry well now I have to you know prove prove the point I have to like make sure that nobody thought this was a mistake you you know, I get it.

This guy back to Ireland for sure.

Um, yeah, I, I think I'm lucky enough that I still get those crunch lucky enough.

I'm with you though.

I I'm with you. Like I, I worked in theater for years.

Like that's what that is, is like, is like building, building, building, building, building.

And then, you know, from, from tech week to the run of the show, it is your, it is a hundred percent of your life and it's fun.

And especially fun when you're doing with other people.

Um, I think when we filmed, like when we film our docs, like, you know, that, that that is very much that it's like get on an airplane all this equipment work all day get enough sleep at night wake up the next day interview get interview prep go do it again it's usually long you know like I had a trip last year where we had a mixture of no clip and secret tape stuff and I was in I was away for a month so so it was like Korea uh Warsaw Sweden and then I went to Ireland my family came to Sweden so at least I was only technically gone on for two weeks and then we did that so those are the moments

that that i still get out of that or like doing the half -life stuff like that was that was similarly like that was super crunchy like i fucking that edit was actually not fun at the end by the end of it yeah i was just terrified but um uh yeah so i i'm with you though i i think that's that's the stuff i miss the most from game spot is is that i'm doing it with other people like when everyone's doing it it's amazing you know everybody has such fun memories of e3 but you know at game informer you know it's a stressful full time but i think where i think it gets unhealthy in my past is kind of that kind

of chip on the shoulder mentality or a little bit of the martyr complex i suppose but when you're working really hard and you know at game informer it'd be a matter of like well i'm going to edit all these cover story videos and i'm gonna have to stay late to get them done and i'm going to do the podcast and stay late to edit that and post that but at the same time i don't want the podcast taken away from me so i need to pretend like it's not a big deal but then you get this chip on your shoulder and then it becomes a matter of like they don't know how hard i'm working and i'm going to get more

and more of a grudge because of the energy that I'm using to do the extra work to just get more and more angry about why am I not getting further ahead in this company and that's where I think creates a really dangerous cycle.

Especially in like companies like that or similar to GameSpot where like there was nowhere to go right like like what we what was your next job really meant to be like they're small organizations even when you go up the pay is usually not all that much better um like my my when i by the time i was leaving game spot i was like either you put me in charge of all video for game spot or i'm going because i was just like there's no way i'm getting ahead like i'm not in i'm not in the management uh ecosystem here for some reason you've decided that i'm not a manager i don't probably because probably

because i shit talk all the existing managers all the time and i'm not a team player but yeah they decided that and and yeah I similarly by the end I left before I felt before that I was worried about that sort of increasing that that um I wanted to leave happy with what I had done there and missing it and sad to go you know rather than rather than feeling like I needed to sort of jump I guess I kind of stepped away and that made me feel better about it because GameSpot was like my I'm saying it's probably same to you GameFormer like GameSpot was my first love on the internet like I loved that place

i still love that place i loved all the people that work there i still love all of them and i didn't want to have any negative association with it whatsoever so yeah that was that was important i think it was like an ex -girlfriend you spent a long time with i i don't want to burn those years you know right it is such a weird emotional and complicated thing but you know i look back on game informers so fondly and it's like god that was the best job conceivable i think the min max one is probably better but you know still like yeah the game Gameform Error is like okay every month I would get to

fly around the world to visit the studio you know for the game we were highlighting for the game that was on the cover how many how many trips you must have done like 100 trips it was uh 80 cover story trips wow yeah um and it was it was so fun and so so fun just to look back at the history of Gameformer and every issue of the magazine it's like I remember who went on that trip I remember where we went and I just you think of the location so much more remember the restaurants we went to you know it's just fun to you see you know the the game informer span in that run uh and from that lens and at the same

time you know after i left game informer especially after the layoffs and everything just kind of imploded emotionally is i think about like god it was such an incredible job but i was so pissy about so many things i had so many notes in my phone of like you know next employee review i'm going to bring up these points and i'm going to make this case about myself because then this isn't fair because this person got this and i got this it's like oh jesus christ man you you start to realize in retrospect, like, God, maybe I was really angry a lot of the time there.

And it's just a weird combination of having those emotions along with like, God, best years of my life.

That was so incredible.

What do you think? What's different?

Is it the, I remember not to load the question up as I shoot it your way, but it's exactly what I'm going to do.

Greg Mayer told me when I was meeting with him before I started Noclip, he said, every decision is yours and everything you put in, you get back.

And like he said, that's the difference is that you you probably don't know what that feels like right now but um you know good and bad whatever you put into this thing you're going to get back for me it was control for sure having control and autonomy i don't mind if things go wrong if they're on my shoulders but having being stuck with a fucking captain who's driving the thing into rocks was the thing he used to i'm screaming at them and there's nothing that they'll listen to what what but then there's also the youth element you know when you're that young and you're that hungry a lot of the time

it manifests as anger so what What do you think sort of changed for you?

No, I think, I think it was control.

And I think about it a lot in just in terms of like, I was just something that I'm so thankful for with Minmax is being able to wrap my head in theory around everything we're doing, you know, um, and being able to message it.

That was the part that just killed me is like, can we just have consistent messaging?

What is our strategy?

What are we doing? How are we pushing this thing?

Hopefully not in a gross marketing one -on -one kind of way.

But just if you're on the community side of things, I want to be able to explain.

These are our priorities.

These are our pillars.

These are our main shows.

This show is popping up as a bonus because of this.

And then this is a biweekly schedule.

Just like that level of communication.

I was beating my head against the wall.

I feel like for nine years of Game Informer, but just what are we doing?

We can't just keep running around like rabbits and expect a community to build up coherently on the other side.

And so, yeah, I am so thankful every time that, you know, I might get frustrated about some things at Midmax, just small things here and there is think about like, God, God, I'm so, so lucky that I'm able to kind of digest this entire outlet and just communicate it hopefully well to the community of like, this is what we're doing.

Here's why we're pivoting here.

Here's the plane with this show.

Like that level of just kind of curated messaging is a godsend.

I think you guys are like one of the best in the industry at doing that.

And it's something, I think it's something that our community has criticized me on which i think is very fair um because i i feel like whenever we do anything i want to break the mold immediately where it's like oh we're doing you know three back in the day we started doing three -part series and then i was like oh let's just do like really big ones and then okay we did some really big docs i'm like let's do like like an embedded thing let's do that and do this and then so we're fucking all over the place and then we do things like you know i spun out a a podcast uh on a separate feed and then

i integrated it back into this feed or we did no clip crew and then we didn't do that and i think it's perceived a lot by people uh rightfully i'm not critiquing them as like us failing a lot maybe like doing something and then not sticking with it whereas to me as an artist it's like no they're like this is i gotta break shit like i need i need failure to learn i need so to me it's not failure it's like oh we tried that thing and and i learned i'm taking 15 of that with me on my creative journey to the next thing right but but i need to do like that's my my process that's interesting i mean how

do you communicate that are you able to say in your patreon posted update i mean just saying like i i know this doesn't make sense i just need to do it like is it it's just a tough message to convey it is i think people who listen to the patron show which is sort of like an you know 40 minutes to an hour of me explaining everything we're doing every month sort of reiterating this stuff like i think to them it probably comes across but uh i don't know what our youtube people think because like that's our biggest community and we'll just like not post anything for four months and then here's a fucking

big documentary on cyberpunk or something you know what i mean like so one of the things that that i'm we're doing for the dwarf fortress doc for instance is putting up a video ahead of time on youtube being like not just what's coming but like why we're doing it because that's the other thing is i think a lot of people think that we're either in bed with the developer or a publisher are we getting funded to do this stuff by them or i've probably muddied the waters with that a little bit by doing this half you know valve stuff and you know i would try to keep that stuff as as church and state

as humanly possible um and i've no regrets on that because it's it's been some of the most fun work and also has you know helped a great deal with keeping the crew um uh you know keeping keeping money coming in yeah um but yeah it is but it is it is tricky you how do you balance that like when you sunset a show how do you do that do you do it quietly or do you do it loudly uh it's a good question um yeah we kind of so we have a system there's a system in place that i'm again endlessly thankful for and i think it was ana diaz who's with us at the time who's now at polygon and and leo who came up

with i think the core of the idea for the system that we have called new show plus um where every week we pitch four new shows to the the community and then the patron supporters get to vote on which new show we create or continue and so are you an incredibles fan by chance can i make a strange analogy the the pixar cartoon that's not a good sign yeah i've seen it i've seen them okay there's more than one right yes there's this incredible uh sequence where he's learning about the full history of syndrone's lab and all the robots they're building and it's like they're showing like okay this robot

this robot this robot defeated this robot then this robot continues and this robot defeats this robot But I always think of that for new show plus in terms of if we have a really good show, we'll keep building eventually because we're pitching new shows every week.

We'll have a show that can defeat it.

Right. Right. OK, then a new show is going.

And in theory, that shows better than the old one.

And so the beauty of that system.

And I really am happy with it so far is it lets us constantly seem creative and to try weird experimental new stuff.

But at the same time, it's like, well, the community gets to vote on all this stuff.

And so if you loved a show and it only went for two episodes before some other show replaced it, can't be mad at us.

The community voted for it.

And so naturally things will die out instead of having that thing that every other outlet has.

And, you know, we also have it for other shows of just like, you know, this show is getting a little long in the tooth.

But there's definitely the subset of fans that love it.

So if we end it, we're going to piss people off.

But just having, yeah, a system in place where we always get to experiment and there's logic to why things are fading out.

But I think hopefully it helps.

But at the same time, yeah, there's shows where it's like, God, we used to be better about every year kind of having the full refresh.

And I always try to pull from the old Sid Meier quote of like, you know, for every new Civ game, it's like, okay, we're going to keep a third of it, we're going to change a third of it, and then a third of it's going to be new.

and so for the first couple of years at min max that was the philosophy for our content and then around like you know year three three and a half or so it's hard to be like i kind of i like our content like everything's being pretty efficient i don't know if i want to change it that much but um yeah so hopefully hopefully everything's communicated well we kind of i fell for a trap recently which is a good trap to fall in i suppose but you know the criterion Deuterium closet picks that series on YouTube.

Yes. Yeah. And so, um, who doesn't like watching those just easy six minute videos to watch yada, yada, yada developer, or sorry for, uh, actors and directors picking out some favorite movies, movies that meant a lot to them.

And so I was always kicking myself watching that being like, God, we should have done that at game informer.

Cause we had the quote unquote vault of games of like every game game form was ever shipped.

And every time we had a developer by the office, they'd come in and it would just be like the most fun 30 minutes of them going to be like, Like, oh, my God, I can't believe you have this Genesis game.

This is the first game I ever worked on, man.

You got to check out the second level.

And so I was just kicking myself about like, why didn't we do that at Gameformer when we had the chance?

And then I remember that Kelsey Lewin on our team, she owns now four used video game stores.

Shadow Pink Gorilla.

Of course, in Seattle, yeah.

And so we're like, oh, we should try to do that and just see how it goes.

and so we got um oh ryan payton who worked on metal gear solid 4 and subsistence for metal gear solid 3 and then eventually halo 4 before he was fired from the project yada yada yada and then started republic and they just released batman arkham shadow um but um yeah i started camouflage working republic and batman arkham shadow but anyways arkham shadows the vr game right yeah yeah did you play it it's pretty good yeah it's good it's good metaquest 3 it's really and so um yeah so we did a video which was ryan payton coming to pink gorilla and then just walking around the store sharing some memories

from games that he worked on but then also just games that he had a sweet nostalgic thing to say about like he was a big fan of shenmu so we talked about that for a long time a rad racer on nes um and that was one of those that i felt really bad i talked to kelsey a lot about it of just like i don't know how to message it because i'm really proud of us being really clear with the community and this is one of those things that's just I don't think bandwidth wise we can commit to doing this on a regular basis it's not a matter of you're going to have a five episode limited series or something and so we're

just going to do one episode and if it really blows up we'll probably want to do more but if it doesn't you know and so yeah it's in that realm of like I feel bad for just sending out a trial balloon and then being like all right it's a trial balloon because I just send out a trial balloon for the sake of it because it's kind of fun to do you know totally and I think I yeah it's like Like you're probably on the the way you do it and the responsible way in which you approach that stuff is probably closer to how the audience feels.

Because the audience doesn't want to feel like you are floundering or or or making weird decisions because their trust in you goes.

Sure. And whereas I I don't know why, but my creative instinct has always been I don't care.

like I just I don't care if people think like I don't care if I make a bunch of weird bad shit that people don't like because they'll like something I guess and right and and I rather I or I think it's more that like my anxiety and my because a lot of like at least my desire to do stuff is fear of becoming obsolete or fear of this work not resonating with people so I'm always trying to sort of lay the tracks as quickly as ahead as possible and find that new ground as quickly as possible so to me it's scarier to not evolve i guess is what i'm getting at right right i mean if it was just the no clip

documentaries do you think you would have burned out at this point um i think if it was just the docs which it kind of is again just the docs but i think it's i think if i if we did them the same format all the time then yeah right and in a way i can see that being something that might be more snackable for our audience that might be more um easy to watch a lot of them like if you watch an episode of hot wings they've not changed or hot ones sorry they've not changed the format right or those you know the like you said everyone like gq and vogue and everyone does these like formatted shows right

and i get it and i i feel the same way when a new series of drive to survive the netflix series comes on about formula one i know the format i I know what it's going to be, but the episodes that I like are always the ones that break the format.

And so I like to challenge people as much as possible.

And I think when you, when you challenge them and it works, you hit their hearts more than if you, if, if you, if you might, you might like, they might appreciate the stable diet of this format of documentary every single time.

but I think eventually they'll, you know, you're not, you're not, you're not doing anything that's like worth worthwhile or it's, or it's artistic merit maybe doesn't hit home as hard or something.

I don't know. Yeah.

So then it comes down to people who are, there's probably a ton of people who are just fans of the podcast for you guys, right?

I suspect, I mean, our biggest community is definitely YouTube and it's the one whenever we put something up that the most fervor happens around.

And then the podcast is obviously like very different.

It's kind of a weight.

The other other problem with the podcast is that it's kind of antithetical to a lot of the noclip stuff where it's it's current games it's a lot of i mean our the games we play as people the four of us are very indie and weird and we do cover some of that stuff on the docks like we we mostly cover indie studios but you know they tend not to be maybe the most esoteric ones like we're not going to make a you know a four -part series on fucking despolate or something or you know or you know maybe we should i don't know why is it an idol we'll just jump in um but yeah i think you know there's a there's

a balancing act there like dwarf fortress is a good candidate because it's like that's the ultimate game no one plays but wants to read about it's like eve you know or you know people watching videos of tarkov on youtube who would ever play the game because it scares the fuck out of them aka me um yeah i it's a it's an interesting yeah balancing act i think by the the way i mean i think the podcast is such a good job i mean somebody's asked me recently like how do you find out about like obscure good new game releases it's like you know what we try to cover as much as we can at min max but the same

time when i think of like the podcasts who are usually on the cutting edge of like here's a cool game that's under the radar i think i think your your podcast is definitely up there you took that's all jesse garage's work and and jeremy as well and then frank me and frank have our weird little corners that we are into as well tends to be a little bit less uh less indie how do you um how do you approach i guess the sort of let's talk about the the patreon numbers sure amazing right your youtube stuff yeah so your patron to youtube number is insane right so how but obviously the flip side to that is do

you ever worry about about growth on youtube um because you guys have a healthy community like a really dedicated community and your videos do well on youtube but you're not like you know fucking a million subscribers or whatever you don't mean like you're not up there how do you feel about youtube as its own sort of um metric i guess for for success yeah onboarding people i don't know yeah it's interesting puzzle it is funny it's like it's it's kind of a weird i don't know double -edged sword or i don't know how you want to say back at a compliment when you get that of like god your patron numbers

are great the ratio to youtube is really impressive which is like yeah are we failing on youtube in a big way um yeah it's like saying your wife is really beautiful like how did you how did you manage that exactly what's happening here um yeah it's funny so i think we're at like 61 000 subscribers on youtube and we've been we've been growing um decently over the last year like our watch time in 2024 was up 67 percent compared to the year before year on year yeah yeah wow um and a lot of that to be fair was because we did a big oral history of pop cap but we did yes i saw that video did really

well oh yeah it's funny we did that back in 2021 and for some reason youtube decided to wait until now to throw it in everybody's feed so that was probably a big factor for the watch time we had our one for that was jeremy did a no clip crew about heroes of might and magic three so like pretty fucking obscure and then like i went on the i went on the fucking um i wonder if i can find it now i went on the the analytics one day and i was like what the fuck happened here because it did like 15 000 views maybe and then now it's up to 170 000 it happened in like a month we were like what happened in like

hungary you know one of these places where they're huge mind magic fans something must have happened then or it was just just YouTube decided it is confusing.

Now all we get on that, uh, pop get video.

Cause it's four hours long.

And so every comment now is just like, uh, dude, I just woke up from a nap and this was playing.

I don't know what this is.

There's something with YouTube.

We're just pushing it to everybody, whether they want it to or not.

The algorithm, just like you're bought farming people, view botting people.

That's amazing. But, um, anyways, so yeah, YouTube, we're still, you know, I'm happy with YouTube numbers.

You know, I remember talking to Brian Brian, David Gilbert, in an interview we did, I think it's like our number one video on our channel is to let interview with Brian, David Gilbert.

And he was talking about like, he's got that effect.

He really does. Yeah.

But it's like, you know, I was asking him just about, does he feel successful?

The fact that he can just, you know, would put out a video, a polygon that was just called Wario and it would get like 2 million views.

Like how the fuck surely other people have tried that.

Um, but he's like, I don't know, this is just, you don't really feel it.

You just feel that more people are angry at you and the YouTube comments just get shittier and shittier.

And so there is a certain aspect of that where like, I love the core Minmax community, not in a gross parasocial way, of course, but you know, it is funny that like when videos start to do well and get outside of our bubble a little bit, the real indicator is just, oh, these YouTube comments are getting more misogynistic.

Okay. That means we're kind of leaving our, our nest a little bit.

And not to say that we shouldn't push for that because we do need to expand on YouTube to find new people to fuel the Patreon so we can keep rolling with it.

But yeah, we've definitely struggled a little bit.

You know, we see a lot of those comments of people being like, I can't believe this doesn't have a million views on YouTube.

And it's like, I don't know, that's very flattering.

I think probably the water has found its level.

I think, I don't think there's some great injustice in the world because our podcast is not getting 100 ,000 views for this thing.

But, you know, something that we found that's been really helpful, found is a weird way to put it.

But, you know, we back in 2014, I think it was, we started doing rapid fire interviews at Game Informer where it started with the No Man's Sky cover story we did.

And it was like, God, what are we asking about No Man's Sky?

How do you wrap your head around?

What should be a video about this?

And I remember Jeff Markeofava at the time, who's now at Midmax at the time.

He's like, just ask him if you can ride a fucking dinosaur.

I was like, oh, yeah.

It's like that should be the video is such as asking a bunch of rapid fire questions.

Can you do this? Can you do this?

and granted that you know maybe didn't end up the best for no man's sky when that game launched and a lot of things they said we're going to be in the game we're not um but uh that format really worked well and so it was really fun to keep that growing a game informer and then when i left it was like well you know i created it but at the same time it's a game former thing and so they kept doing it god bless them i helped out every once in a while of like you know they're like hey we're doing tim schafer for psychonauts super rapid fire do you want to contribute any questions like oh my god absolutely

please and so then when game informer went down last year then i was like you know what let's just yoink that right back and start doing it at min max here and so we've done i think like four of them at min max so far and that has been it was kind of i think the missing arrow in our quiver for content because they generally get outside of the bubble it's an easier more consistent format than you know just doing a preview for a new game hopefully it's shedding some new light in a fun way.

And it's I think they're really weird interviews because they're so fast. They get so much content in there.

But it's so amazing the number of people that I know based on the comments, they don't seem to think that it's a weird thing to do.

There's like this is how every interview should be like, no, this is a weird interview.

It's weird how fast and punchy this one is.

But well, it's it's like interviews for the listen to a podcast on two X speed generation.

Yes. You know what I mean?

Yes. Like I think it's all killer and no filler.

Yes. And so that's been really fun.

and you know like the avowed rapid fire we did we got like a thousand news yeah she did a great job and it was a terrific we got like over a thousand new subs from that one you know the split fiction one is taken off and so it's like okay that it seems like to be what we needed in our arsenal is to have this somewhat reliable way to get new subscribers and get the word about min -max out there a little bit and so that's been really fun and they are they're so fun to put together it's like it is the best case scenario where we're trying to recreate what we used to to do it back at Game Reformer

a little bit where it's like it's so much more fun as like a group project and so the way we do it now at Minmax is like hey we're doing you know rapid fire about split fiction coming up whoever's in Minneapolis let's go out and get like a big breakfast thank you patron supporters for paying for our pancakes and let's just have fun and let's just like lob jokes and sincere questions and we all did research ahead of time about the game and then just write down as many as we can and then we record the interview I boil it down obviously record the the interview and then we do like another round where we

do like a screener where we have people come in uh just like people from min max and we all watch it together and i can see then and we record it and if you're at the ten dollar tier you get to watch this editing pass and screening pass which i think is kind of dorky fun behind the scenes stuff so we do like a screener and then we have a recording and also i can just watch and be like this joke does not work this is confusing and so it's a really it's like a dress rehearsal for the video yeah yeah it's because we used to to do that game informer where we record these rapid fires on the cover story

trips and then go back and watch it in the office, like in the office bullpen.

And you could just get such a good feel for like this question sucks or like I really thought this was going to be a fun recurring gag and it is confusing.

And so it is fun to have a format of an interview like that where we're really trying to hopefully tighten it down to just the good shit.

That's terrific. Yeah.

Yeah. It's been great saying that.

And you're right. It's sometimes that's all you need is you need one of of your one of your things every once in a while to sort of pop pop up a bit and and get you know get that reddit love or get shared on social media or whatever yeah are you finding that social media friends because the vectors for what is popular like for instance you mentioned your like podcast on youtube is doing whatever it's doing but like the hidden figures are the podcast metrics on on apple podcasts or whatever and you guys are constantly right up there and in the mix as well as well um do you find that um that social

media is a is a place that you are getting more or less hits when it comes to promoting your work i don't know yeah i mean it was a couple years ago janet garcia bless her heart was really beating the drum of like you are blowing it why aren't you on tiktok and instagram it's like yep i know i just don't really like using those platforms i don't want to do it and now it seems stupid that we would make all these clips and just share them on twitter Like who's watching a minute long video on Twitter?

It's pretty rare. Right.

And so that's been fascinating to push more and more in that direction and to have it is kind of fun then to be like, OK, this is the highlight of this episode.

This is the funniest thing that happened.

Let's turn that into a TikTok.

And we've actually TikTok.

We're slowly growing.

We've had a couple Instagram clips now, both starring Haley McLean from Bonus Pod, which is amazing.

Amazing. Um, but both of them have crossed like a million views, which is huge for us.

And that's just, it's a fascinating thing to try and figure out though, of I, it's fun to see the numbers go up.

I am still really skeptical about how many people, even out of those million are going, who is this min max?

Let me look them up on YouTube.

And then they find us on YouTube.

And then they also throw the next hail Mary pass of, I like this YouTube channel so much. I'm going going to support them on Patreon.

And so I don't think that's, you can't judge it based on that.

Like, you know, we're not getting a big boost on Patreon because of the TikTok presence.

But at the same time, I think every time I get self -conscious about that, I do think the value of posting those things on Instagram and TikTok is worst case scenario.

It's a nice way just to let followers of MinMax know what else is going on.

Like people who support us because, and it's probably a wild majority support us just because of the main podcast the min mag show podcast and then they get to see like oh what is this yeah leo and ben jumped into an icy lake and we get to see that minute long clip the end you know just to let them know that like hey we're doing something with your support even if you don't really see it if you just listen to the podcast and so that feels better than hoping for a wave of patreon support because of yeah social stuff yeah yeah that's interesting if you're yeah your acquisition funnel right it's

all about that sort of having them make that one step but i'm i'm with you like the way in which i it feels like the the instagram especially is where i see a lot of min max's stuff pop up okay yeah to me that's what it is it is like oh shit i didn't know they did that i didn't know that video was up i missed that thing my youtube subscriber subscription thing didn't pull it up or whatever um but yeah i i'm i'm with you i'm feeling it's or it's a it's a it's diminishing returns or the amount amount of effort you have to put in sometimes is tricky but then if you're not there if you're not at the party

you know what i mean you can't i don't know can't drink a pint i don't know what the end of that that's that's the old axiom i know it you're not at the party no but it is interesting to like you know i'm so curious to know like what giant bombs numbers were back in the day for the bomb cast for audio listeners you know because you know seeing behind the scenes of our numbers it's like there are times i'm to be fair i'm endlessly thankful but there is a part of every once in a while where we're like really high up on the apple podcast charts and i'm like right we don't have that big of an audience

you know so i mean yeah you're like oh this is 40 ,000 like what is number one like 50 ,000 or something it must be i mean maybe kind of funny can answer this but i mean for the min max show i think on youtube it was averaging around like 18 ,000 views for last year um and then for like the it's a little bit squirrely because we have the audio feed for patreon supporters as well so that's a couple thousand in there but for like the main uh podcast feed it's like averaging about 22 000 per episode for listens yeah i'm very thankful but at the same time it is just a weird feeling of like in my mind

the bomb cast back in the day was like 300 000 yeah in my in my head it was somewhere around a quarter of a million to like 300 ,000 around there yeah and so it's not like we should have 100 audience you know i'm just i'm curious to see like has is it just a matter of there's so many gaming podcasts everyone's branched out a thousand different ways or are people turning off from gaming podcasts in general and i should be more scared about our future like it's just it's it's bizarre to see behind the scenes and be like god it's not that many i don't think yeah i i have i have wondered that exact

same question because of exactly what you're saying yeah like i have had that exact yeah because i because sometimes we'll get what sometimes we'll get up there right on our our podcast on youtube or on on the feeds gets between eight and the thirteen thousands kind of depending on where we're at and then the youtube version gets like like well i don't know between two and three maybe that's something to go up a bit more right but like sometimes we're dancing in the top 10 right and i'm like huh like i'm like really all right yeah cool i guess just you know just to fully fully bend over backwards

and all this stuff you're like i understand we're very lucky and very entitled to be like that number seems huge to a lot of people and i get it yeah but even like i'm trying to think and it was a different behind the scenes service but like back at game of former for the game of former show i want to to say we were like maybe around 30 000 per episode but then again it's like i think that number was just screwy because if i think of like the feeling of the quote -unquote cultural impact of the min max show versus the game former show when i was hosting it it's like oh it's night and day it feels

like min max is more impactful so i don't know what that means exactly they've gotten better with the feeds as well because it used to be this if you were subscribed you would auto download lots of stuff whereas now they know if you've listened to it it doesn't get pulled up up.

And there's even like a threshold, like if somebody listens for like not enough, then it doesn't even do it that way.

Like they're, they're, they're the analytics on that stuff is better.

It's closer to like, that's an actual listen that it used to be.

So maybe that's the other thing.

Maybe the, maybe the podcast back in the day and it was, you know, it was like YouTube subs.

Like we have 850 ,000 YouTube subs.

Like I bet like 400 ,000 of them are dead.

You you never, you never, it's not like we're putting up videos and they're all getting millions of views, you know what I mean?

Like, and so does YouTube then punish you for having so many subs, but the views aren't there.

And I don't like, I think about it a lot in terms of our YouTube subscriber numbers of like, this is petty.

I agree. But just I feel like, Oh, are we not getting invited to as many preview events as we could be?

Because people are seeing our YouTube numbers and they're like, Oh, I've been max.

Isn't that big? Whereas if I make make the case of like as a gaming outlet overall i think we're we're up there and i'm really thankful for it but it's just it's a weird case to try and make to i don't know ea or you know different publishers out there but like oh we should be included in your preview cycle because it doesn't look like it but i think we're actually one of the biggest gaming outlets out there even though it's technically just the weird structure of me being full -time and everybody else is a part -time contractor but it's like i still think we're in the arena i think you can still

you can well now you you've done the smart thing you point at the rapid fire questions you show look at the views that are on that there you go freebie takes one of your people a couple of hours to do that there's a there's a fun thing let's let's talk about games coverage because i'm i'm in i am in the same position as you in a way like there's there's it feels like i'm talking to like some sort of like conjoined twin who's off in another universe doing this this thing we seem to have a lot of the same sort of fears and aspirations and just the desire for everyone to play more age of empires

and age of mythology but no one's doing it man that's the problem are they not no i think they're out there actually i i'm the problem i haven't checked out the new uh dlc for age of mythology the extended version or retold edition where they added the whole chinese mythology now a new version of the chinese mythology then the last remasters chinese edition it's a confusing one now did they release it i saw it was a rise of nations one getting worked wait really did i make that up in my fucking head i might have i might have just had a dream like a remaster extended it oh no extended edition came

out a while ago so i was back in 2014 no i guess maybe not maybe i just made that up i fucking love rise of nations it was cool it was cool for sure you just nuke everyone at the end didn't work out okay sorry i derailed you what do you want to talk about yeah so like look games coverage here's actually before i get into this yeah why do you why do why do you do this why did you get a job at game former why are you doing min max like what is the thing that because money or klaus i mean you don't seem like a type of person that is particularly motivated by by those things as much as anyone is not motivated

by you know even a little bit but like with the amount of work that you're putting into it like what what is the reason why you are in this space and presumably wanting to do this for the rest of your career yeah i think it's um you know i i think about it a lot i think about But just appreciating people like you or like a lot of peers who was just a guest cohort at Minmax for a month.

Like there's I am also one of those people that's just endlessly fascinated by the game industry, you know, and it's like I'll never make a game.

I know you you've dabbled now, but like I'm not that interested in that.

I'm just fascinated by trying to wrap my head around one part, one sliver of the world.

You know, I can never understand this wacky world we're in or all the different art forms out there.

but there's just one that I started scratching at the surface at.

And now I'm what, 15 years into this career.

And I still feel like I'm still digging this hole in the backyard. It's endless.

You know, it is so fascinating.

And so if I can help shed a little bit of light into how these games are made through the interviews and at the same time, have fun talking about what's fascinating about these games, um, on the podcast, like that's, that's a pretty good combo for me for the rest of my life, I think.

Where do you think you are then with, I guess Yes.

You mentioned a few minutes ago about how, you know, you are min -max, and I would say the same thing, is one of the biggest sort of, I don't know, we're making a distinction here between a sort of generalist games coverage outlet and, say, a YouTuber, right?

And perhaps in many people's eyes, there isn't a distinction.

I'm not quite, I don't know.

But when I look at the space as it it exists now it's obviously like you know with game informer shelving that was kind of the the nail in the coffin in the world of print obviously um sites like game spot and ign are still producing uh work but it it feels very much like we're in the sort of um the autumn of of the world of video game websites at least at the moment and even youtube you're seeing a lot of um um like even the skill up for instance is doing a similar thing where they're you know he's doing more stuff like do like doing more like weirdly it's more traditional game preview stuff

you know what i mean it does feel like and this is part of my calculus with noclip crew as well and and also sort of i miss that world it does feel like there is a big huge gap that is only getting bigger in the world of games uh coverage for the type of generalistic i know it hasn't worked out for a lot of people and all that business is failing but it also does seem like at a certain point some the crown has got to have to be passed to somebody um or you know numerous people what do you make of i guess because it seems like like min max is definitely approaching that sort of direction direction,

but obviously, you know, modestly, cause as you said, similar to us, you're a one full time, you know, sort of situation with a bunch of contractors.

What, what is your sort of, what do you make of the landscape as is what, as it is at the moment and what do you sort of expect it to look like in the next two or three years?

Yeah, no, it's, it's terrifying.

Like, um, I think starting min max, I've just been so focused on sustainability and it's always a thing of like, okay, you know, it's the challenge.

We hinted at a little bit earlier of trying to budget with a community supported outlet.

It's like this number can fluctuate all over the place.

So what is the safety net?

What is the concrete number that we can budget out what to do with?

And it's like, it's tough to do if it's moving all over the place.

So, you know, I'm just obsessed with how do we stay sustainable?

And it has freaked me out again, also because like knowing the numbers of how much we get per ad and how much YouTube revenue and stuff like that.

And then look around at other sites and i'm like this doesn't make sense the math is 100 the math is not here and so at that point you just realize like oh we're on the ultimate house of cards like so many of these sites very sadly to be clear are going to be going down i think within the next couple of years because it's just there's nothing holding it up and you go to some place like summer game fest which is awesome but it just feels like this shangri -la that's been made for outlets outlets based on a model of 10 years ago and it's like it's awesome that keely and i made bit in the crew that they

can create this experience for everybody but the same time i look around and it just freaks me out if it's like hey raise your hand if you feel like your outlet is on solid financial ground like i i don't know how many people are out there like that you know it's it's pretty scary and raise your hand if you're surprised that your outlet is still up exactly a year ago you would have said you'd be here in a year right and everyone's hands shoot Yeah.

And so, you know, it is that distinction that's tricky and PR struggles with it.

I get it of who's an influencer, who's an outlet.

And like, in my mind, I've always wanted Minmax to be an outlet like Game Informer.

You know, it goes back to one up yours was my first real video game podcast that I fell in love with.

You know, obviously love the bomb cast and stuff, too.

Not that it's a clear rivalry, but.

And so the idea of like, oh, I just always love having a podcast represent an outlet, having like the go to podcast, like this is the summary of everything thing that's going on at this outlet and so that's kind of been the model for min max here and so it is weird though to try and pitch yourself as no we're a real gaming outlet i swear it's just we're kind of in that community funded thing but if you're letting kind of funny through the door i i we're we're like a younger brother of them maybe and so it's it's a tough thing to try and get out there but like you know we have such a weird model

of you know me hosting the main podcast the min max show and then also you know being the video editor for this stuff um and running the business stuff and all that but my feeling is like i wish more outlets popped up that were this is so self -indulgent so forgive me but we're like modeled a little bit like ours like i feel like this structure works well and i mean so much of it comes down to the team that uh we got together of like you know the eight other people in both min max they all have so much other stuff going on that it's a weird thing that that's kind of the way it works it's like jacob

Geller is primarily focusing on his YouTube channel, obviously.

But then he's. And doing talks in Scandinavia.

Exactly. Flowing around the world for his brilliance.

But then the nice thing is hopefully Minmax is just that place where he gets to talk with other people in a lighthearted group.

And it's a couple hours a week.

And hopefully it's a fun experience for him.

And so we just have that structure where we kind of have that pocket for all these different people where we're the fun thing on the side for everybody.

And hopefully we can pay them well and they stay stay happy.

Um, but at the same time, it's like, could this work for other outlets?

I would love if another outlet popped up and tried to mirror that, that structure of kind of one person full time.

And then as long as people weren't being enraged at the fact that they're staying part -time contractors, you know, um, I think that's a model that could work and it's been sustainable enough for us that I'd love to see more people try it instead of just getting out of the game's press us all together yeah i i entirely agree i think the there was that was sort of what the end answer for noclip crew was in my head yeah but but the problem was was that to to do it it would have been setting up a second patreon a second thing and i just my toes curl like i just it's because it's not fair it's not it's

too it doesn't match with no clips mission like they're they're very very different things and paces and and i don't want i don't want to turn noclip into something that you know it just it wouldn't make sense if we had these everything that goes up on that channel needs to have been sort of blood sweat and teared over in a way that you don't do with with that type of stuff because you need to get it out and that's not what its utility is and that's not why it's fun to make either like that i enjoyed and i think the rest of the guys enjoyed doing the noclip crew stuff a lot because it was a totally

different pace to what we're usually doing and it was a really cool place but when maybe that's my fault at the end of it is that i just couldn't uh grit my teeth and and ask again asking is hard i'm bad at asking that's why we don't we're so bad at asking for for patrons and we we have this like very good it goes down but it goes down very slowly right and then when we ask it shoots back up again and and i think i'm just i don't think i'm bad at doing that side of it so entirely i'm the asking game because remember at some point i think it was like with a little mini relaunch y 'all were doing

years ago you emailed every former supporter right with like a custom video about it so what did i do i think i did oh yeah because on the dm on patreon it you can dm everyone and unfortunately people can't opt out of that so i don't use it very often because i once i once had a guy respond like i think he didn't like my politics or something it was like you fucking piece of me again and i'm like i'm sorry dude i'm sorry patreon doesn't let you unsubscribe you're with me forever motherfucker change your account change your login i don't know i felt really bad he was really mean to me but i felt

really bad for him because i was like yeah i hate getting i'd hate getting spam from somebody i thought was a piece of shit too um but uh yeah i think i i think i put out a video that was like yeah it was like an unlisted youtube video yeah like you're an old supporter come on back please and i i remember looking at that because i'm a jerk for this stuff and it's like yeah that was a big spike for you guys when you just sent out that message to everybody and it did and we did have a lot of people come back as well um it's hard though because you're like fuck man what was the worst job you had

what was that what was the least shittiest paid worst job do you have any bad grocery store during high school yeah i think about in my head whenever i think about anyone who's a patron of ours and it's obviously not the case because you've got folks who we have a lot of game developers we have a lot of like people people who are very independently successful and you know I see their names and I know who they are or um you can just tell by the the way in which you interact with them on the discord or in the messages or whatever but whenever I'm asking anyone I'm sitting here in a house in Northern

California um I have uh you know I had emergency surgery last year that I was able to to pay for out of pocket because my insurance didn't cover much of it at all um and i think about when the first 20 30 years of my life and no money i have when i was in london or when i moved to san francisco and i go nah fuck it like i'll i'll i'll pay for that thing yeah um but ultimately i think who does pay for it who's probably in the middle of that equation is the rest of the crew that's the thing that maybe sometimes i'm like oh i should ask more because because then i'd be able to give more work to the rest

of the the people who are on this do you ever do you feel that pressure like as you're stable and it's incredible stable i mean the folks who contribute to mimics are you know like you said like people who are more than capable of doing and do their own stuff on the side and are very i'm sure creatively satisfied and successful as well um but they obviously stick around so that's that's got to be a um uh you know a star on your lapel but do you feel pressure to keep them sort of fed yeah it's interesting where you know we used to do a check -in every three months with like a one -on -one meeting

and we recently shifted to six months because i'm like you know scheduling with eight people every three months it's a bit much um and so it's it's nice to have those check -ins with everybody and it's everybody's so different and i think a lot of it just comes down to understanding where everybody's at but But really, as part of that check -in, just to be able to talk to all of our other co -hosts and contributors and stuff and just be like, hey, arrow up or arrow down for the next six months of MinMax?

Do you want to do slightly more or slightly less?

And some people are like, I'm good, actually.

I got a lot going on over the next six months.

Sarah Podzorski just launched Fields of Mysteria.

That's an example where she's like, that's, you know, I really got to focus on that as we're getting that out the door for the early access version here.

So she's like, slight arrow down.

down. And other people are like, you know what, actually it's going to be a lot of flexibility, slight arrow up, you know?

And so, yeah, there's, I'm trying to think if there are those examples, you know, I don't know if this is getting, this is getting in the weeds even for our conversation, Danny, but it's interesting.

Cause like my pitch. We're an hour and 20 minutes into a podcast that the people who are listening are into it.

But like my, you know, my pitch for them for a lot of those check -in meetings is that idea of like, I'm wary about setting up big new shows that that we are paying for because if that number changes in a big way on Patrion, it's scary.

But because we run it pretty conservatively financially, like we're still gaining a little bit in the bank and that pays for travel and stuff like that pays for those pancakes for the rapid fire planning meetings.

Cause we go nuts on those pancakes and you wouldn't believe it.

Minneapolis is cold.

Right. So, you know, that's right.

Yeah. Stack it up. You have to heat them up more.

So that works. But as part of that, it's like, you know, if you ever have like a big idea, if you ever want to do like a one -off you know if you ever want to visit every independent studio in alabama i don't know it's just some nonsensical i wish there was an independent studio in alabama there's gotta be some cool indies in alabama come on well we're saving that for alamax that's going to be coming soon look forward to it but anyways the point is like i pitched that as like if there's like a big one -off i'm more than happy to like make sure you're well paid for it and it's something that if we

have that built up in the bank that'd be easy to do and then it's also not going to to stress us out for like, we need to keep this rolling forever.

And that's only going to drain if the numbers change, if ads drop out of the podcast for some reason, it's going to have a real impact on us.

And so that's kind of the sweet spot.

I think in terms of quote unquote, keeping the contributors fed, a lot of them are in that camp though of like, I'm happy doing a couple hours a week here and there.

And, you know, the part I'm kind of jealous of them for is hopefully a message is enough, but it's like, if you guys need to like check out for a month, if you're feeling a little burned out, thankfully there's nine of us.

And so the community, in theory wouldn't even really notice in a big way if like you just kind of wanted to slink back in the shadows and kind of recharge your batteries for a bit and so yeah hopefully we're flexible enough where they're doing well but yeah everybody has so much going on I mean I mentioned her a couple times but yeah Haley McLean she's up in Halifax and she's like a video game IP lawyer and like it just she's stuff is great yeah she's doing so much and then it's that idea of like and then you just come on the podcast for fun like this is after a big day of writing writing legal

contracts for indie developers and it's like yeah that's such a fucking super weapon because you can like there's always like something will come up in the news and you just like go straight to her and she has the answer for it it's awesome it's so helpful for like the stories popping up about like skies of arcadia trademark is getting renewed and there's a million youtube videos all about it and it's like hayley is this bullshit should we care about this and she's like they need to do it legally it's not a big deal yeah i loved it it was great it was brilliant yeah because it's great because it

makes again it's like counter you know cultural in some way or counter the way journalism is supposed to be or it's just like no like this is the honest boring answer to this this is you know what i mean but you feel it felt special like it felt like oh that's something i'm getting from this podcast and i'm not getting from others you know yeah and so yeah thankfully we have such a by the way you've been very kind i'm not taking this ass kissing lightly i very much appreciate the kind words you know but like i just i think of the crew we have and I'm not saying it's primarily the women but it's

primarily the women um no but like think about like you know somebody wrote into the podcast a while ago and they were asking what like used game prices and I remember like Kelsey Lewin off the top of her head knew how much a used copy of three ninjas kickback on super nintendo was and I was like what other gaming podcast has somebody with that specific knowledge just just one in a million she just knows all these things from running these used game stores and then on top of her work at the video game history foundation where she was the co -director for a while over there and stuff so it's like

crazy resources to have in our rotation we're very honored man oh man yeah and you guys have done like i think that is one of the like failings i've had as a as a somebody bringing people to work at at noclip is that we have never had a woman working on in anything we've done and it's it's one it's i'm going to give that typically um depressing uh white guy answer to this and that i have it is something i have tried and failed it's not for want of trying but obviously i'm that's not an excuse i'm laying out i would say the biggest thing because no clip especially for the first like four or five

years was basically just me and jeremy anyway yeah um i would say that our focus for a long part was making sure that in the documentaries we had good representation reputation and i'm i'm very proud of what we've done there because it's been a lot of work as well um over the years to to make sure that we're getting the right people for interviews and we still have to work really hard to make sure that that's the case when we're when we're chatting to people um but yeah it's um that's that's something i wish i still i'm constantly looking out for fun and then i sometimes and then i see people

that you got on mimax i'm like motherfucker where did you find these people they're so good well the answer is keeping your eyes open while like game informer you know like hayley was an intern and sarah i met at some function at the university of minnesota back when she was a student there like you know early you know 2010s and stuff and so it's just a matter of like okay remember that person was good remember that person was good um but you know and again this is not exactly the coolest conversation to have for two guys here but you know janet crecia again has talked a lot about that idea of it's

really tough to be like the only woman on a gaming podcast because you're the lightning rod for all the shitheads but also Also, it's just so nice when we have, you know, not trying to shoehorn it in an obnoxious way, but when you have the situations where it's like, oh, we have three women on the podcast this week.

And it's just like this.

Feel free to cancel me, Danny.

Women are exponential.

You know, it's like if you have like the one soul woman of every gaming podcast, like paladins, it's just this feeling of like, oh, the more people on a podcast with shared experiences, the better the podcast is going to be.

By and large. Well, I need to be identical mentally.

Right. Right. But just like for so many giving podcasts where they have like the one the one woman on the crew, I feel like it just gets so much better if you can get two, three.

And it really it just makes it so much more fun.

And now when we have episodes of the podcast where there's not a woman on, it feels like this feels lame.

What are we doing here?

We have such a narrow vision on everything at this point.

Yeah, I mean, from my when I'm from my time working on radio, like there is a science to some of this stuff and that is 100 percent like part of it.

you want to have you know uh sort of a decent amount of common ground between everyone but you also want everyone to feel autonomous without being tokened it's like a very tricky balancing act that's why you get like certain formats of radio stuff and i think the podcast is basically the same thing so yeah totally you don't want to you don't want to have somebody on feeling like there's uh any tokenism going on because then they sort of fit a role and it might just be one that they've imagined in their head or it might be one that is coming from the audience but it basically basically batters

them into a sort of a corner.

Um, which is also like the opposite of what you want to do.

Um, right. You know?

Right. Um, yeah, we, um, you know, I appreciate you noticing the slow growth from Mx here.

I feel like there's kind of an elephant in the room that we talked about privately that we haven't really talked about here where something that, you know, I felt really thankful for that we've been able to do is we do a game code giveaways quite frequently to like the numbers.

Yeah. And it's, it's, it's really worked out well for us.

Um, and it's, you know i'm happy to talk about any of the questionable aspects of it because there's there's a way you could do this that would really suck that would be really gross but hopefully it's not the way we do it where you know if there's a game that has released that we think is cool but just we can see from the number of steam reviews that just like it's not getting out there like arco was a good example from last year right yeah yeah even like 1000 times resist when that game uh first came out yes it subsequently had in december something happened and it sort of a shout out but i'm

yeah i totally with you that was a slow boil for sure which you don't often see at the moment you know these games that do slowly boil they tend to launch it or not yeah absolutely like it's like hollow knight's other example i suppose i don't think thousands of resistance getting the hollow knight numbers quite yet but so what we do is you know if we see those games that like we all genuinely love and we talked around the podcast we think are cool um then we see like they're not getting out there the sales aren't getting out there we'll reach out and say like hey could we get like a bunch of steam

codes to give away and for one week if you support min max any tier on patreon we'll dm you with a steam code for that game and we'll message when we're out of steam codes no one's feeling too ripped off here or anything um and so we've you also have to do it that way because patreon has rules about lotteries exactly we can't make it a gamble so we need to be really clear like you are getting a code or you are not getting a code we have one and the frustrating part i've seen yeah exactly but i'm sure some people tried it um that said you can do that on instagram which we found success for like

if we have a big game code it's like hey you know leave a comment on this patreon or this instagram post give us a follow and then we'll gamble it or just do a random number generator and choose one person yo sign up to our patreon and on instagram let us know and we'll give you the gamble that way oh it's terrifying um but uh by the way i'm gonna get back to this but it was tricky doing like trivia tower a trivia show i'm in max you know because like you can't be there's no gambling so it's like if you support us on patreon you can compete in a game of skill which is what trivia tower is is but we

can't have any questions in trivia tower b just like name a number between one through a hundred that'd be really fun but like i don't know i can't imagine anybody from patrick even those degrees of obfuscation away from it you're but i guess you don't want to be the one who's suddenly banned from patreon exactly like shit that would be everything and so i'm sorry jack so the point is then we do those game code giveaways of the cosplayers this week we'll send you a code and that's been a big boost for us and hopefully you know it seems like people come back to us from the pr side of things they

feel like it's a good win -win if we're like right you know especially weeks where there's a big state of play or something it's like yeah if there's a game that we genuinely think is cool like you know we did um we did a giveaway for dragon's dogma 1 on steam before dragon's dogma 2 came out where it's like if you're capcom and you have thousands of old games totally sitting in a fucking google sheets thing somewhere right it's like oh yeah we like dragon's dogma 1 so it's like hey we're doing a reaction stream and we'll roll a 30 second trailer trailer for dragon's dog but want to talk about like

hey support us on patreon you get this code it's a win -win kunitsugami path of the goddess was another one from last year that's like it's cool game and it's not exactly blowing up the sales charts according to the steam reviews which is an imperfect science and so that's been really helpful for us for keeping those numbers going we need a boost and i think there is a gross aspect of that if it's like some game that you're hyping up for the sake of this game rules and you need a steam code for it so you support us on on patreon but as long as it's always downwind from the conversation where we

genuinely did like the game right you know and it helps in a big way we can also point to like yeah this game has overwhelmingly positive reviews on steam and 600 reviews only like it is it is a gem out there and you can get it by supporting us at the two dollar tier like it's a nice way to support it that's your sort of uh your church and state separation there as you try and make it so that this is something that that you did talk about in the past something like that yeah yeah do you then worry that it influences the game because i'm with you i'm like i'm i'm very much the church and here i'm

the church and state guy who then went and made i was like i was like i'm gonna keep a church in state but if the church wants to pay me to make propaganda for them that's fine because that it's obviously promotional material that's where my brain building and the church is they're in different buildings it's confusing it's confusing but i think we very much have that old school probably raised on game spot you know giant bomb mentality oh totally like gartsman leaving game spot dude my first interview for game spot i don't i talked about this years ago i think when they flew me out to the uk

for this interview yeah and i was living in is my dream fucking job i was like massive in the game spot community i wanted to work here so bad bad they flew me out to london for the interview for a position and in the interview they asked the question of like what would i have done is there anything over the past year on gangspot that you would have done differently and i and i i i fucking said that the reaction the the communication with the community with what happened with jeff caused more damage than or as much damage as um whatever happened over there and ultimately that was i said that's

that's that would have been the thing i would have done differently and this is how i would have done it and it was me staking i didn't want to work for game spot if i thought that any of that fuckery was going to be i was going to be part of that yeah that was more important to me than my dream job that then i didn't get the job it was down to me and one other guy the other guy was fired after two weeks for being a fucking creep or something i don't know i don't know who he who this person was but they got fired and i subsequently moved to london and spent the next two and a half years trying

to get a job at game spot again and i never regretted it because it was like so fucking important to me that that line had been drawn in the sand and that if i was going to join and i ended up joining under a different management administration and i don't know maybe they maybe they didn't hire me because i was a fucking idiot i don't know and i didn't know how to do anything i don't know i don't know I honestly don't know yeah but like that's so whenever people get pissy on me on fucking social media about like oh noclip just makes propaganda I'm like if you if you fucking knew how seriously

I took this shit yeah like so in a way the secret tape stuff was like this very difficult sort of square to circle I guess um with doing with with figuring out how to do that without it being being you know without it being you fucking sellouts and i think we've been really lucky that we've said yes to projects that make sense and said no to projects that haven't um but but how do you feel about that when you are the you know at game informer you had a sales department presumably who was doing a lot of stuff yeah and game spot we did too and you probably had lots of things to say about your sales

department like we did maybe i don't know yeah um how do you how do you feel balancing both of those things because that that was the church and state thing within those organizations many many times the editorial was here sales was here right how do you feel sort of adopting that role do you feel more comfortable with it now or has has the game changed so much that it's easier just because of where we are in 2025 with that i think it's one of those things if the game has changed in a big way and we are in that older mindset but i think In this case, I think it's helpful to have a couple of people in that older mindset

of there should be some clear division and obviously being really transparent with the community whenever there is something sponsored that's coming through.

We do sponsored episodes of Trivia Tower where it's like, oh, the last episode was sponsored by GameMaker, the engine.

It's like, oh, that seems like a great fit.

That's a great fit.

Yeah, why not? And so those are really nice when those come through and we're not doing Raid Shadow Legends sponsored streams. like we've never done any paid let's plays at min -max um although no promises but you know there were discussions recently of like would you ever do a paid tabletop play for interesting you know and it's like i think we would it's non -endemic yeah right it's like and if it's a game we like like that seems that seems to be cool and hopefully the community to be up for that and so it is interesting to try and navigate those grounds it helps a lot to have like a really uh

great team where in our monday meetings we can talk through any of those situations of like how how do we feel about this?

You know, the easy example is it's not exactly a church and state issue, but you know, for like ads on the podcast of like, Hey, how do we feel about any sort of gambling apps whatsoever?

Right. And it's like, nope, let's just say no to all that.

And it's like, so for the main show, it's like, Hey, any, any gendered ads in general of like, Hey guys, shave your balls with this rock hard boner.

It's like, you know, we're fine.

We're fine. Just passing and all that shit.

Cause that's like 80 % of the ad opportunities that come through, You know.

And so it's nice to talk to the team about, you know, how do you feel about this?

And the fun thing, too, is like our team's really varied of like some people are like no one gives a shit.

You're you're a dinosaur.

And other people are like, absolutely not.

We cannot, you know, accept this trip, you know.

And so it's interesting to try and navigate.

But, you know, I talked to you a little bit about it.

We started last year something called MinMac Spotlight, which is trying to harken back to visiting those game studios that we did back at Game Informer for so long.

And so with MinMac Spotlight, the idea is going out, spending a day at a game studio, half a day, and just trying to shed some light on what's happening in this space.

So we've done two so far.

We did one on Panic in Portland, kind of a postmortem on the playdate to some degree, and then one that was about EverQuest and like the people who are keeping EverQuest alive.

live um and the the idea was we did the portland one on panic as kind of the template for we want to make this a sponsored series moving forward so that one wasn't sponsored but we want the other ones in the future to be sponsored so the everquest video was sponsored um and our community seemed all on board for it and it helps that it's like we're not going to be talking about everquest winning game of the year for min max in 2024 sadly enough and so it's like there's those situations do that just to fuck with people just to see what the reaction is would that be great just to bring me next on in flames

um but there are those situations where it's like you know i think this content will be cool it'll be unique i am proud of that video um and we're able to shed some light on the industry and teach them about a corner of the game industry that they probably hadn't thought about in a long time or didn't know anything about um and so hopefully there are those avenues moving forward but the conundrum is then a situation of like okay So I think where we're at now for Midnight Spotlight is if it's like a studio profile, we wouldn't accept payment for those.

No, sorry. We would accept payment for those.

But if it's a matter of like highlighting this specific new game that's coming out this year that we're going to be talking about in our Game of the Year debates, we just would not accept payment for that.

But there's probably still some of those that's like, yeah, I would like to fly out to the studio just to learn about that.

and you know what, it's going to cost us some money, but at the same time, that's worth it for just for the insight we can share.

And so it's that fine line, but hopefully we can always communicate that.

And we will always communicate that to the community about like, here's where we're at.

If it's going to be for a game, that's going to be debatable for the two tens, which is what we call our game of the year debate, then we wouldn't accept payment, but everything else will be really clear that this is a sponsored video.

If it's something like an EverQuest, you know?

Yeah. I think it's demonstrative of kind of like, I think like how, how case -by -case everything is and i think i hate saying that in one way because you can manipulate that like a bad actor can then sort of make a case for basically doing any type of shit but i think like for instance you doing those type of things that obviously wouldn't work on noclip because of the sort of the i guess the way in which the audience feels about our work which is that it is somewhat of a time capsule that like these things will hopefully be things that people watch in 10 or 20 years or in my dream in 100 years

time there's people watching this stuff and that's giving them insight into the early days of this um you know while the earth is on fire or whatever um but you know and then even down to the weeds of it of like you know how do we cover this because you guys do so much like preview things whereas we don't do preview so in a weird way the way in which no clip could do that stuff would be doing preview things we don't do them because because and the reason why we don't do the reason why we don't do preview things as documentaries entries is also because even if they're not paid for there is the assumption that they're

being paid for fallout yeah yeah the fallout stuff totally yeah which like the month that went up really we got so much praise for being the the outlet that explained what the fuck fallout 76 was and then the minute that came out dead you know what i mean yeah but it goes back to what i say about like wanting to break some eggs and and make mistakes because like i've said a thousand times to our patrons the haiti series doesn't happen unless we do fallout 76 because i learned a bunch of things about how we should cover games that are still in development from that right um but yeah i'm it's a it's

a it's a fascinating sort of problem to to chat about i'm conscious of your time because i know you got to go in the next like uh five or ten minutes I have a question I want to ask you about which is you've got you've got some GDCs on next week you guys are in town for GDC yeah yeah they're doing meetups as well right yeah yeah well the security meetups are great and the Tempest Bar aren't they the best it's yeah where's it on where's it on this will be going up the weekend Monday March 17th you don't need to be a Patreon supporter to come on out but Tempest Bar in San Francisco it's like a nine

minute walk from the Moscone Center and so yeah Tony the owner there is a MinMax fan so he lined up last year and like reserved a little spot on the stage for us and so not to podcast from but just to you know get to get to talk to folks because it's going to be st patty's day so it's going to be a little bit busy um can you how did you say that can you say that again i said st patty's but i was just trying to charm you by saying it that way how did you spell how did you spell it oh christ in your head i guess well normally i say patrick's patty's i guess i I would, I'd spell it with a D if I

was spelling it out.

That's, yeah, that's good.

Okay, all right, cool.

As long as you don't say patty, like a burger patty.

Yeah, okay, thank God I passed that test. That's stressful.

Yeah, patty, okay. Sorry to be a fucking Irish.

No, no, that's your job, man.

And so, yeah, we'll be there at Tempest Bar.

And yeah, it's gonna be fun.

I think it's gonna be a couple of developers that are gonna be swinging by and stuff.

But yeah, those community meetups are super fun.

Everyone's just so nice.

And it is just, it's those Patreon messages in the flesh of people just talking about like, oh man, you had this joke in a rapid fire that you did with media molecule back in the day.

That was so fun. It's like, how do you remember that?

I don't even remember that.

And so, um, it's, it's, it's a great time.

So come on out and say hi.

You don't need to be a patron supporter, but yeah.

So Sarah Padorski and Haley McLean and I will be out there at GDC.

And then Janet Garcia is going for her other podcast, um, games and other things.

And so, um, games and not games, I should say his name of the show.

Anyways. So we'll all be out there.

It'll be a fun time, but we'll be making a travelogue showing off that, uh, shown off the event.

you know that's always that thing of hell yeah it's it's it's so fun to get to show hopefully the patreon community like a glimpse of this is what a gaming event feels like we're not going to be all encompassing showing a preview of all these games for something like sgf or gdc but we can i feel confident that i can whip up my phone and hopefully not people feel too awkward but just to capture that vibe of like oh hey good to see you you know giving hugs to other press people and connecting with developers you haven't seen in a long time like that's that's why we love the the game industry behind

the scenes i feel like and so the more we can kind of share that with the people who are funding the trip the better off it is yeah especially because there's fewer vectors for that stuff you know i've i miss e3 man yeah i miss yeah and keely's done a great job of setting that whole thing up and i'm glad there's something else and i'm not i'm not shit talking uh sgf but um yeah i miss it i never people used to complain about e3 maybe i was lucky i had a an easier job i don't know hosting all the stuff and doing all that but like every every time because i just think about all the years i was at home

watching it thinking man i wish i could go and then every year i just adored it yeah it was the best fun don't you notice is the people complaining about it it's kind of the old timers who have been there a long time i don't want to use the georg jaded but maybe there's a little bit of that in there for me as good as it used to be it's like what this is still disneyland what the hell you're talking about man this is amazing how often do you do you rally against that because i find myself like in my life trying as long trying really hard to make sure that i don't end up like that yeah yeah like

maybe that's part of the whole mixing it up all the time thing is making sure things are fresh and new and that i feel that excitement because i really worry about like being 20 years into this thing and then suddenly being really tired like at that stage i just think i need to get the fuck out of the way and let somebody else have a go you know what i mean like so i want to be in it or not you know yep i mean for content do you feel that way at all i think about that all the time i was kind of feeling about that with our like monday show that i eventually handed it off to to Haley who's done

a great job with it but it was a matter of like I'm doing this but I was in the back of my head being like am I going through the podcast motions I never want to be in that groove but I'm not focusing as much as I should be and so yeah trying to get out of that but then also I just worry a lot about I don't know just just kind of the lazy snark you know when it comes especially for the reaction streams it's tough you're trying to make them fun not to to just fall into that camp of just being like this guy is trying hard it's just like you know i'm sure we fall into that trap at times with our

reaction streams but as much as possible i want min max to be a place that doesn't fall into those grooves of just kind of the i don't know just the snark you know just the yeah smugness yeah and just kind of that that feeling of just kind of like i can't believe that developer didn't think of this obviously it's like just keeping that humility of like you guys have no idea you've never done anything a sliver as hard as developing a video game so like shut up that's that's literally why i stopped doing my opinion show when i yeah because i did enough interviews at game spot and i was like i know

nothing yes and none of us know anything like it's not just the it's not that gamers don't know i'm a gamer i don't know i've i cover games for a living and i'm here saying they should do this and this and then you go talk to a developer and they're like yeah well that would would have taken an extra year or like we don't have those people or that technology doesn't work with this technology i'm like oh okay sorry right right and so we're just kind of opening the door a crack but there's a there's a whole factory beyond that that the press doesn't get to see you know exactly yeah so gdc should be

fun i'm looking forward to connecting with some folks out there and stuff um planning future content yeah what you got future content wise what you got coming up what's uh what's what's happening we're into we're into in spring spring has sprung well i mean it will eventually up in minnesota i'm sure we're still frozen we're trying our best um yeah we got uh we got so So something that I've considered tapping your skills at some point, and you don't need to commit to anything at this point.

Higher shot accent?

Yeah, definitely. No, the last couple of years we've done this event in May called Doc Lightning, which is something I wanted to do for a long time at Game Informer, but we finally got started a couple of years ago.

And the idea is we all have amazing technology in our pockets with our phones.

We can make a documentary.

You can make a documentary right now, Danny.

Not no clip quality.

you get something now danny i recommend turning the phone horizontal it tends to make for a better viewing experience this way oh i like to go in the middle yeah sure like use anglers yeah so the idea with doc lightning is we just put out a post on patreon it's like hey you don't need to be an expert you don't need to know anything here are some free tools you have a phone go out and make a documentary but it has to be under three minutes long wait you've done this in the past in the past last few years last two years yeah how have i never fucking seen this i don't know this is check it out check

it out and so we've we've had the idea of doing like a game jam but documentary before but the one thing i was like oh it's gonna take people so much fucking time let's not bother but you guys are already doing it so now we don't have to do it so we can join forces i feel i'm like embarrassed that i don't it's like finding out there's a whole like fucking giant bomb series i didn't watch which has happened as well in the past i mean the thing is you know So we, you know, put out that post on Patreon.

We have a Discord channel.

Everyone helps each other.

If people are stumped about, like, I don't know how to interview somebody, we offer advice there.

Like, I don't know what technology to use.

Again, we don't want you to spend any money.

Just go out there, interview your grandpa about his life.

Cut it down to three minutes.

You can do that, I promise.

And so the fun thing is, at the end of the month, then, we have a big screening film festival for these shorts.

And, you know, they are amazing.

And kind of, the more crude, the better.

And so, you know, the last couple of years, it's been like Jacob Geller and Leo Vader and I think Haley was there last year as well.

And we just sit down for two hours.

We used to do a stream where we watch all the communities, three minute documentaries and like tearful, incredibly heartfelt, some real goofy stuff.

It is just all over the place.

But no matter how good or how bad, three minutes, you can sit through a three minute documentary, you know?

Yeah. And so, yeah, that's called Doc Lightning.

and if anybody wants to partake you just need to be a patreon supporter at even the two dollar tier then you can jump in there but it'll be a fun time coming up in may hell yeah i'll be keeping an eye on that there you go and i'm sure we've got some little mini documentarians here on the noclip uh noclip podcast feeds who are interested in that so patreon .com slash min max two n's two n's don't forget about it um was it really because of uh because of where you're from or was was the other one taken no well the other one was kind of there was a min -max games they developed some games and stuff

but it was a matter of yeah it was like on the big list of of potential names for the outlet i was like oh mini games with two n's i don't know i want something to like hint at the fact that we're in the middle of the country do you remember mini clip the web so it was like a flash website it does sound familiar yeah yeah um and then it was a matter of all right min max that'll be free right and it turns out it was taken on most platforms but we're like you know know what i like it so much anyway let's let's lean into it so beautiful yeah hey you've been you've been too kind on this episode thank

you for not at all i i should be kissing your ass i guess i kissed your ass enough when you went on the mid -max show a couple times maybe we're equal at this point don't don't do that as well because then people think it's disingenuous yeah you're right then it then it's into that whole like fucking oh there's a fucking cabal of media people and they're all fucking friends which is like such fucking horseshit like we're all loners we don't leave our house and like you know fucking we see each other at like one or two events a year if that even happens but they're like the fucking cabal those weirdos

those liberal we've been corrupted by reading too many youtube comments we can't do it danny when they're complaining about liberal weirdos i'm like fucking you shut the fuck up i gotta bring back my um my opinion uh thing but it's just gonna be opinions on internet shit i want to target yeah that's good that's the type of energy i want to be putting it into the world yeah ben hansen thank you for gracing us with your presence um and uh yeah head over to youtube .com slash min is it just slash min max double yeah it's confusing yeah youtube it's just min max but the min max show subscribe on your

favorite podcast app it's not a patreon exclusive thing and then also pew pew bang Yeah.

If you want a video game slumber party, which has been, they are releasing their third episode coming up on Monday, but the first two have been amazing.

It's a super fun energy.

Speaking of video game slumber parties, you should come to QuakeCon this year.

Yeah. I went last year for my first time and it was the most fun I've ever had.

It was terrific. Well, how about this?

How about you come to Minneapolis?

Because I just learned, and I should have known this.

This is embarrassing, but we have the Mall of America, right?

Yes. There's a place for fun in your lives, as the slogan goes.

There's a point. There's a place for fun in your lives.

That's what they, wow.

wow commercial used to say things must have been bleak when they open that but they have an aquarium where they have like a tunnel like a glass tunnel you walk through okay and they have a whole thing where you can do a sleepover and you can sleep in that tunnel and just get to watch like sharks and sea turtles swim over your head all night so how about that for a slumber party man that sounds great especially because my anxiety will just think that it's going to collapse oh yeah it's gonna be that sounds amazing okay quick cons the place to be though yeah well no No, it's the second place to be.

That weird Mall of America fucking aquarium is the place.

There's a place for sharks in your lives.

Yeah. There you go.

All right, folks. We'll be back on the podcast next week.

Have a great week. Play some video games.

Bye. Thank you.

[게임 미디어의 생존과 커뮤니티 구축: Noclip과 MinMax의 대담]-[Running a Patron-Funded Gaming Outlet with MinnMax's Ben Hanson]

📋 Summary

게임 미디어의 지속 가능한 미래와 커뮤니티의 힘

1. '작고 스마트하며 지속 가능한' 모델의 중요성

2. 콘텐츠 제작의 딜레마: 양인가 질인가?

3. '교회와 국가'의 분리: 스폰서십과 독립성

4. 커뮤니티와의 유대감: '바이브(Vibes)'의 가치

결론

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript