Let's talk about the video plan

Can you believe the Kickstarter venture is creeping steadily toward quadrupling our initial goal? We're all a little taken aback -- in a good way, of course. We've been thinking about ways to expand this venture beyond just a podcast and website, and we have some very interesting and exciting things in the works that we hope to be able to talk about before the Kickstarter campaign ends. But for now, let's talk about the most ambiguous piece of the plan that we've made public so far: Video.

We haven't really said much about our intentions for video besides "We're going to do some video stuff and you can contribute money to help pin down the topics." Not surprisingly, those goals haven't proven to be nearly as popular as the podcast topics, and I think that's because the podcast is a known quantity whereas video... isn't. You guys know what you're getting with the podcast. We've done something like 160 of them to date... though our goal is to make the new episodes more like very early or very recent shows, and hopefully not like the Sonic call-in episode. Though that was magical in its own way.

But video... we've tried a lot of things with video, and nothing's quite stuck. For the most part, that's been a result of us lacking the tools and resources to do what we want. With the Kickstarter earnings we're collecting, though, that shouldn't be a problem this time around. We can buy the equipment and software we need for quality video production, and we can even afford to work with video pros to compensate for our own video incompetence. So the question is no longer "What can we do?" but rather "What do we want to do?"

Truth be told, we're still pinning down some of the specifics of our video plan, but we have a pretty good idea of where we're going. It's not entirely unlike our podcast plan, which is to say the three of us will be sharing duties. Podcast hosting will be a revolving responsibility, with each of us planning/hosting/editing one episode and then sitting in as second/third chairs for the next two. We'll each be handling our respective hosting duties the best we see fit, meaning that the tone and style of the show will likely vary somewhat from episode to episode even though the three of us will serve as the constants for each episode.

Similarly, we're aiming to publish a different video (by which we mean a produced video, not livestreams, which will be something else entirely) every other week, and our planning/hosting/production duties will rotate from episode to episode (with a total of 26 or 27 episodes). I suspect there'll be greater differences in the videos than in the podcasts, though, as each of us has different ambitions and interests for this particular medium.

• Bob: Wants to produce a series of videos looking at the work of specific game directors.
• Jeremy: Wants to go back and take another crack at Retronauts: Bonus Stage.
• Ray: Wants to create a series called "Games on the Floor," conversations about classic games recalling the days of sitting around on the living room floor in front of the TV.

Different folks, different strokes, but each and every one should be a lot of fun. We hope!