Looking back on 2015 and looking ahead to 2016

Hey everyone, I thought I'd take a moment to look back at this past year of MLiG, and look forward to where we'll be headed in the new year. I can hardly believe the level of success we've had in 2015, and it blows away anything we ever thought was possible when we first started.

Heading into this year, we were sitting at around 3,000 subscribers, which was already well ahead of where we thought we'd be. But as we close out the year, we're sitting at around 11,200 subscribers, which is just an insane amount of growth.  I'm also extremely proud to say that we have over 70 fully produced episodes at this point. Based on the amount of work and content, I feel confident in saying that we don't have one truly "throwaway" episode on our entire channel. Well, except for maybe that Ryse Son of Rome video...

The RGB Master Class is absolutely the most popular series on the channel these days. We released 9 videos in the series this year, and they've all been very well received. Especially the Nintendo 64 episode, which has gone on to become the second-highest viewed video on our entire channel in just a couple of short months.

These are also the toughest and most time-consuming videos we do - but keeping on track to release one RGB Master Class episode every calendar month is our highest priority. We have lot more console-specific episodes on the way, starting off with PlayStation in January. In the following months we'll be doing other consoles - for instance, we have a loaner HDMI-modded Gamecube on the way from Video Game Perfection, so look for that relatively soonish. Also on tap for this year is Neo Geo, Saturn, original Xbox, Dreamcast, and more. Try may also do a dedicated Ultra HDMI N64 episode for the 300 series.

In addition, we'll also be expanding the series to portables, which will be a lot of fun. At first, we were just thinking we'd do one or two episodes to cover all the portables, but we discovered that it’s actually quite a bit more involved than we anticipated. We currently have a whole bunch of loaned hardware in our possession for Game Boy and Game Gear episodes.

Of course, this series would not be possible without the help of so many people - Artemio Urbina, Bob at RetroRGB.com, Matt Buxton at VideoGamePerfection.com, Wes Almond at RetroFixes… and that’s not even scratching the surface. The amount of support we get from the RGB community pushes us to make the best, most complete, and EASY TO UNDERSTAND episodes as we can. We're honored to have your support.

Of course, there's our other episodes. We decided in September to change the naming scheme for these to "Showcase" from "Recollection." The reason for this was that we really felt that it summed up what we were doing a bit better and honestly, it’s just a much more approachable and searchable term.

Outside of the individual game showcases, we started to cover entire series and particular themes, like a developer's games on certain platforms. Covering more than one game in an episode, while extremely time-consuming, is a ton of fun - especially when editing. It’s also a style that is ripe for collaboration, and we already have several lined up for 2016.

I know that we both have at least two series each that we plan on doing. One should be coming up early in the year - I've recently rekindled my love of lightgun games, so I'll be focusing on one of Namco’s famous series.

One of the episodes that I'm most proud of being on our channel is the Myst & Cyan Developer Showcase episode where Try got to sit down and interview Rand Miller, one of the creators of the series. This is the kind of episode that we always wanted to do when we started the channel. We wanted that episode to be a sort of showpiece for the channel so that we could also use it to pitch to other developers we'd love to talk with. Hopefully we can line some more up for this year - I have some in mind that I'd love to meet with.

In February, we began our collaboration with Rerez and produced some additional episodes. We were very lucky to be a part of that whole thing, and while it didn't work out in the long run, Try and I learned a very valuable lesson. Since we were releasing episodes on both Rerez and our own channel every two weeks, we realized that we might actually be capable of weekly releases

Beginning with the Myst episode, MLiG went weekly. Since there are two of us doing the channel, it gives us each two weeks to make an episode, and remain weekly. Sure, this might sound like plenty of time, but it’s actually extremely difficult. I'm really amazed that we were able to keep it up til the end of the year, only skipping the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. There have been times when we were maybe a day late (SNES RGB), but we've been incredibly consistent. We'll be continuing this trend next year.

In May, we started our weekly Episode Debrief livestreams on Sunday nights from 9-11PM EST. Well, it wasn't weekly at first, but it became weekly when MLiG went truly weekly in August.

We don't want to dilute the listings of our regular episodes on the channel, so we leave all the archives unlisted in a public playlist. We get a pretty good turnout for the streams, usually between 30-60 people depending on the subject. We think of these streams as "bonus material" for each episode. We also love interacting with our chat audience and having two of us on stream at a time really allows for that. This is one of my favorite things to do each week, as it kind puts the cherry on top of completing an episode.

Which brings us to where you're reading this right now - Patreon. We are so humbled by everyone's generosity and support and it’s really allowed us to expand on episodes - specifically the RGB episodes. There have already been a ridiculous number of instances where your support has directly lead to episodes being more complete and thorough than they ever could have been without. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

We've put out ~5 Patreon exclusive videos at this point - Video Logs, and other behind-the-scenes type stuff. For this new year, we're ideally aiming to make one Video Log per episode, if we have an idea for it. Depending on workload, of course.

So when it comes down to it, that's an episode, a Video Log and a livestream every single week.  

What does 2016 have in store for us? Well, we have so many ideas for episodes that we'll probably never run out - even if we're weekly. But we'll continue to expand our productions and quality as much as we can. Thank you for watching My Life in Gaming, and here's to bigger and better things!

Coury