Introducing Game Champions And MinnMax's New Shows

Hello everybody, Ben Hanson here. It's time for some announcements! Thanks to your feedback, we're making some changes to MinnMax in 2022. Here's a breakdown of the new shows we're announcing...

MinnMax Party Chat - We're rebooting MinnMax Council. Our Patreon-exclusive podcast is now called MinnMax Party Chat and will be popping up as an audio download every Monday for $5 supporters. We're doubling down on community interaction, with each episode being recorded in Discord's "Stages" that allows for a revolving door of community members to jump into the conversation (with their voice) based on the topic. For everybody eager to hear more cohorts in a more relaxed format, the show will also feature more cohorts and friends of the show popping in and saying hello and engaging with the community. If you don't like the sound of your own voice (you should, by the way. It's beautiful) you can still submit questions in the live chat and leave them on Patreon. The ability to be on the show via Discord and to submit questions is exclusive to the $20 tier. We record the show at 12pm Central every Monday, but will change up the recording time to accommodate for the community's schedule every now and again. We hope to hear your voice in the near future, hopefully you seen this as a fun opportunity to engage with more of us directly. As always, let us know if you have any questions about how it all works.

Steam's Secret Stash - Since you all seem to love hidden gems, group streams, us trying to wrap our mind around bizarre games, and aspects of the game industry nobody is talking about, we're creating a new show called Steam's Secret Stash! The first Tuesday of every month, Sarah Podzorski will download the previous month's strangest and most off-the-radar games on Steam and she'll be joined by another cohort as we wade through as many as possible. Since the recording of The Deepest Dive for Pokémon Legends: Arceus is happening this Tuesday, the first real episode of Steam's Secret Stash will be happening on Twitch on February 8th at 7:30pm Central. The show will also be public on YouTube the following day.

CrossFade Season 2! - Our music discussion podcast, CrossFade, is coming back! Our first guest announcement is coming Feb. 1 and the episode drops Feb. 11, so tell a friend and subscribe today. Here's a link to the show available to everybody on their favorite podcast app - https://apple.co/3kWBb5K

Here’s what you need to know about season 2:

• Still releasing bi-weekly on Friday
• More one-offs, news, specials, and commentary episodes
• Still taking two albums head-to-head with interesting guests from music, games, and more
• More community involvement (that’s you, so tell us what you want to hear on the show!)

CrossFade is a music podcast hosted by Minneapolis music guru and former Game Informer editor Matt Helgeson and produced by Jason Dafnis where Matt and a guest each choose one of their favorite albums and get the other to review it on-air. Season 1 guests included Nextlander’s Alex Navarro, Van Halen historian Greg Renoff, composers like Austin Wintory and Gareth Coker, THPS producer Ralph D’Amato, Mike Park of Asian Man Records, guitarist Matt Sweeney, and a buuuuunch more.

We also take questions and song suggestions from the community, so keep your eyes peeled for each post, leave us a review on iTunes, and hop in the #music channel of the MinnMax Discord server to get involved. Thanks for listening!

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We have new ideas for bigger shows as well and hope to roll them out in 2022. Now let's move on to the Patreon changes, but we want to note that you might want to wait until February 1st to change your pledge since you'll be charged for your new pledge amount on the first of the month.

Game Champions - We're rebooting the $50 tier on Patreon and it's now "Game Champions." Instead of simply reading the name of all $50 supporters on the podcast, we're now making it more of an event by letting everybody at the $50 choose any game under the sun and proclaim themselves the champion of said game. We'll read your name and game choice on the podcast. What do you want to "champion" or "be the champion of"? Resident Evil 4? A Plague Tale: Innocence? Chrono Trigger? Street Fighter 2? Dirge of Cerberus? Take your pick! A game can only have one champion at a time. We'll also be tweeting out your name and your choice of game. If you're at the $50 tier, send me your game pick through a Patreon message. By the end of the year we'll have a big list of Game Champions, maybe we can do something fun with that as well...

New Patreon Goal! - We've heard your feedback that you want more full Let's Plays of classic games and you also want more Jeff Cork, so if we hit 2,900 supporters on Patreon we're streaming the long-fabled full playthrough of the GameCube classic Chibi-Robo! with Jeff Cork AND Sarah Podzorski in the MinnMax studio. Any help telling a friend about the benefits of supporting us on Patreon is appreciated!

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MinnMax Is On TikTok!- Due to your very smart suggestions, we created a TikTok account for MinnMaxShow. We already feel 10 years younger, JeffM can't stop dancing. We've been uploading clips from Trivia Tower on there and they're already taking in a surprising number of views! Any help sharing clips or following us on TikTok is appreciated! https://www.tiktok.com/@minnmaxshow

On a similar note, we're giving away a code every week over on MinnMax's Instagram so please give us a follow there as well! https://www.instagram.com/minnmaxshow

We have a new banner (seen above) on Patreon, YouTube, and elsewhere thanks to the art of Hugo Pereira. You can follow him on Instagram here - https://www.instagram.com/hugop.arts/

We also have a new podcast/streaming overlay design thanks to the very talented Gavin Thompson, you can check out more of his work here! http://gavintdesign.com/

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As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback on these changes. There are more small changes to our content as well, including more streams on Twitch. This definitely isn't it for the changes this year, we look forward to shaking things up more in the future and working together with you all to make this the best gaming Patreon out there. We cannot thank you enough for your continued support, we're slowly growing because of all of you spreading the word and supporting independent games media. This is all because of you, so thank you!