State of the JoyRide 2022

Salutations, you wonderful JoyBoys! Whether you’re an active patron or an avid fan peeking in from YouTube or our various socials, we’re happy to have you check in on this massive end-of-year update to celebrate our 7 (wow) year anniversary as a team!

How 2021 Impacted This Year

Before we look ahead, it’s actually important for us to first discuss the year BEFORE as it played a major role in everything that happened THIS year. We’ve already brought this up in the Heroes Rising Abridged pre-stream and Patreon-exclusive director’s commentary, so those who’ve seen those can skip ahead. For everyone else, we need this expressly written out in text for everyone’s full understanding. 2021 started off great, and then it got BAD very quickly. So bad, it nearly killed the channel.

What happened? YouTube is currently our main platform. That’s where most of you see us and that is where we receive the bulk of our revenue (the return on investment from Patreon, which covers the production budget for our work). A change in the algorithm that affects the visibility of our videos shifted in a way that dropped our average viewership by nearly 70%, practically overnight. Suddenly, flagship series like My Hero Abridged were underperforming, and this came at the absolute WORST time as non-stop pressure from Toei caused us to cancel Dragon Ball Subpar, a parody that garnered massive support on our Patreon, which understandably TANKED after we announced its cancellation.

The comfortable cruise control we had from our growth in 2020 came to a screeching halt. I literally had to pay out of my own pocket to get production started on Heroes Rising Abridged and Game of Stones. To avoid accruing debt while still paying our editors fairly, we began to delay parodies and paused production on our first original manga, PARAMEDIC. Something had to change real quick, because we were in a death spiral.

Towards the end of 2021 I met with my two most trusted partners, Steena Carey and Cody Rock; not just voice actors you’ve heard in many of our parodies, but both incredibly talented creative heads in their own right who have better heads for business than me.

How 2022 Turned Things Around (Sort Of)

Steena took over the position of Chief Operations Officer and social media management to strategize our comeback and engage better with all of you through Twitter, TikTok, etc. while Cody agreed to a partnership with his podcasting company, Rock Voice Productions LLC; resulting in the start of new projects such as REBUILD OF JOYCAST and THESE BACKWARDS ECHOES (and more to come).

On the parody front, it was a lot of trial and error all the way to the end of this year to see what new projects would stick, and SPY x FAMILY ABRIDGED was the clear winner. This parody alone has helped us crawl out of the hole caused by 2021 and brought support back into our Patreon to fund Heroes Rising Abridged.

Although an improvement from late 2021 and with our expectations tempered, Heroes Rising still did not perform on YouTube on a level that could warrant us to invest our still precarious budget into MHAbridged as an ongoing series. HOWEVER, our classic stubbornness warrants us to see this story we love to a proper conclusion and we will attempt to wrap the series in the most efficient number of movies/specials, barring they don’t bomb MASSIVELY on YouTube.

We also snuck in some dream projects: BERSERK, SONIC X, and Chainsaw Man the Musical: Act One. Despite their lack of success on YouTube, these were incredibly educational productions with values far exceeding their viewership returns. As such, we will be producing one more Act for Chainsaw Man: the Musical.

Looking Ahead to 2023

We’ve been secretly stocking up on a few parody releases to get us through the winter. Most notable of them are the final episodes of Dr. Stone Abridged: Game of Stones. It’s been a great run. I never could have imagined the level of success the first three episodes and movie had, and I am very happy with the grand story and emotionally satisfying conclusion you will all get to see in Episode 5 (arriving Q1 2023).

After that we will be focusing on the production of the first of My Hero Abridged’s final specials: My Villain Abridged, followed by Spy x Family Abridged 06.

And with these parodies will come our new goal for them in 2023: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. Believe it or not, we produced more parodies in 2022 than any year prior. They were paramount to helping us climb out of that hole, and now that we have some semblance of balance we want to go back to making the best possible product, which will mean slowing down a bit. In return, the parodies will be longer and of much higher quality. We know you’ve been loving our output lately, but personally, we believe we can be doing better and you’ll greatly appreciate the upgrade.

HOWEVER, as we rededicate ourselves in 2023 to making higher quality parody productions and original projects, we will be doing our best to provide more previews, behind the scenes, commentaries and more here on Patreon.

We also want to rededicate ourselves to a department that has been heavily ignored: merch. We are currently designing awesome new shirts that celebrate JoyRide’s content and history (some obvious, some more obscure than others), which will be purchasable in limited time events throughout 2023. There will also be opportunities on Patreon and our streams to win these shirts through raffles. The first shirt will celebrate our newest project: These Backwards Echoes.

As for our original manga, PARAMEDIC, our small victories and successes in podcasting and abridging have allowed production to resume. Because we like to hold our cards so close to the vest and surprise you, we’re not showing anything and promising any release dates until it is finally DONE. Thank you for understanding, you’re gonna LOVE IT.

TLDR; NOTES:

• 2022 was spent crawling out of a hole caused by a near fatal 2021. We survived.
• 2023 parodies will focus on QUALITY (and length) over quantity
  • Spy x Family Abridged is our new flagship series. Episode 6 in production now.
  • Dr. Stone Abridged is ending in early 2023. Episodes 4-5 arriving in coming months.
  • My Hero Abridged will continue on a video-by-video performance basis. My Villain Abridged in production now.
• More original projects arrive in 2023
  • More episodes of These Backwards Echoes
  • New Pilot for audio dramedy written/directed by Cody Rock
  • PARAMEDIC original manga back in production. Cross your fingers for 2023 release
• More Previews and Exclusive Behind the Scenes Content for Patreon in 2023

We cannot overstate how impossible this is to do without your support on Patreon. We are incredibly grateful to all our patrons past, present and future who keep JoyRide’s engine burning and we cannot wait to wow you with all the amazing new content arriving in the year ahead!