NEEDED: YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF DIGI!

Morning! 

So, we had a big planning meeting yesterday. We even had a pin board with cards that we put up on it. We're proper posh.

Included on there was everything we NEED to do – which includes finishing Digi Level 2 as a project (sending out Kickstarter rewards, Drong’s Challenge etc.) – as well as everything we’d like to do. We’re not ignoring the Digi Level 2 channel. We still want to continue the Let’s Plays, because they’re fun.

We also discussed how important the Poland trip has been, just in sheer practical terms. By going away for 8 days, and filming every day, we’re going to get three or four main videos, and a whole bunch of exclusive Patreon content. Still to come your way is a visit to a bizarre movie museum in Wroclaw, Corner Shop Corner, we’ve got our visit to the Polish/Kaliningrad border and Gdansk, and the full interview with Igor Witkowski.

It was exhausting filming every day, but so, so fulfilling, and that model also gives me time between trips to earn money through the day job to keep the lights on.

At the top of the board we pinned two cards with the words “Big, bold and epic” and “We go there”. These are our mission statements going forwards, whether it’s making stuff about video games on Digi Level 2, or our main channel work. 

I mean, they have been for a while, we’re just trying to crystalise it. I wish I could do smaller, less ambitious stuff, but I made ‘small’ videos for years, and they didn’t satisfy me sadly. I guess I need to be fired up creatively with ideas that I want to share.

We also compiled a long list of all the video topics we’d like to cover. They’re just starting points – because a lot of the time I won’t know if there’s a story until I start really digging into it. 

Some – but certainly not all - of these ideas require us to go abroad again. Obviously, we don’t have as much money as we used to – thanks, TV industry collapse! – so we need to work out how to pay for them. One of the alarming things was pricing up a potential week-long trip in the UK, versus going to another country. Accommodation and car hire is SO much more expensive here, that it kind of ends up being more cost-effective to go abroad in many respects.

And, of course, once the flights are covered the cost is pretty much the same wherever we are (or cheaper, depending on the country).

So, we may be doing another couple of overseas trips this year. There’s one that’s just ridiculous, which I’m desperate to do, but it requires even more traveling than Poland, so I need to work out the practicalities of it.

The big one is America, but I think we’d need a few weeks there, as there’s so much I’d want to cover. 

Consequently, we kicked around a few ideas as to how we might fund it all. I’d love to get your thoughts on what we could potentially offer – maybe as merch, or limited sponsorships, or whatever – on top of Patreon, that you’d be up for. We can slap your logo or website or whatever at the start of every video that comes from a trip.

Patreon is brilliant, and hopefully you feel you get value-for-money from it, but it’s kind of part of our baseline income these days. It helps us hugely – and helped us with Poland – but it can’t cover everything we’d like to do. We’re shortly going to open pre-orders for those who didn’t get to back for a Digi Level 2 and Digi Live DVD, which might bring in a bit, but again… it’ll also need to go to fulfilling those pre-orders.

Weirdly, we were approached by a sponsorship company recently. It’s not much money, but as the channel grows we might be able to rely a little on that in the future. 

We do want to still do a live show this year, but Harrow Arts is looking less and less likely in 2025 – plus we don’t get paid for that until after the show. 

So, we’re kind of looking at out-of-the-box ideas, and willing to entertain anything. There’s a guy called Adrian Bliss, whose videos I used to love (sadly he now just does TikTok), who once crowd-funded an America roadtrip. Among the rewards he offered the chance to go with him on the trip in cardboard cut-out form. Weirdly, someone I knew was one of the people he ‘took’ with him, and she was in every video he made. But that sort of fun idea is something we’d be looking at. Exclusive things, basically, where you become a part of it.

Thoughts, please!