EARLY ACCESS... PLUS: SOME CH-CH-CHANGES...

Hello, you lot. Here’s this week’s video, in which Gannon and I explore the history of the board game Operation (it's still processing... so you might only get the SD version at first).

Now… I don’t want to scare the horses – and it shouldn’t, because this is A Good Thing – but having hinted at this in a few recent posts… I’m moving away from a guaranteed episode-a-week schedule.

It’s not for any bad reason… more that what I want to be doing are episodes that always feel like an event – so that every one of them has the sort of creativity investment and ‘bigness’ of a Supernatural World, Digi Deluxe, or Halloween or Christmas Special. That doesn’t mean you won’t get us sat on the sofa on the channel doing the things we do – more that those sorts of episodes will be enhanced and expanded in new ways, and will have a hook beyond ‘here is a thing we’re going to talk about’ (good example: me becoming an ordained minister so that I can exorcise a haunted doll). I just want them to be more creative than two people sitting and chatting.

Sanja and I talk a lot about ‘plus-ing’ (an old Disneyland term for how they can take guest experiences to the next level) so that nothing we do is presented in the most obvious way. We want to be able to give you more than you expect.

Unfortunately, a weekly schedule doesn’t really allow for the time to plan, shoot, and edit episodes in the way that I want to. And it really doesn’t allow for the thinking time required. That’s probably the biggest deficit I have right now; just the time to think about what I want a video to be, before having to sit down to film it.

While this week’s Digi ep is fine – and there’s some decent banter between Gannon and I – it was only after we’d filmed that I realised there was so much more I could’ve done to present the subject in a more interesting way. Therefore, I’m left feeling unsatisfied.

Unfortunately, that weekly ep treadmill meant that I was just rushing to get something on camera, with no time for the creative expression that I live for. I don’t want that anymore; I want to know that I’ve given my all to every episode we put out.

My two favourite YouTubers are probably William Osman and Garrett Watts. Neither of them stick to any sort of regular schedule, so when their videos appear I get genuinely excited. It does indeed feel like an event, and their videos have clearly had so much work put into them, because they’ve given themselves the time to do that.

I’ve got really exciting ideas for the eps I wanted to do for Christmas, but I was faced with the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to do them, because I was too busy trying to get an episode out every seven days between now and then. And there are loads of other Digi video ideas I’ve been wanting to do, but I can’t because… weekly schedule. So… time to change things up.

Sanja and Gannon are both on board with this, but we’ve decided that we’re still going to get regular weekly content to Patrons along the lines of the Patreon exclusive vids we’ve done already. But… sometimes they might take the form of podcasts (as we’ll still be doing BYAMPOD weekly), or blogs. One way or another, you’ll still get stuff early, you’ll most likely get something just for you every week, and obviously the higher tier will get something extra (there’s some deleted Operation stuff incoming).

Anyway. That’s it. I don’t want to make a real big deal about this publicly, because it’s likely many people won’t even notice. Ultimately, though, I think this is a really, really good thing going forwards, and it makes me excited to give myself the permission and time to work a bit harder on what I put out.

I should say that this doesn’t mean you won’t ever get runs of weekly eps; something like a multi-part Supernatural World or Digitiser Deluxe (or Digi Level 2 when we get there) would work best as a series of weekly episodes. I just need to take the pressure off myself so that I can concentrate on the part of creating that I enjoy the most - the actual creating part – so that I’m proud of what I create, and that you know you’re getting the absolute best I can do.