Important information about our release schedule in 2016

Hey everyone! Try4ce here. We’ve been talking about how to approach My Life in Gaming in 2016, and I think we’ve come up with a schedule that’s really going to help us (and our sanity), as well as give our audience more of the types of episodes that you want to see.

MLiG went from semi-weekly to weekly, beginning in August last year. We delayed a video from Friday to Saturday once or twice, and we took off for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but aside from that, we released a video every Friday. It’s a pretty crazy accomplishment, because our episodes kept getting bigger and more complex all through the rest of the year.

Also beginning in August? My first all-nighter editing for MLiG. By which I mean I literally didn’t go to sleep on Thursday night. I heard my alarm go off in my bedroom at 7:30 a.m. while I was putting the last touches on the Myst episode. I showered, and then spent a miserable sleep-deprived day at work. And it wasn’t the last all-nighter before a Friday release. I spent so many Thursday nights not sleeping at all. Going to bed at 3:30 in the morning after editing the Sweet Home episode felt downright luxurious. In fact, between August and the end of 2015, every time I was the editor on an episode, I went to bed at a normal hour exactly one time.

Coury fared better than I did, but he still went to bed at 4 or 5 a few times while finishing an episode.

From start to finish, 95% of the work on any given episode is the work of only one of us… gameplay, writing, hosting, shooting, and editing. Sure, we look over each other’s scripts, help get extra shots, and we try to both appear in each other’s episodes whenever it makes sense to do so, but for the most part, there are “Coury episodes” and “Try episodes.”

So, while we were going all-out on weekly releases, we alternated. This gave us each two weeks in between episodes, but frankly, we’ve realized that’s not enough. I have a full-time job, while Coury has freelance work and kids.

We decided the other day that our New Year’s Resolution is “no more all-nighters.” That means that no matter how close (or far) we may be to finishing, we stop and go to bed at a normal time. We’re still targeting Friday releases, but if a video slips to Saturday or Sunday, so be it. It’s just healthier that way.

To make this work, we’ve decided on a new schedule that we’re really excited about. It allows us the time to make one big episode in the “Showcase” series per month, one RGB Master Class episode per month (as we have been doing), and one “simpler” video per month (not simple in terms of editing, but a shorter video about a less broad topic). “Simple” videos could be anything from “Tips & Tweaks” to “Before & After,” or less intense Showcase-type episodes, like videos on a single game (I want to continue my “Rare After Nintendo” series), Hidden Gems, Coury’s “Worlds of Power” series, or other concepts that we haven’t even thought of yet....and who knows, we’d love to bring back “How to Beat” when it makes sense.

Here’s how this will work:

Coury will release a Showcase episode on the first Friday in February.

I will release an RGB episode on the second Friday.

Coury will then release a “simple” video on the third Friday in February.

We take the fourth Friday off. Three episodes per month.

Starting the next month (March), we swap episode types. I kick off the first Friday with a Showcase, then Coury does RGB, and so on.

So here’s why we think this is great: after finishing a “simple” episode, each editor will have three weeks to prepare and finish an RGB episode. Then he’ll have three weeks to make a Showcase. Then he’ll have two weeks for a “simple” episode. To us, this feels like a huge relief, and gives each episode the prep time it deserves. RGB episodes in particular are extremely intense projects, and frankly, Showcases have gotten to be fairly complicated too. We’ve discovered that our audience likes “multi-game” episodes, and those are fun for us to make too… so by giving as much production time to Showcases as we give to RGB, we have time to properly play, enjoy, and digest the games we want to feature. It even opens up the likelihood of featuring more RPGs, since we might actually have a bit of time to play them! We’ve missed RPGs!

We also plan to use the “off” week to make a little “VideoLog” exclusively for our supporters on Patreon. We had talked about doing one per episode, but that might not be too interesting every time, and maybe you’d get tired of seeing them so often. We want to show you what’s going on behind the scenes, and how your support has helped us be more thorough with our topics!

During months with five Fridays, we’ll release the “simple” episode on the fourth Friday instead of the third Friday. We’ll do our usual Episode Debrief stream on Sundays (9 p.m. EST) after new episodes. We’ll do a “Bonus Stream” at the same time on weeks when we didn’t release an episode - just stuff we want to play for fun.

We’re going to finish up January with a couple of episodes. The PlayStation RGB episode (which features every system that’s backwards-compatible with PS1 games) has continued to be more complex than we imagined (it always is). We’ll release it this weekend… sorry, Friday just isn’t happening. We’re also planning a Tips & Tweaks episode. Then look forward to the implementation of the new schedule in February!

We’re feeling really refreshed, relieved, and creatively charged, thanks to this new schedule. Important episodes now have the production time they deserve, and we can cover more games (and even long games). It gives us a way to be consistent with the types of episodes we create, while regularly delivering variety as well.

We had a great 2015, and we learned a lot about what kind of production capacity we have. This is taking that and optimizing it. We think it’s gonna work great for us, and hope you continue to enjoy MLiG in 2016!

-Try