There will be at least one, and maybe two off-season episodes. The one that's definitely happening is a retrospective on Sega's final console, the Dreamcast. The one that MIGHT happen will be some kind of briefer look back on the ups and downs of gaming in 2017.
But the Dreamcast episode will segue nicely into my next season, which will feature the following episodes:
- Sonic Adventure 2
- Sonic Heroes
- The Sonic Advance Trilogy
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2006
- A Wrap-Up Episode for other Sonic titles of the era.
- Shadow the Hedgehog
$1 will get you the NEXT week's episode once the season begins. So when Adventure 2 comes out, you'll get Heroes a week early, and so on!
$3 will get you ALL the completed episodes of a season all at once as soon as I start releasing them on YouTube. This will allow you to binge-watch the season as fast as you'd like, instead of waiting a week between releases.
$5 is the "TGC Producer" tier, and gets you access to episodes as they're actually completed. This may mean that you'll be able to see episodes weeks or, because these things take a while, even MONTHS in advance! (Seriously, Prime 1 was the first episode I finished in the Retro Studios, and it was here three months before it went up on YouTube!)
Now, you might be asking... WHY am I releasing content like this?
Simply put, blame YouTube. Their algorithms favor quantity and consistency over quality. If you can upload once or even better, twice a week, your rankings shoot WAY up. This change was implemented right around the time I was trying to get started on YouTube, and it completely KILLED anyone who was trying to do anything that took too much time. Animators were hit the hardest, but it hurt any kind of scripted, polished video, and kind of led to the rise of people who work VERY hard on their channels, but not so much on individual videos.
Which is why, you might notice, most of the people who are still making these long-form analysis videos... were already famous for doing it pre-2013.
This change made sense for YouTube as a business, but I much preferred the old style, and that's what I want my series to be. But sad to say, this sort of work no longer fits within YouTube's system. No matter how much my channel has grown, the only way to get YouTube to promote me to new viewers is to have a period of time where I upload consistently, and the only way for me to DO that and maintain this level of quality is to build a season ahead of time.
That's where, I hope, you guys who do enjoy this sort of content come in. TGC survives, or even thrives, on YOUR support, and for that I thank you.
And not to go all Jimmy Wales on you, but if 1/5th of my subscriber base backed me for just a dollar per month, I really could consider this a career.
Whatever you want to do, I want to THANK YOU for taking the time to watch The Geek Critique.