November 1st celebrates the 1-year anniversary of the launch of That Nerdy Site.
In our first year, we put out over 200 podcast episodes across six different shows. Those 200+ episodes amounted to approximately 11,000 downloads. On YouTube, we brought in 139 subscribers, nearly 24,000 views (including a fun anomaly where apparently a bunch of people clicked on our Darby O’Gill episode of That D+ Show on St. Patrick’s Day thinking they were about to bootleg the movie I guess), and about 620 hours of watch time. The website has reached nearly 4,400 visitors and surpassed 7,500 views. I got to lead a team of 5 at PAX East right before the world started shutting down and even got to appear on a couple of PAX Panels thanks to our friends at Irrational Passions and SDGC.
Given the crazy hellscape of 2020, we’re foregoing a big anniversary event. In addition to the general mood of everything, we also obviously had our own little shake-ups over the summer with the departures of Ben, Chloe, and Christian so we suddenly became a much leaner team and I’m still continually evaluating what That Nerdy Site can be moving forward. As such, I’ve been thinking a lot about goals for Year Two of the site so here’s a look at what we’ve got.
- That Nerdy Site Show and That D+ Show will continue as usual on a weekly basis. Year Two goals include getting a proper video version of the podcasts put together. I recently upgraded my PC so I’m going to work on learning how to record the Discord calls and get the YouTube versions of the podcasts upgraded from the static images we’ve had in Year One. I don’t have a date for that but I’m hoping to get that going sooner than later. We might also start recording live on Twitch when we sit down to do the episodes but that’s a TBD thing as well.
- That News You Care About will move forward with the same plans listed above for video versions and possible live Twitch recordings. But one of the things Logan and I talked about when we originally planned the show was that there’s often too much quality news in a week to really tackle in a single hour-ish-long show. So we might explore reorganizing the show around two episodes a week so we don’t have as many episodes tackling something from a full week prior and can be a bit more on top of the big gaming news each week.
- I’m hoping to bring back That Ultimate Video Game List Show for Season 3 sooner than later. The country started locking down in the middle of Season 2 and once it wrapped up, I have just been in a bit of a funkier place throughout the pandemic where I haven’t been great about reaching out to guests because I don’t want to be an imposition. We’re all going through a lot of stuff right now and asking people to commit to a 10-week show feels like a big ask right now but I’ll try to break past that feeling and find some cool characters to collaborate with. With the new consoles and everybody about to dive into Game of the Year mode, it probably won’t happen until 2021, but I’ll certainly start laying the groundwork on that one.
- That Wannabe Film Class and That Anime Pod have been cancelled/postponed/put on hiatus indefinitely following the departures of their respective hosts, of course. But we may end up looking at repurposing those podcast feeds down the line. We’ve had occasional conversations about a movie review podcast that we might try to explore further in the coming year and while I certainly can’t speak to anime with anywhere near the volume of experience Christian had, it is an area of occasional growing interest for me so we might occasionally sit a couple guests down to discuss a given film or show and that feed would be the natural place to upload any such content.
- NEW SHOWS! We had some very ambitious goals in Year One that we never were able to hit but there’s still a creative spark and desire to do some of those ideas so we’ve combined a couple of them into That Conversational Podcast, a (currently) irregularly-scheduled show where one of the That Nerdy Site hosts would bring on a guest for a one-on-one conversation about some more evergreen topics. Our first episode is live with Cameron sitting down with Ian Preschel of A+ Anime to talk at length about One Piece. We’ve also discussed some other possible ideas but I’ll leave those in the mystery pile for the time being in case we can’t get them sorted.
The Website:
- Part of the general funk of 2020 has sapped a lot of the energy and interest in sitting down and putting together some written content for the site. I wrote a couple thousand words on The Last of Us Part 2 that just never made it out of a google doc earlier this year because I couldn’t find the drive to really finish it. But with the new generation of consoles right around the corner, I’m hoping to kick myself into gear and get back into the swing of reviews and other editorial content for the site. It helps that we’re coming up on all of the Game of the Year lists/awards as well which always make for a nice bit of framework.
- Redesigns: I’m also hoping to find some time in the coming months to look at some website redesign plans. The site is functional but it’s also the bare bones version I put together to get out the door before launch last year. Additionally, it’s probably a good time to look at redesigning the show logos away from my simple, interchangeable design built around the concept of those “Hello My Name Is…” stickers. If any artists are interested and available for commission, please feel free to reach out: tstarkey@thatnerdysite.com.
- Merch? I’ve been tempted to try and figure out a good way of handling shirts or pins or maybe even That Nerdy Site-branded pixel sunglasses but as with so many other elements, COVID has really thrown a wrench in those plans. But I’m still hopeful that we can figure something out.
- Video podcasts. As mentioned above, I’m hoping we can get video versions of the shows up and running in the near future so anyone who wants to “watch” on YouTube. As someone who almost exclusively watches the video versions of podcasts, rather than just listen to them on my phone, this is something that I’ve wanted to do since day one so I’m going to try and put some effort into making it happen.
- NEW SERIES! That Retro Gaming Show is an idea I’ve had for a while now as I stare at all of the novelty mini-consoles I’ve been picking up in recent years. Join me (and maybe some of the other Nerds) as I spend time with the games of yesteryear and share memories of playing them or experience them for the first time all these years later. I don’t have a firm schedule mapped out yet but I’m hoping we’ll have one or two of these videos to upload each week for the foreseeable future. Check out the first episode here:
- Video reviews? Frank has been interested in editing together some video reviews for the YouTube channel so hopefully the push to get back in the habit of written reviews will help that.
- After coming out of the game during our launch weekend last year, we were able to hit Twitch Affiliate status, but then it became one of the first things to fall by the wayside in 2020. I personally just invested in some quality gear so in addition to sitting down and recording my own Let’s Plays, I’m hoping to also reinvigorate the Twitch channel. I’m incredibly excited to hop into a lot of the next-gen titles here in November and December so we’ll see if I can’t get some streams coordinated. I’ve even pre-ordered Demon’s Souls so we’ll see if there’s an opportunity to just watch me suffer in the cards…
- Additionally, as mentioned above, we might be able to just start streaming our podcast recordings live to Twitch as we record them, before putting them up on YouTube and podcast services later.
- I am incredibly appreciative of everyone who has hopped in to support us on Patreon this past year. Because of that support we were just about able to cover the costs of the website and podcast feeds. We’ll be looking further at restructuring tiers and goals but I do have one thing that is swapping out immediately on November 1. One of our tiers this last year was supposed to include weekly vlogs from the team and that just fell apart spectacularly pretty quickly and I feel bad about that. Personally, since I’ve pretty much just been confined to my apartment since March, I didn’t feel like I had anything worth sharing and then I just failed at really managing trying to get that content from anyone else on the team. So we’re dropping that benefit and replacing it with early access to the podcasts. Historically we have posted the podcasts live to the Patreon at the same time they go up on the website, YouTube, and podcast feeds. Patrons will start getting them early when I upload them. Recording days and times vary as we’re all juggling other priorities but I’m usually able to get them edited and uploaded at least the night before they go live, sometimes sooner.
Ok, I think that covers pretty much everything for now. Thanks to the team, past and present, as well as all of our guests, for making this last year so creatively fulfilling and helping me stay connected to the world in these difficult times. And thank you for watching, listening, reading, and any other relationship you’ve had with our content over this past year. Hope to see you in Year Two.
As always, stay nerdy and be good to each other.