Ben Kuchera, Polygon:

What I want this story to do is to put into perspective how much money it costs to get to that point. There is no huge flood of cash here, this is four people working very hard to make a very decent livable wage in content. That $408,000 a year is a workable budget for a four-person media company, but it’s far from obscene. It’s a realistic budget for the work they’re going to be doing.

It’s also very possible that in terms of hours worked and money cleared on a per-person basis they’re making less than they made at IGN. What they’re earning is the possibility of greater success, and that success will be owned by them free and clear. That’s an amazing feeling.

A colleague of mine and I discussed many of these points moments after the news broke, of which I posted here:

As an employee of a large tech firm, I deeply understand the desire to freely speak about the industry you are a part of and the prohibitions instated. The benefit Kinda Funny Games has over other would-be media personalities is an established fanbase; however, that makes it no easier to cast aside benefits, workplace friendships, and security.

It’s scary that Kuchera felt the need to write this piece. Hard to believe that most didn’t run these numbers themselves, if just to flirt with the idea of starting their own Patreon. (Then again, Kuchera is more privy to the zeitgeist of games media than myself.)

Without a doubt, Kinda Funny will be a challenging venture; however, the opportunity to break-even creating and owning what you love is a challenge worth taking.

Griffin McElroy on the The Besties finale, time stamp 3:32:54:

Maybe music is the closest comparison but there is no other industry, there is no other media where genres are these huge barriers between… There are people who play fighting games who are categorically different than people who play RPGs. I don’t think there are as many genres an any other medium and I certainly don’t think that there’s as big a divide between those genres.

Not only that, but games by their very nature are interactive, meaning… your experience playing the game is going to be different. So by their very nature, there’s no guarantee that two critics played the same thing. I feel like those divides and those experiential differences that you have with a game are only getting bigger and bigger and bigger. That means that calling something your game of the year is completely… Of course it is because you’re the type of person who likes that type of game and you had that very specific experience playing that very specific type of thing. It just seems kind of meaningless.

Jim Guthrie has composed incredible soundtracks for the iOS classic Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and documentary Indie Game: The Movie. For One of These Days I’ll Get It Right, Guthrie teamed up with producer Solid Mas to release a throwback hip-hop remix record of his work from both soundtracks. It is chock-full of themed movie quotes, turn-table scratches, and an insidious vibe. The most notable record in recent history I can compare it to is RJD2’s Deadringer.

One of These Days I’ll Get It Right is a brilliant album that is much more than just a collection of simple remixes. Like LEGOs, Guthrie and Solid Mas have torn down completed sets and reimagined them as something wholly original. A worthy purchase if you are a fan of Guthrie, hip-hop, film, or a sound from yesteryear.

iTunes | Bandcamp

Kinda Funny Games Patreon:

In September, you changed our lives. We launched a Patreon for Kinda Funny, and your response was beyond (BEYOND!) our wildest expectations. The support, the Tweets, the shares — it all showed that we really had built the community of best friends we’re always talking about. And, once we knew that, all we wanted to do was make more content for you.

Enter Kinda Funny Games. Now that we don’t work for IGN, we can talk about the stuff you’ve always wanted us to talk about on YouTube — games.

I was initially taken aback by this news. Four iconic personalities leaving IGN?! There must be bad blood. I was wrong. After 3+ decades of experience at one of the leading video game publications, backed by 1755 patrons at the time of this publication, and a deep desire to speak their mind at any given time, these guys are braving the unknown and entering into an excited new era of media.

I thoroughly enjoyed Keza MacDonald of Kotaku UK’s (ex-IGN) thoughts on the news:

What all this proves is a) god dammit, journalists and media personalities ARE worth money, and b) you can be funded by 5% of your audience

— Keza MacDonald (@kezamacdonald) January 5, 2015

This reminded me of some thoughts I posted in June 2014, derived from Griffin McElroy’s interview with The Indoor Kids:

Baseball diehards can tell you the subtleties in team dynamics. There can be diversity under the same umbrella. Many more sites need to embrace the privilege of instant and educated opinion. If the games community cannot foster intelligent conversation on its own, someone must lead the way.

As an employee of a large tech firm, I deeply understand the desire to freely speak about the industry you are a part of and the prohibitions instated. The benefit Kinda Funny Games has over other would-be media personalities is an established fanbase; however, that makes it no easier to cast aside benefits, workplace friendships, and security.

While I can’t say I am a fan of their humor, I do enjoy their critique of video games. Godspeed, Miller, Moriarty, Scarpino, and Gettys.

Teddy Wayne, The New York Times:

Pre-Internet, we accepted that media had a mayfly’s life span: Yesterday’s news was yesterday’s news, and that was it. If you were the creator of it, you made peace with the notion that people either saw it or didn’t when it appeared, and you moved on; there was no alternative.

If it lingered in the public consciousness, it was because of its durability, not repeated reminders. Content had finite endings and deaths, not asymptotic approaches and long-term vegetative states from which resuscitation is always an option.

Consumers had to make similar bargains: If you went out on a Thursday night during the 1990s, you missed NBC’s “Must See TV” schedule (unless you taped it) and understood that it would be a while before you could see it again. (It helped, too, that there was less media competition in previous decades and, in the case of TV, that dramatic series were generally less complex, so that missing an episode of “Dynasty” might not set you back as far as skipping one of “Breaking Bad.”)

Now, with just about every airing of a much greater number of shows obtainable at any moment, there is no excuse for missing one — and, therefore, a more urgent compulsion to catch up, in case you missed it.