So towards the end of last year, in addition to getting engaged, I also purchased an HD PVR 2 gaming edition capture card. The goal was to be able to live stream my first Wii U gaming party featuring Nintendo Land. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I experienced all manner of technical problems and decided to return the PVR to the store and put that money to more important things, like an engagement ring. Nevertheless my dream of putting Wii U gameplay up on the interwebs lived on.
More recently, I’ve been contemplating a way to realize that idea and have all but settled on the webisode format. There are a few decent ones already up on the web, such as the ever hilarious Game Grumps. They’ve been around for a while and have a pretty solid system; what I’m looking to set up is a little bit different.
Besides the obvious entertainment factor, the main purpose of this particular endeavor would be to serve as yet another way to stay in contact with my friends. Yes, it’s an ongoing struggle. The older you get, the busier you become, and that sucks for your social meter. Ideally this show would be something that I could produce once a week, featuring a different friend, or group of friends, and a different Wii U game each time. I’ve been thinking of some ideas to keep the show interesting and varied and have just about settled on running 2 episode types: Play-throughs and Challenge Series.
Play-throughs are pretty self explanatory, but for example, I think it’d be very interesting to have 2 friends over to run through The Cave, a 3-player co-op game featuring 7 very dysfunctional characters. Or have a go with someone else at a 2-player run-through of New Super Mario Brothers U, because we all know how crazy that game gets the more people you add. Essentially, these types of episodes would resemble Let’s Plays without being called “Let’s Plays” because I can’t stand that name.
A potential Challenge Series I’ve been thinking of would bring Nintendo Land into the mix. As a Wii U owner, I’ve had the luxury of being able to spend hours upon hours of time with the various 12 games that make up Nintendo Land to have racked up some pretty high scores and I’m near unbeatable in Animal Crossing: Sweet Day. If recent game parties are any indication, it’s a safe bet that 
watching 4 people trying to best me at that particular game would be incredibly entertaining and likely involve an array of high pitched shrieks and other adrenaline-influenced noises. I don’t know why, but usually when I hold a gaming party things eventually progress from being friendly and cooperation to EVERYONE VS. JOE!!! Well then, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
At any rate, I’m very excited about this new web show concept and can’t wait to get it under way. I plan on basically treating this like a radio show where I’d book my guest(s) for a segment one week, broadcast it and then book the next guest(s) for another segment another week and get a schedule going. It’d be especially awesome if a friend who may have been in town for something else would swing by to do an episode before they left. Those are the type of applications that really excite me about this thing. Hopefully it will be as entertaining as I think it’d be, catch on, and more of my friends will see it and want to be a part of it, even just for the sake of catching up. There’s an awesome sushi place three minutes from my apartment after all 8)
I’m always down for a White Star Roll 8)
Now I just need a name for the show, an Elgato Game Capture HD, a tech guy, a fancy web cam, a USB mic, and a few eager volunteers from the audience 8)
ThirdMind Channel 