Cup of Jones - 08/03/17

Why do you hate Yoshi?

GmanSir

How do we see live cup of hones other than live? Do they exist somewhere? I work week days from 8AM to3:30 PM Eastern Time Zone ^^

chocolate_prophet

Hey Jones! If there was one video series/ feature from back in the old Gametrailers days, which would it be?

Dafydd Gape

Jones, Thoughts on street teams? I feel Allies could help a lot by pimping EZA at local conventions that you can't to around the world. Even if its something as simple as passing out stickers, badges or nifty designed posters.

Jordan Buitendyk

Hey Jones glad to hear your mother is doing well. By the time I am writing this comment the EZ livin livestream has come and gone (it was great by the way), could you give us an idea of the lessons learned, if any, from that livestream?

What is your plan with $2 tier? Is it OK that its current rewards is not that valuable anymore?

Alexander Zyryanov

Do you still play Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes? If so how is the guild doing (raids and the new territory battles)?

Howdy Brandon! It was wonderful meeting you, Ian, and Kyle at PAX yesterday! After our discussion, I have a pertinent and important question, though not business related for once. Best ghost at the Haunted Mansion? Mine might be Little Leota, gotta love the creepy "You'll be back . . . come back with your . . . death certificate."

Dale Payne

Brandon Jones, I love that you guys are able to stream playthroughs so consistently but I just don't have the time to watch it all. Is editing them down or turning them into more serialized, shorter videos a possibility?

Morgan Mohalla

Hey Brandon, hope all is well! I wanted to ask a question, maybe one too broad to answer. I wanted to know where you would like Easy Allies to end up in the future. I know an office is a stretch goal, but I mean in a more general sense. How long do you see Easy Allies lasting? Would you be content with maintaining the size of your audience and community as it is, or is growing in size a major goal? Thanks for everything you fine gentlemen do! L&R

rrice64

Brandon, can you give your impression of the blinking guy meme I see on twitter all the time? It's hilarious.

Jason Walstrom

Hey Brandon. Do any of the allies have an interest in diving deeper into the world of esports? Watching Huber's WWE discussion made me wish for an esports version. I know the current patreon model provides EZA the freedom to not chase the latest trends, but covering esports, even at a casual level, can provide many benefits to EZA in the long term.

ParaCanKor

Jones - with all due respect, I have to ask: what's going on with Community Comments?

DaleBastion

When the EZA studio eventually becomes a reality do you have any specifics in mind for it or are you mainly waiting to see what you can get your hands on?

Kian Jahromi

Hi Brandon, about the Hall of Greats. I love the idea but I have a suggestion. When reading the results, announcing #3 kills the suspense right away. When you reach the top three, wouldn't it be better to announce the game that got the most votes next? Then you have two games going head to head for the #2 spot and the suspense would build up more. Also, I'm not a fan of putting the results on display before reading them. It didn't ruin the last episode for me, but while watching it on Youtube, it felt a bit spoiler-y. L&R

the_finnish_ally

Is patreon the long term business model of EZA or is there a plan years down the line to get to a more traditional business model (IGN, GT, etc)? I understand the burnout that came from the old way and the current freedom that patreon allows but was curious if there were other options y'all were considering.

Dale Payne

Hi Brandon, I just want to say I love EZA & want you to far exceed your Patreon Goals #studiohype and was thinking about how to boost your numbers. While I'd imagine Twitch to be a quite lucrative venture (with subscribers etc). Is there no way while your streaming on Twitch to promote your Live on Twitch through YouTube? Getting the attention of your 115,000 subscribers is surely the way forward, or could a new once weekly Live Stream Show on YouTube be the way to go, to try and convert some of those subscribers into Patreons. This way your increasing your presence & diversifying on YouTube in an exciting way and not turning your back on the Twitch audience at the same time. Just thinking out loud, L&R from the UK, Michael_Seaward.

Michael Seaward

The PSX Meet & Greet was a highlight of last year's adventures and I'll be there again this year. Although, this time there is a slight change.... I purchased Early Bird tickets which come with access to a limited Friday night event before the convention over the weekend. Based on last year's Meet & Greet I'm concerned there is the possibility of a scheduling conflict. In an effort to get ahead of the planning, would you mind taking this into consideration when scheduling this year's Meet & Greet? I would love to be at both for as long as both will have me. Thanks for taking the time and as always, Love & Respect - Thomas

I love pins too! Do you collect them? And if so, do you have any you like to show off?

QUESTION Hello Brandon, Recently Bloodworth made an inocent sounding tweet about some current political happenings, I read the replies and was shocked by the number of allies that were upset and lashing out at each other without much L&R it seemed. My question is does EZA have guidelines in place for how the individual Allies represent the brand? I honestly lost sleep over this and couldn't help but be reminded about Jontron and Pewdiepie's swift exits from youtube this year... Love and Respect, Morgan Mohalla

Morgan Mohalla

Hey Jones, have you and the other Allies thought about letting the Patrons come up with ideas for future Community Comments videos? I did make a comment in the Patron Community section not too long ago about how it would be a good idea for a Community Comments video to be about the community's own Hall of Greats.

Karl Williams

Took a while, but I finally managed to listen to this whole episode. Life is pleasantly sooo busy. Thanks Brandon for these. You make for a relaxed, laid back voice that I'll never tire of hearing commenting on so many varied things, mostly having to do with gaming and Easy Allies :)

chocolate_prophet

Hey Brandon, I have a question about the Q & A segments that span across the many EZA shows. Why is it that despite almost every show having a Q & A section, only the official Easy Allies Podcast calls it "Love & Respect"? This theme of Love and Respect throughout the Easy Allies community is something very unique and endearing, and I feel that it would only benefit Easy Allies as a whole, to embrace that term as a connecting thread through all of the EZA content.

Eric Mitchell

A Batman question if I may. I always thought that it's not smart for Batman not to kill Joker because he escapes every time and kill innocent people. So by sparing Jokers life Batman essentially let civilians die. What do you think?

Alexander Zyryanov

Hi Brandon! I thoroughly enjoyed the Easy Livin' stream last weekend, and I was wondering what your thoughts were on the whole event in hindsight? Were there any specific challenges that you faced that you didn't expect? Was there anything you'd do differently? Also, do you guys have any plans to do something similar in the future? The format of the stream could have many variations! For example, I remember Huber discussing great Christmas games in the past. How cool would it be to amass a collection of the Allies' favourite games that they received as Christmas presents when they were younger and continue to have nostalgic, festive memories of? Then you could rent out some ski resort accommodation sometime in early December and blast through some jolly video games while reminiscing about Christmases gone by! I'd watch that!

Jones, Thanks for this lengthy video! It's been a while since we had you in this long form. Having said that, you should forget of the burden of the questions from time to time and just do your editorial at least once a month. Kind of a kick the tires of what's going on with the allies. When the 50k goal is finally hit, do you have a contention plan? Meaning, a studio is not something you can put in the vault and forget one month if the founding drops one or more months; once you sign that lease, there is no turning back for a while. Now, I want you to forget that perfectly valid question/concern, and grab that piece of paper where the script for the new patreon/youtube video is written; read it. and record that voice over. Please Jones, just record it.

César Villa

Hey Jones. Great and meaty episode. What formal voice training have you had?

Jordan Kirk

When you guys were back at GT, I was always hanging out for GT merchandise. More specifically I really wanted a GT Time mug. I loved the idea of drinking tea from the mug while listening to that podcast. Anyway, I was just wondering, how many of those mugs were made and who has them? Is there a secret stockpile of them back at Defy? Or did Liquid Bosman or some other character smash them to piss off Kyle? Any update on those mugs would be appreciated.

The Banana Forklift Killer

First thought : Needs more Cup of Jones whatever the reasons :P

chocolate_prophet

Agree with this 100%. I always enjoy these, no matter the length, but I definitely feel they should be like "investor meetings." Twice a month with updates and maybe answer 10 minutes worth of questions. That's it. That way it will feel less like an obligation.

GW Fawkes

Felt good holding off this long Cup of Jones until today so I could have something to listen to while at work.

Karl Williams

Great response Jones. I would not close the comments section on EZA YouTube videos. I love the feedback I get on my comments. I am sure others prefer not to read theirs. We are putting ourselves out there.

Could you please talk to Damiani about showing his beautiful hair more often? Or just burn his hat

What crazy spinoff would you like to see for Batman? Comic or Movie. I know there is a weird pirate one or a vampire one, even a recent TMNT crossover. Or do you like Batman more as a detective and fairly rooted?? Alone or shared universe? (of course Robin should be included if possible, Batman needs a Robin in my opinion)

Tim Bechen

Huber is destined to be a game-show host, when is EZA going to make that destiny a reality?

Alex McMillan

I'm curious from a comment you said in this episode.. "We own EasyAllies". Who owns EasyAllies? Is it evenly split across everyone? And after the GameTrailers experience, would you sell EZA if a large media company wanted to purchase EZA?

Steve S

Great update! Thanks Jones!

Prayers for your mother Jones as well as the rest of your family. My grandmother went through both Breast and Ovarian Cancer and beat the hell out of it. See you soon at PAX!

Dale Payne

He was on stage during Nintendo's 2007 E3 conference. It's about 21 mins in. :) <a href="https://youtu.be/gJN7XX26NFU" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/gJN7XX26NFU</a>

BeatenDownBrian

Hi Jones. What I meant with number obsession was 'social media number obsession' = fretting over likes, comments, subscriptions etc. As someone who's clearly been very successful on Patreon and other platforms, I'd love to hear from you on this. What's your advice or thoughts for someone who puts a lot of time and effort into their creative work, but then becomes embarrasingly sad about a lack of likes, comments and subscriptions. That's what my question meant, sorry if I was being vague :) love &amp; deepest respect, Erica.

irene035

Hi Brandon! It seems the patronage is stabilizing for some time between $40 and $45k. The so desired stretch to a studio seems a bit too much to ask as it is. Do you guys think of ways to bump it if this trend holds, or are you fine with how things roll out as they are? You could consider special promo weeks with extra streams and whatnot to get new patrons or revise the current tiers to encourage existing Patrons up their pledges (If 1/4 of the $1 and $5 group moved up a tier that would already get you close to a studio).

Johan

Does anyone know what press conference Damiani was on stage for?

Jordan Ney

Any chance we can get this show on the Patron RSS?

Cliff Boyd

I came here to suggest the same thing! Brandon is a busy guy and can't fit these into the normal schedule, and that's OK! But it's funny that he apologizes at the beginning of each episode that he can't do these more often then dumps a huge 2 hour video. This could have been the next 4 episodes!

Matt Brookbank

Brandon, your voice is something I can't get enough of. I could listen to that all day, and be interested on everything you say. Now that out of the way, As far as Merch go, I would love to get a EZA patch. Just so I could add that to my University Overalls. Which I take to all student parties and majority of student events I go to. I would gladly represent allies like that. As for T-shirts go, I already have 40 different ones, so I wouldn't want anymore right now, but something like that would be really nice. Even if you would do only a limited batch of them.

Hey Brandon (Don’t take this as feedback on this episode, as this episode was actually focused on more of the stuff I want to see addressed. Also apologies if this comment may sound a little rich after you just answered 2 questions from me in this episode.) This has been bugging me for a little while &amp; I just want to get it off my chest. I don’t really feel like I need a 2 hour COJ, I listen to it, I enjoy it, but I just don’t feel that I need it. I think back to the first episode, and how you said that you wanted the show to be like a mini investor meeting of sorts, just a check in with what’s going on with the allies, and addressing any concerns people might have, but over time, and due to time constraints, and the volume of questions, it very quickly just sort of turned into a Q&amp;A with Brandon Jones. Personally I don’t feel you need to be answering every question, I get that people want to ask you about your opinion on games, or movies, or about Disney stuff etc., and I know you’ve said you like answering that stuff, but I just feel like people already have so many avenues to ask these types of questions, whether it be on Twitch, or Twitter, or wherever. Honestly I would like to see questions being limited to ones more focused on addressing complaints, feedback, concerns etc. that are directly related to EZA as a whole. You guys put out a lot of content as it is, so much so, that I'm willing to bet that most people can’t/don’t watch it all, and so they miss stuff. A recent example is the Splatoon 2 review, despite Blood talking about it’s delay both on a stream, and on Twitter, there were still a lot of comments asking where the review was. This is where I feel COJ could, and should be stepping in, with short 10-20 minute episodes twice a month, saying “hey everyone, here’s what in the pipeline at the moment, here are setbacks we had, and here’s what we want your feedback on”. To me personally that would have much more value than the current show does. Finally, we all know how hard you have been working, and that simply getting time to even to do a COJ has been a struggle, and this is why I feel COJ could be scaled back a bit, not only in length, but also even in production value (I know that the idea of this probably kills you), but I don’t need background music playing, or comments splashed on screen, or even the lighting to be perfect, all I need is you in front of a camera giving me a quick and dirty update, and addressing some comments. My hope here would be that this scaling back, would make COJ not only slightly easier to produce, but also make it easier to stay on schedule, and possibly even give you more of a chance to do editorial episodes when you did have the time. I hope all this is at least a little helpful, as it comes from a good place. L&amp;R

BeatenDownBrian

Is there a way we could get private access to cup of jones audio rss feed like the other podcasts? As many of us probably listen to them on their way to work, its often difficult having to find ways to remember to check coj after via patreon app as its video only...having a downloaded audio version would allow offline play and would be really great to stay in synch with it. Thanks!

Hi Brandon. My (probably bad) suggestion for improving Q&amp;A is to also answer one question that got the most likes. This will give a chance for late questions to be answered.

Alexander Zyryanov

Oh, I definitely agree that you should always be thinking of brand new things to do. The reason I brought up Level and Backtrack is because they seemed like two of the simplest yet still fun GT shows. Each show looked like it could be done by a single person, not necessarily requiring playing through a whole game or piecing together footage from different sources. I was also actually a big fan of Level. I love it when good games are closely analyzed and taken apart to see what makes them hit the sweet spot. :)

TurboChickenMan

I've got a string of comments here. Not too long, I hope. ^_^ Only two are questions, clearly labeled.

TurboChickenMan

Have you guys thought of doing a second Patreon like Kinda Funny has? I feel like seperating game and non-game content could help Patrons help fund the type of content they want to see easier.

Hey Mr. Jones! (For question only, skip to #7) 1st: Thanks for taking my previous question! It had been so long since I asked it, you were halfway through reading it before I remembered what it was about X-) 2nd: On the subject of meeting celebrities: I actually had the mentality you describe when I had the great fortune to speak with you at Kinda Funny Live 3. As you said, I only wanted to introduce myself and thank you in person for what you do, and you were too gracious with your time and for that, once again, thank you so much. 3rd: On the Willy Wonka sweepstakes suggestion: Could you implement a $1000 tier, and over the course of the year, people who give at that level have their name entered for a drawing and EZA selects the winner well enough in advance to bring them to the annual anniversary meetup (With personalized benefits of course)? Just a thought. 4th: On the Community Comments YouTube section: As someone who looks forward to that for hopefully obvious reasons, I never have looked at those for two reasons: 1.) I've commented. I don't need to go any further as that is my reward tier, so I don't feel the need to comment further outside of it. 2.) The internet is a very bad place sometimes, so I have never wanted to see what others have thought about the video in an open platform that is YouTube. Here on Patreon and the forums are my go-to if anyone said anything negative about my opinion (Though I have had the good fortune for that not to happen in either place, to my knowledge). Ignorance is bliss, and if I don't know someone has said something vicious or vial about or toward me, it can't hurt me. 5th: It was really, really cool to see your enthusiasm when answering if you have stretch goal ideas beyond 50K 6th: You've answered where people can view previous episodes, but I want to call out Mr. Bloodworth keeping up with the forum post! Just another avenue people can go. And FINALLY (Which I'm sure you're thinking &lt;=-) ) 7th: If I feel like I have erred in submitting something, what is the best way to confirm if I'm in the wrong? This is in reference to my comment not making the May CC video and I'm COMPLETELY FINE with it being held, and I also know you and the other Allies can't respond on an individual basis all the time, but having a definitive, "You did X, therefore won't qualify," would be cool.

Brandon K Gann

Jones I would recommend maybe cutting down the 2 hour show into 30 minute segment, allowing you to have more Cup of Jones

Chad Ball

Exactly are we the only two to see this

Chad Ball

If Cup of Jones were in a higher tier, I'd pay it no matter what!

Henry Ramirez

They've mentioned dropbox previously, but I imagine the harddrives are how they directly record/access it for editing. Backing up that much data would actually cost quite a bit. It'd be cheaper for them to get their NAS storage device, but that's more of a studio-level purchase as it'd be pricey.

I found the answer to the game development question pretty odd. I don't think that was directed towards the allies lack of PC hardware knowledge, anything like that usually gets corrections on the podcast later. I'm a technician at a datacenter, and there's only been a few occasions when your lack of hardware knowledge has been noticeable at all. Memory differences when Ian was talking about GDDR5 vs DDR4 (Which is just different types of memory, one for graphics and the other for CPU's, an common and understandable mistake). Just wanted to clear that up, Jones seemed like he might've been a little unsure if there were people constantly thinking that. To be honest, the question itself was fairly vague and covered really broad topics.

I'm so happy to see Jones' continued respect for the community, and for all the questions the community has. I'm kind of a lurker, and don't engage on the forums, and yet I still feel connected when I hear these questions and answers. I love EZA so hard, you guys. &lt;3!

Liz Castro

Where do you keep the table and the sofa when you're not using them

Love me some cup of jones, even if I always forget to ask a question... wait almost 2 hrs ?! Great :p

Térence Caron

Jones, there are more rumours going around about Arkham Insurgency (i.e. The Arkham Origins sequel) - what would you like to see from that game? Also what do you want to see from Rocksteady's new Superman/Justice League game? Cheers!

Adam Mullany

A "Lore" page would be great on the Easy Allies website

Robert A Iglehart

What's the name of Brandon's card game?

Robert A Iglehart

I love Cup of Jones and look forward to it whenever it releases. BUT...I've always noticed that when you do these Jones you're always so careful. Yes, careful, when answering questions and giving answers that are genuine and true (at least to me) but always careful not to offend others. Not a fan of what I'm about to say but always "politically correct". Be yourself Jones. Perhaps you are and I'm just plain wrong, but please remember you don't owe us Patreons ANYTHING. I see Patreon as platform that allows fans to pay creators for a service or products and Easy Allies gives us so much. It certainly gives me hours upon hours of content that I'm such a huge fan of. Keep up the solid work Jones. Wishing you and EZA continued success. Always.

Gustavo

Time travel has become a reality, thanks to the Allies =P

Roketsu86

I think you'll find it's 08/03, but still hype that we get our Cup of Jones!!

Matt Currin

2 hours cup of jones!? my life feels complete! Question: You mentioned that you had a LOT of game footage and so on stored on a bunch of harddrives lying around. Have you considdered moving that things over to a cloudbased service i.e Google drive/drop box? Just in case the HDDs crashes, as we ll as it could make sharing easier internally.

Sebastian Hall

I caaaaant believe we are getting a COJ episode !!! Thank you !!!! See you all this weekend!

Ian Patterson esquire.