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We're doing a bit of cleaning up behind the scenes at the Retronauts Patreon, and one change we've made can mostly be chalked up to our good friend COVID-19. Remember that guy? He's been making our lives a living hell in America for the past 18 months! And because of that, throughout 2020 and 2021, we've been unable to travel and put on the three live shows formerly unlocked by our Patreon.

I say "formerly" because, as of now, these goals have been removed. That doesn't mean we won't ever see you again in the future; actually, it's very likely you could be seeing us in person towards the end of the year! (In fact, tomorrow you can watch our remote PAX panel, all about 30 years of the Super NES.) We just can't promise to be anywhere any number of times during the year until the world steadies itself and we calibrate to whatever "normal" ends up being. We'd like to stay safe, and we also don't want to force our beloved listeners into a cloud of viruses just to hear us talk about old video games in person.

But there are also a few other reasons we've eliminated live shows from our Patreon goals:

  • These goals have been around since the beginning of our Patreon: way back in 2014, when we were still figuring out the platform. Over time, we realized Patreon goals should be things that directly benefit you. While we do plenty of work on them, trips to events are mostly a perk for us. And while a few hundred of you might get to see us in person, the rest of you get a recording of a live show—which we realize aren't ideal episodes for the majority of people who don't get to see said recording in person.
  • When we originally planned on attending three events a year, Retronauts consisted of just me and Jeremy. Now we're much more of a real business, paying artists, editors, writers, hosts, and so on. This means we have to be more mindful of our travel budget, even if the last few years have led us to save more due to some unfortunate circumstances.

That's basically all there is to it! Again, this doesn't mean we're completely ruling out live shows; in fact, when the world opens up, we'll be itching to travel and perform again—likely three times a year as we did in happier times! But for now, we don't want to make any promises in a very unpredictable world.

Until we meet again, please stay safe! We miss you all.

- Bob

Comments

Paul

Have you considered doing any kind of live stream show? That's something that I would definitely buy a ticket to, outside of Patreon.

retronauts

My own personal take is that this wouldn't be very interesting to livestream unless we're all together in the same location. Not ruling the idea out, of course, but I think listeners would probably prefer us to focus more on making regular episodes in the meantime. - Bob

Jared Blankenship

Thanks for the heads up. This seems like a sound move in our current climate. Keep up the good work and thanks again for the entertainment you bring!

Thomas Young

Makes perfect sense. Kind of hard to do a live show when there are no live shows to do. It didn't occur to me that someone would be so foolish as to try to hold you to account for that.

Anonymous

Cheers, Stay safe folks.

Anonymous

No worries at all. One of the downsides of Europe, aside from all those "warehouse" platform games, is being so far from the Retronauts (except Stuart!).

Anonymous

Slightly off topic but I want to mention that since the beginning of the pandemic with travel being a big no no, I have NOT seen a decrease in quality for the episodes. It has been the same amount of energy and verbal repartee whether the hosts are in the same room or through the Internet (Zoom?). I guess I'm curious how the hosts themselves feel. Obviously being in the same room is preferable but doesn't the new paradigm present more opportunities as well?