New Hosts, Changing Names, And MinnMax’s Updates For 2024 (Patreon)

Hello everybody, Ben Hanson here. Thanks to your support on Patreon and help sharing our shows online, MinnMax is continuing to grow. That has allowed us to bring on new folks like community manager Haley MacLean in 2023, and it allows for even more positive changes heading into 2024. A lot of these changes are based on your feedback, so thanks for sharing your thoughts in the Discord and to everybody who took the time for the recent MinnMax content survey. Keep in mind, these aren't all of the changes and exciting announcements for 2024. There's still more fun stuff planned. Here's a breakdown of the changes we're making...

Party Chat Is Now Called Bonus Pod, And Haley MacLean Is Its Host!

Our Patreon-exclusive podcast that drops every Monday in the bonus podcast feed for $5 supporters is now called Bonus Pod and community manager Haley MacLean is hosting every episode. For fans of Party Chat, the big picture take-away is the show will now feature more appearances from cohorts and will save the community calls for the back half of each episode. We heard your feedback that you want a more casual podcast for MinnMax regulars to talk about what they've been up to and to share recommendations, this is going to be a better avenue for that. Haley MacLean did a great job as a guest host and she's been on so many episodes this last year that it made sense to give her the reigns of the show. I (Ben Hanson) will still frequently be on episodes, just not every one. We still want the show to be a place for community feedback and will be reading text posts and taking calls from folks at the MinnMax Council tier, just not throughout the entire show anymore. Also! The show will now be recorded (and streamed live on Twitch) at 4pm Central. So hopefully that schedule change makes calling in easier for a larger group of people. Haley wants to have special themed episodes as well focusing on specific topics where we can have a big group of community members call in and she'll communicate that ahead of time. The first episode of Bonus Pod drops today!

Michael Huber Is The Temporary Host Of Trivia Tower!

We're shaking things up with Trivia Tower, with the master of hype Michael Huber from Easy Allies (show them some love and respect on Patreon!) hosting the next three episodes! Michael hosts the game show Mysterious Monsters over at Easy Allies and we know he'll knock it out of the park with Trivia Tower. We're not planning any radical format changes with Trivia Tower at the moment, but he's free to make tweaks to the show if he sees ways to improve it. Click here to watch Michael Huber's episode of Trivia Tower with him as a cohost. The first episode of Huber's Trivia Tower will be premiering towards the end of January, we'll let you know the exact date and time as soon as we're locked in.

Charles Harte Is Helping With Video Editing!

Currently working part-time at Game Informer, Charles Harte is stepping in at MinnMax to help with occasional video projects. You might remember him from his appearance on the Assassin's Creed Mirage episode of The MinnMax Show. He won't be editing all of our shows, but we'll call him in for things like editing travelogues and other projects so we can rely more on edited content as an outlet. He'll be popping up on more episodes of the podcast as well, just not on a regular basis.

Haley De Boom Is Now A Friend Of The Show!

We've heard your overwhelming feedback, we'll be bringing Haley De Boom (yes, that's her real name) on to more MinnMax content in 2024. You might remember Haley from her star appearance on The MinnMax Show last month, where she made all of us look dumb and boring in comparison. She worked on some of the biggest movies in history at ILM, was a motion capture engineer in Japan at Square-Enix working on Final Fantasy games, and now she works at Apple. As you can imagine, her schedule is challenging but we'll have her pop up on the occasional reaction stream, podcast, or Max Spoilers. Just to be clear, the structure of MinnMax is we have the regular cohorts/contributors and then "Friends of the Show" who are our paid recurring guests. So she won't be a regular, but a delightful surprise whenever she can pop up in 2024.

Overlay Changes And More Chat Than Ever

Now we're diving into the fun weeds of production. Thanks to votes from supporters at the Backstage Pass tier, the above image is the new background for MinnMax's content in 2024. Shout-out to graphic designer Gavin Thompson for designing MinnMax's updated video overlays, you can check out more of their work here. Speaking of $10 Backstage Pass supporters, we'll now include their live chat on the video version of The MinnMax Show during community questions. Why not let them answer the great community questions as well? We're also going to try to have a larger gameplay window when discussing a game on The MinnMax Show as well AND not cover up the Wall of Heroes slideshow as much during the show. Oh, and we're also going to include Twitch chat into the overlay for our solo streams.

In Conclusion

Hopefully you feel like these tweaks are continuing to steer MinnMax in the right direction, we couldn't do it all without you. As always, we want you to find a tier on Patreon that's sustainable for you and that's how we stay sustainable as an independent games outlet. On that same note, some of the updates for 2024 are an attempt to alleviate some pressure from my work/life balance. We hear your feedback that you don't want any of us to burn out, that's always a real risk to MinnMax's sustainability so again we want to thank you for supporting us to the level that we can spread out the workload a bit. It's a game-changer.

Let us know if you have any questions about the changes or MinnMax's plans for 2024 in the comments below. Thank you!