CO-OP LIVE Starting February 9th, 4PM PST/7PM EST -- Follow coop_live on Twitter to join in!
matt chandronaitYou may have seen this announcement already, but here’s the post where we spill our guts on all the details. Can we do this?? YES! Can we do it without screwing up, live, for the world to see? Probably not. That’s the theme of this announcement video. Watch it, first, and then read below for how you can be a part of the show!
First off, a lot of people have wanted to know what’s going to happen to their CO-OP iTunes feed. You won’t have to subscribe to a new feed as CO-OP Live will go right into the same CO-OP feed you’ve been using. While we’ll be recording live, once we’re done the show will be re-compressed and uploaded as per the norm and those of you unable to watch the shenanigans (oh, and there will be shenanigans) as they happen will still get the full show delivered to you later Tuesday night. The same series of download links will also be available.
Big thanks to Dylan Kenney for the new theme song we’re going to be using starting next Tuesday! He’s a fantastically talented musician and his music fits the soul of our new show and the new/old logo perfectly! Why is this logo new/old instead of just new? Because it’s what indie game designer Phil Fish originally came up with wa-hay back in the day when we were first slapping our show and our business together! He’s also the creator of the upcoming game Fez and the creator of the Area 5 logo at the top of this page.
That original CO-OP logo was deemed by some powers that be that it wasn’t “gamer” enough, but we’ve always had a soft spot in our collective heart for it and with the launch of a show that will hopefully involve you as much as it does us, it honestly felt more fitting. CO-OP Live should eventually become truly, er, cooperative. We couldn’t have gotten this far without you and now it’s time to bring you into the act. Make sure to follow coop_live on Twitter and during certain times of the show we’ll be using that to talk directly with you. Revision3 apparently has some kind of live chat-room software that could possibly be up by next Tuesday, so keep an eye out for that as well on the Revision3 CO-OP page, though I don’t have the details yet as to how/if it’s going to work.
Essentially, the course of our new show is thus: we’re going to shoot and mix game review/preview, interview and—a first for us—game demo segments live on the show. We’ll have as many guests on as we can as per the CO-OP norm and once a conversation is over, we’ll bring in you, the audience, for your thoughts on what was just said. Now’s your change to tell Ryan and I, directly, that we’re idiots for not liking Demon’s Souls. Also, you’ll have your chance to make fun of us to our virtual faces for making extremely hyperbolic claims or badly forming our sentences as we’re not going to be able to edit them out like we normally do. What, you thought we only edited around gameplay footage? Oh ho ho, if you only really knew the kind of shit that’s hit the cutting room floor… Well, I guess now you will.
We have a lot of plans for other kinds of segments we can introduce thanks to this new format, and most of them would have been impossible in the original CO-OP format (can you say: musical guest?). Still, our goal is to keep as much of our style as we can. We want conversations, not talking heads. Criticism, not just score run-downs and we want to shoot the show in a way that isn’t just static cameras locked to some people in the center of the screen. Our goal is to make the Area 5 mark on the live format and apply as much of our style to it as we can, even though we’re going to be on a regular set instead of shooting guerilla-style about San Francisco as we normally do.
But that’s not to say that pre-edited work is going to go away! We’re actually hoping that the live format saves us enough time that we can go back to making Area 5 Snacks and other shorts. We’re going to have to work up to that, though, so please be patient with us as we work out the kinks in our live show and really spit-polish it to that sheen that we’ve all come to know and love in our more traditional work.
So what about CO-OP? Technically, CO-OP is a separate IP and we’re signing a separate contract with Revision3 for CO-OP Live. That means it could, technically, come back. Will it? Not soon, no. Not unless someone wants to sign a deal with us to do it again, but we’re still very open to the possibility. Our work with the new, resurgent, so-cutting-edge-that-it-practically-bleeds Electronic Gaming Monthly will be the most immediate place you’ll have to see our edited work. So far all we’ve done for EGM is gameplay clips, but that’s going to change, and soon. You’re going to like what we/they have in store :)
Our hope, though, is that CO-OP Live can be even more important to your gaming entertainment life than even CO-OP was! So come back every week. Chat with us directly, comment here or on the Revision3 forums and let us know how we can improve the show. Our new format is going to make us more versatile than ever and more able to quickly adapt to changes and suggestions and while we’re definitely going to need your patience while we get things running smoothly (we think it’ll take us several shows), we’re also going to need your help in making it its very best!
Reader Comments (89)
sounds like an absolutely fantastic idea, looking forward to watching the first episode 100% live! its really quite a cool idea, a problem co-op had sometimes was that the games covered were not as recent as people would have liked, and this will remedy the problem perfectly! looking forward to seeing the magic happen. here's hoping that at some point you guys get to have some developers on the show to demo a game to you guys!
keep it up!
Ben
I will look forward to seeing it guys. Will be sad to see the current format go for now, but I know you guys are doing a lot of great stuff for EGM and its good to try something beyond 1UP Show 2.0, that was a good thing by the way but I am sure there are loads of other great things you guy can do as well.
If it gives you more free time for other stuff like the snacks etc, all the better.
Mat
@Ben Maltz-Jones ... Indeed! That was our thought as well. We think in this format we're more likely to be able to get developers to come by and demo their games to us/you. If we can get them agree to answer questions directly from the audience, even better!
@mats effect ... Yeah, we all consider ourselves video editors and we love the process of it and we couldn't just not do it any more. Gotta scratch that itch!
Sounds great guys, can't wait to see the new show. Might not be home in time to see it live, but would be downloading it later in the night at the very least.
@matt chandronait yea know the feeling. Best part of video production.
Sounds great, I'm really looking forward to the new show. I'm glad the transition seems pretty seamless.
this is amazing, congratulations, your successes makes more people happy than you could ever imagine
Awesome news. Looking forward to it.
The new concept seems to be the right thing for you guys.
But will miss the fantastic co-op theme song.
" So pack your bags and your shotgun too, we'll might run into zombies...
Good luck, the gamerworld needs you more than ever.
It is a shame there will be no more co-op, but I am quite assured the live thing will turn out great. After all it is the same team and I guess the basic premise will stay the same. Too bad I probably won't be able to watch the show live, since I live in Europe.
So staying up every wednesday till 2am right? Hallelujah this is the ultimate vertigo for my european sleep/work cycle.
Nevertheless I will also support this and further projects. Thanks a lot folks.
And please pick up the original CO-OP theme for other purposes, it becomes an anthem to me.
I'm looking forward to this new show. Co-op was my pick for Podcast of the Year on my podcast's Best of 2009 show, and I am excited about this new evolution.
So this is your way of being lazy and no longer having an edited show. Is this what you're doing just to fulfill your contract with Revison3? Why even bother if you're going to considerably drop the effort you're putting into this?
What a let down.
Sounds pretty good, but I assume this means the end of in-show narrative bits? /sad
Does the partnership with the new EGM as well as Seanbaby's partnership mean we could see new episodes of Broken Pixels?
I want a CO-OP live t-shirt.
I think it has great potential.
How are you going to control the flow? Is each episode going to be a set length?
Good luck, guys!
I have some misgivings about the change. CO-OP was excellent and I felt the crew did an great job of curating opinion as opposed to the word vomit that podcasts normally employ. I have the feeling that this is going to be very podcast-y in terms of dynamics, and I felt the 1up show and then CO-OP were progressive in how they approached the delivery of video game opinion. It was unique on the internet, and I feel this move robs the production of that quality.
I'll check it out, but the benefits of a live show (watching it live, I guess), will be totally lost on me. I had to get a PVR because I can't stand appointment viewing.
I'm with
CocoCO-OP!That's 1AM on wednesday where I live, so I'm probably not going to be watching it live. Also I like seeing the outdoors in your videos and the trips to awesome deli's and the trip to Musee Mechanique. Good Luck on the new show, I'll be watching (after downloading it).
So are you going to pretty much do the Original CO-OP or some form for EGM, and for Revision you'll do CO-OP Live?
Just curious how this all came about.
Looking forward to the evolution of CO-OP Live.
GOOD LUCK!
P.S. When are the shirts being made?
I like the idea of Coop Live and I think it's going to be great with the awesome game demos, guests, and live feedback.
Although there will be some set backs, I think you should still have camera going around the room filming the show live. It would make the show seem like it's edited but really isn't.
I hope Co-op live prospers and that you can keep the show interesting even though it's live and might not have the nice camera angles we viewers take for granted!!!!!
Also, Coop live should have like a demo of the week segment called Retro PWNage where you play an old game from the NES era at some point in the show and see how far you can get without dying or failing the level. The viewers can vote on which game can be played each week.
Very clever, guys! Timing this at 7 p.m. EST avoids any possible conflict with LOST. I don't want you guys to fight. Though if you did fight, I know it wouldn't be my fault.
Seeya Feb. 9!
Sick. I just hope it doesn't transform Area 5 into one of those webcam sites with annoying pop-ups.
I'm with the other Europeans who probably won't be watching this live... And though I have my misgivings with the loss of the random SF backdrops and the narrative, I trust you guys to make it different from all the crappy studio podcasts out there... and hopefully to keep your audience interaction above the banal - in depth responses to our responses please, I watch the show for your opinions - not some douche's!
Wait a minute - no more produced Co-op?
Kind of sad to see the old format go. But I'm still very happy that I can still get the show on my iPod cause I think I would rarely have the time to watch a live show every week and Co-op is one of my favorite things to watch/listen during the week. And who knows this new format might take help you guys take over Rebel FM has my favorite show/podcast.
Yeah........
You know a bribe would also do the same thing.
Like many others here, I'm a bit apprehensive about the format changing. That said, you guys deserve ''mad props'' (or whatever the hell it is kids are saying these days) for taking on a new challenge where most others would be content to ''keep doing what works'' for years on end. Kudos to you and all who support what you do (your friends, frequent guests, Rev3, all your loyal viewers, and everyone who's ever donated time/money/equipment/etc).
Keep doing what you're doing and don't be afraid to mix things up (like you're doing now) every once in a while. I continue to look forward to your well-articulated opinions, impressions, and lively discussions on upcoming games, recent releases, and the industry in general. Good luck!
-- Sakimori
Does this mean... Jason won't be able to steal any more footage to make new Jason Shows?! Or the possibility of a live Jason Show...?
I won't lie to you guys - this announcement is disappointing to me. I love the format of Co-op, and I don't want it to change. The big draw of this new change, LIVE participation, is useless to me since you're starting it too early in the day. I am still at work at 4:00, as I'm sure many people are (god I feel for our poor brethren in Hawaii and Alaska). Also, I don't come here to hear from the other idiots on the internet - I come here to hear from YOU GUYS.
I understand that there's no way for you to pick a time that works for everybody, and I know you guys believe you are doing what you believe is best for the show and your own livelihood. That still doesn't change the fact that I just became a little bit less interested in downloading Co-op every week.
I really don't want to see the produced format go. The show is great, and there's no reason to change it!
Also, dear "Powers That Be": you are wrong about the logo.
can't wait! :D
Yea! That'll work! The talks were the good part of the show and making it live will be interesting.
I can see how a more formal studio will help with bringing in guests, but "shooting guerrilla-style about San Francisco as we normally do" and the well thought out and curated opinions drew me in as a fan. The quality of the conversations and skits were/are way above anything else out there, I would hate to see Co-Op turn into X-play where get a superficial skimming of gaming headlines.
Keep up the good work guys!
I hope this doesn't turn out like a 1up game night with awkward pauses, people being uncomfortable live. I am very disappointed in what you guys are doing, but I have faith and i'll give it a shot. You guys haven't let me down before, I doubt you'll do it now!
Kindof sad to hear this. As I understand it everything what made Co-op unique, the skits, the conversations throughout San Francisco, the narrative will all be lost if it's "just"a live podcast. Hope you prove me wrong, but am seriously not excited and rather disapointed on hearing this news. Looking at the comments I'm definitely not the only one.
So you guys are going to be like Attack of the Show on g4techtv style type show but just with games????
Whoa! Holy crap-face! We were gone all day set-building and rehearsing. Didn't expect quite so much commentivity (Get it? Comment+activity. COMMENTIVITY! . . . Sounded better in my head.) Gonna take a few posts so I don't get logged out in the middle of writing them...
@Neptune ... yeah, we've gotten that a lot. I wish we could do it at different times to appeal to different time zones, but for now our worldwide audience will hopefully enjoy the download version of the show enough to keep subscribed. Of course, there's always the option of not sleeping ;)
@Tino ... same as Neptune. Also, we do still very much love the original CO-OP theme and it's not going to go away forever. We might run into zooooooommmbies... God I love it!
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
if u guys dont get it right the first time and make it a hit i feel you guys might lose alot of viewers. especially if the production value is not there with the cool unique camera shots, the black bars showing two different screens, the awesome music......i dunno guys, make it work.
I'm hopeful you guys are doing the right thing and Ias a European will be downloading it each week as normal. I'll miss the sketches from the old shows and the random San Francisco backgrounds though. I'll probably miss the co-op theme song the most though. Why change the song? Good luck with your new format and look forward to seeing how you will imprint the co-op style onto a live format show.
--Ian,
@Shocked ... Allow me to clarify a few things. Our contract with Revision3 for CO-OP is separate from our contract for CO-OP Live. We're not being bullied into finishing our terms with them. We're also not, as you seem to believe, afflicted with some kind of new media senioritis. And this is where I almost didn't even bother answering your post because anyone who's seen our work should be able to at least somewhat appreciate the effort we put into it every week. Have we ever given you cause to believe that we would suddenly abandon our professional pride like that? This is a business we're running here. It's ours. It's our reputation. We give over to mediocrity at anything we do and we'll ultimately fail. That's the new, small-business paradigm and we're not immune to it. But the best part is, we love it! That's why we keep doing it--week after week--even though it would be more profitable, individually, to work in fast food (no lie). Don't think for a moment that we're going to let CO-OP Live flop or that it's just going to be us sitting in front of a camera and talking for an hour, though I can see how you might think that based off other, Internet-based live shows. Some people will love it; hopefully most people will at least enjoy it. Bottom line: we're going to kill ourselves trying to make it the best goddamned show we can. Also, don't ever call anyone on my team "lazy." Ass-hat, moron, chicken-fucker, whatever, but "lazy" I will not stand for.
@BlackWaltz ... sort of. We're still going to have them, but the'll be shorter and only at the beginning or end of the show or only in one-off, recorded shorts kind of like the Area 5 Snacks we've done in the past.
@MattQ ... that's a 1UP brand. They've talked about doing more and I know Cesar would love to make them! (it was his baby :) ). No promises, but no, it wouldn't be an EGM thing, it'd be a 1UP.com thing.
@Courtney ... coming! Seriously! We're going to have T-Shirts. Honestly, we're a little worried about how many girl-sizes to go with, but I think we're going to have a pre-sale so that we can just pay for what is bought for the first run. Gonna be fun!
@Larry ... not really a set length, though we're going to have the segments roughed-out ahead of time in what's called in TV terms a "rundown." Basically we'll know ahead of time how long we have to talk about a game or topic and what segments are always coming up next.
@Andrew ... we're preserving as much of the conversational style as possible! Honestly, your concerns are ours. The last thing we want is to just dump words through the ether and hope something good comes out on the other end. I love podcasts and I love being on them because of their free-form nature, but for this kind of thing that's ultimately an audience-killer. We're going to have to make mistakes and we're going to find it pretty bumpy going for the first several episodes, but I think you'll dig the end result if you've been enjoying what we do in the past (which is what it sounds like :) )
all my best and good luck with the new format, I loved the 1UP Show, loved CO-OP, will love this too I'm sure. :P
I guess blue-filter, slo-mo, fade music, fade to black gets old sometimes. Robot dicks will be a hard act to follow.
@John I. G. ... Our digital shorts and snacks will hopefully satisfy some of that for you. It's our goal to make segments outside of the studio when we can so that we can move the show from the static set. We get bored looking at the same thing all the time, too, so I know how you feel!
@MO ... that's pretty much it. Can't really commit to what we're doing for EGM just yet as we haven't started production, but all signs point to it being a go and we're hoping that all our projects (we have even more going on) will cross pollinate audiences for us as people from each area discover our larger contribution to gaming media. If we're good enough at our jobs, that should happen. That's the plan, at any rate.
@Novato ... funny you should mention that :) Yes, we're going to have a roaming camera. We don't like just having locked-off shots, either. Ideally, we'll have two shots on studio cams and two roaming cameras. Should work out pretty well if we can fill all the positions. Fortunately Revision3 has several interns that are helping us on set and so far they've been great! Dude, I love your PWNage idea! It's too complex to implement right now since we're still trying to wrap our heads around all this other stuff, but I'm going to see if we can make it happen :)
@Rex .. yes, we are clever like that ;p
@AJ Jenkins ... sorry man. We've already sold 6 pop-up and 4 pop-under ads for the first show targeted specifically at your IP.
@Jon K ... what we're struggling with right now is how long to make the community interaction segments. No one really want's to see us sitting there for half an hour just talking, but it feels like anything less than 10 minutes really doesn't give enough time to answer a question or respond to comment thoroughly. I think it's something we're just going to have to play with and we're definitely going to need a lot of feedback as to what people want/need.
@Cody ... can I bribe you with chocolate? I have a half-eaten, dark chocolate bar here at my desk. I could probably send it off in a normal envelope if I broke it into small enough bits... mmmm, chocolate biiiiits. Nevermind, I'm eating it. Right now.
@Sakimori ... we do it for you! No, seriously, we do. We're hoping this will be a way to offer much the same kind of content and allow us a richer interaction with all the fine minds out there that love think about the greatest-medium-ever and consider it as important as we do. Straight up: we're apprehensive, too. That's why we know we need to get it right. We can't do it unless we feel confident about it in the same we we feel confident about CO-OP.
@Eric S. ... A . . . live . . . Jason Show? Oh dear God have mercy...
@Giolon ... Totally fair and an understandable fear. Give it a chance :) -- The community interaction is going to be a part of the show, definitely, but it won't be all of it, by far. For now, we're cordoning it off into its own segment. That might change in the future--which is part of the bonus to this format: it will allow us to be a lot more experimental than we were before. Which, of course, provides greater opportunities for success as well as failure. Guess we'll just have to not fail. ;)
@Cory ... Yup, that's not what we want, either! If we start moving in that route, I hope you're still watching long enough and care enough to drop us a line and tell us that we've started down that slippery slope. Also, we think there are a million other places out there to get that kind of content and we don't want to be an also-ran.
@EVERYONE ELSE WITH COMMENTS OF POLITE CONCERN ... You can read in a lot of the replies I've given here what we're going for. Hopefully I've alleviated some of your fears. We know what makes CO-OP unique and valuable to you all because you've TOLD us. Online via Twitter and comments on this site as well as direct email. At PAX and on the street in San Francisco. It's helped make us what we are and given us the boost to keep doing it! So that's why we're going to need your help, here. We think this format can be every bit as powerful as CO-OP and will even give us tons of new opportunities to branch out into unique kinds of content that just weren't possible to us before. It's exciting and scary and sometimes we're going to try new things that are going to fall flat. But where's life without risk and where's success without dancing with chance a little? Give us feedback as we move forward. Let us know what you really love and hate. After all, without you we're just making a show to watch ourselves. And that's masturbation. Which is a sin.
Well said Matt!
1UP Show and Co-Op were and are two of the greatest video production related gaming shows ever put on the Net! With a limited budget and time constraints your small team does amazing work. These guys are anything but lazy. And to top it off it is free. I will continue to visit this site, watch your shows live or download weekly and support whatever you guys do with EGM!
Thanks for all the hard work and the best "informative entertainment" video game show on the planet.
Sigh...I'm excited for the new format if only because I've grown to be such a fan of the work that you guys do that I know it'll rock, but i'm going to miss the traditional format something awful. If only there was a way to do BOTH! Continued success, guys. All the best.
I'm excited to see where this goes. I love the show as it exists now, but I think I see the potential in this. I'll definitely try to tune in live as often as I can.
I really, really will miss the co-op opening theme though. It's grown on me something fierce.
My initial apprehension after watching the trailer has been alleviated by reading this post. I recognize that editing together the CO-OP show in post takes an order of magnitude longer than just going "live to tape", and the final results are usually 80% of the quality, a pretty good trade off, especially since you guys are getting more paying work. But what really excites me is the live demo play. I'm a big fan of GiantBomb.com's quicklooks, they are the only previews worth consuming, and it will be nice to see a new take on this style of preview. My 2 cents: Demo play through's with the developers are never interesting, but post mortem discussions with some game play could be rad.
One word: epic. Good luck prepping for the first show, can't wait until next Tuesday!