Happy New Year! This year we resolve to play more video games! Specifically to stream those video games on Twitch. Even more specifically, to be funny and amusing for your benefit while we stream those games on  Twitch. Also to fulfil our LoadingReadyLive Kickstarter promises, which was to do all those things, so conveniently enough…

We’re proud to unveil the YRR of LRR Livestream lineup! The LRR crew and our friends are going to make good on that Kickstarter promise with a bunch of shows that will cover every genre of gaming from classic console to next-gen first person shooters.

We’re kicking off the whole thing with a stream-a-thon on this Sunday, January 5th at 11 AM Pacific/2 PM Eastern/7 PM UK with one-hour episodes of all our shows, hangouts and a Twitch subscriber giveaway for a $75 giftcard to the online game store of your choice. You can watch the whole thing on our Twitch channel – twitch.tv/loadingreadyrun!

If you happen to miss it, the launch and the livestreams will be archived on Twitch for your later consumption and hopeful enjoyment.

So what shows will you see on LoadingReadyLive?

Monday 3 PM Pacific/6 PM Eastern/11 PM UK
Graham & Paul bring their Unskippable sensibilities to GPLP, mercilessly riffing on all games, good and bad (but mostly bad). If you’ve ever wanted to see two men constantly disappointed on a deep, personal level by bad combat mechanics and interminable cutscenes, this is the place.

Wednesday 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern/2 AM UK
As far as Cam is concerned, there is one correct difficulty for strategy games: punishing. Whether it’s “hardcore”, or “extreme”, or “iron man”, you’re not doing it right if your entire squad isn’t one bad roll away from paving the save file and starting over.

Wednesday 3 PM Pacific/6 PM Eastern/11 PM UK
JRPGs are usually awful. But sometimes they are… less bad, and once in a while, there is one that is actually excellent. Wherever a JRPG falls on Kathleen’s proprietary quality scale (from “this is an abomination unto gaming” or “I will prod you with a stick until you put it in your eyes”), she loves these turn-based delights with a fervor that verges on addiction. Join her as she plays and discusses JRPGs new and old, everything from Shin Megami Tensei to Final Fantasy.

Tuesday 2 PM Pacific/5 PM Eastern/10 PM UK
Watching Alex play games is its own pastime. Look forward to Minecraft shenanigans and nutty adventure maps, “Let’s NOPE!” survival horror playthroughs, FPS games with mods you’ve never heard of, and maybe even game genres Alex hasn’t played before… You won’t be disappointed.

Thursday 7 PM Pacific/10 PM Eastern/3 AM UK
There are many games that Graham wants to play and mock, but he can’t really validate the personal time to do so because they’re awful. Luckily for you, the knowledge that you’ll be sharing the “experience” with him is exactly the excuse he needs to work through his hit list.

Monday 6PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern/2 AM UK
Beej has a pile of Nintendo-console crap he’s been meaning to get to — some of it dating back to the SNES — and you’re going to watch him grind through it, even if it kills both of you. Also, you’re going to like it because Beej is a funny guy.

Thursday 8:30 AM Pacific/11:30 AM Eastern/4:30 PM UK
James is a man of many skills, and one that he plans to master is Minecraft. He’s going to play other games too but… he’s really into Minecraft, you guys. He’s even going to get the other LRR crew to play with him on a special server, and you can join in too!

Thursday 4 PM Pacific/7 PM Eastern/Midnight UK
Every week, James and Graham draft Magic: the Gathering Online, and occasionally succeed! Although, when the goal is entertainment over good play, it really seems more like they always succeed. Hop in the chat and tell us what to pick.

Brought to you by our delightful friends at www.CardKingdom.com

Monday 2 PM Pacific/5 PM Eastern/10 PM UK
CheckPoint lives on, filmed before a live internet audience! Kathleen, Graham, and Paul keep you up to date on the latest and stupidest gaming industry news, while sharing their views on the most egregious examples of idiocy. The term “lambast” is applicable.

Every other Tuesday, starting Jan 14 – 7 PM Pacific/10 PM Eastern/4 AM UK
When Jer was a kid, he wasn’t allowed to have an NES. Instead, he had to go over to friends’ houses to get his game fix. Gaming was social, full of controller-passing, catridge-cleaning and password scrawling. Join Jer—and a rotating co-host—every week as they dig up, play and reminisce about their favourite games of all time.

So, a long, long time ago, some friends got together to make a fun rap video. They included a reference to the year “2013” in the lyrics, not really thinking about the consequences. Almost 10 years later, those friends were still rapping and making videos and they realized they’d made a promise they had to keep. And keep it they did, with a day to spare.

Yes! 64K is finally back, but this time with the incredible music of Bradley Rains to back them up on Twenty-Thirteen! I hope everyone enjoys this video. I know we had a ton of fun filming it and putting it together. We’d also like to thank Epic Games and More for being so accommodating about filming in their store!

If you liked the track and you want to help out us and Bradley, you can head over to our BandCamp page and buy a copy. You can also read all the lyrics there and see just exactly how much hot fire Graham and Jer are spitting.

This week is also the… very last episode of CheckPoint on PATV. If you want to keep up with all our comedy gaming news in 2014, be sure to follow us on Twitch. But for now, go watch Now We Console the Loser, where we finally decide who “won” the holiday console battle, PS4 or Xbox One.

And last, but not least, Graham and Paul bring 2013 to an epic end by giving Anarchy Reigns the Unskippable treatment. I don’t really know what this cutscene is trying to say about the future, but it seems to suck. The strippers are just wireframes and all the men look like pin-headed pyramids. Seriously, everyone’s neck is bigger than their brains. Aside from being weird, I’m not sure that’s should even be technically possible.

Hey everyone, it’s Christmas eve! Time to drink eggnog, cook food, and mentally prepare yourself for spending a lot of time with your family!

So What’s the best way to bring a family together on Christmas? Watching LoadingReadyRun videos!

This week’s LRR video is designed to help out all you Americans struggling to understand the meaning of the mysterious Commonwealth holiday known as… Boxing Day. A video that will provide  a nice present for old-school LoadingReadyRun fans.

Come, discover The True Meaning of Boxing Day, and admire the lovely illustrations the talented Maki Naro provided for us!

But wait you say, you want more seasonal delights? Why, we have a whole back catalogue of Christmas-themed videos for you to enjoy today!

How about:
Dave’s Xmas Xporium, the video we did for Cards Against Humanity’s 12 Days of Holiday Bullshit?

Or, Santa and Me, our last holiday video from 2011? (We skipped 2012 due to Strip Search…)

If that’s not enough, there’s the CommodoreHustle Christmas video from 2010, Santa Secrets!

Why not watch my all-time favourite Christmas video, our loving Peanuts parody, Merry Christmas Graham Stark from 2009.

Still need distraction? If you want to start going non-HD, how about:

The War on Christmas from 2008?

Or, the… simply titled 2007 Christmas Special?

Going back to 2006, we parody It’s a Wonderful Life with It’s a Wonderful Game.

And finally, all the way back in 2005, Jangles and Jones Saved Christmas while they were battling a 4:3 aspect ratio…

PS,

There’s also Unskippable, CheckPoint and Feed Dump if you’re still looking for something to watch. I’ll post about all those videos on… BOXING DAY.

Hello everyone! It’s Monday and we have a very special video for you. A video six long years in the making.

Four PS4s.

This video has everything. Four PS4s. The DoubleClicks. A beard. Graphs. Did I mention it has four PS4s?

Please send this to all your most gullible and easily outraged friends.

Next up, this week on CheckPoint, we point out a growing Sony/Kojima conspiracy, a problem with No Man’s Sky and that sometimes people are stupid in Brickbox One.

And finally on Unskippable, Graham and Paul take on the scariest thing since Obamacare… ZOMBIES. In Part 2 of The Last of Us, Graham finally proves that no, you don’t want your mom giving you directions as you try to escape an outbreak of killer fungus.

Many of you have already read this post on Penny Arcade, but if you haven’t please do because I think it’s important to hear Jerry’s own words.

I will however also summarize: PA has decided to shift their focus internally, and cease third-party content like outside-produced shows on PATV, and their gaming news site The Penny Arcade Report. For us, this specifically means that CheckPoint no longer has a home there.

We were out of town when PA announced these changes, so we couldn’t get a coherent blog post up until now, but we wanted to fill you in, and I’m going to start by addressing the three biggest questions Kathleen, myself, and the LoadingReadyRun main account received on Twitter:

– We knew this was happening. Folks, Robert Khoo and PA aren’t irresponsible businesspeople. Everyone involved knew over a month ago that this was forthcoming, this did not just get sprung on us yesterday. I know it’s a surprise—maybe even a shock—to you, our wonderful viewers, but we were aware. Don’t misunderstand me, we are still bummed about losing a home for CheckPoint, but we’re still friends with the PA staff and we’re not sore about this decision—these things happen. Though, for your interest, this was not factored into the Kickstarter budgeting, we did not know then. But that brings me neatly to point two…

– We did not rely on CheckPoint for revenue. It was a part of our overall revenue stream, certainly, but were not actually under a fee-per-episode contract for CheckPoint—our money came from a share of ad revenue. We do CheckPoint because we love doing it, we have the time, it’s a great platform for our content, and (to be honest) it’s incredibly useful for us to have a table at PAX’s Bandland, where we can meet our fans and sell merch. And that remains the case, PA is still providing us PAX passes and a Bandland space, and for that we thank them immensely. The takeaway here is, we are not in financial danger with this cancellation. Many fans of CheckPoint (love you all) aren’t really aware of all our other content. Hopefully they get to see it now 🙂

– Strip Search is a Penny Arcade in-house production, and a second season has always been their decision. We did the legwork, certainly, but Strip Search is a first party property of PA, whereas we own CheckPoint. If a second season happens (riding heavily on DVD sales, watch the skies for info on that) we hope to be involved, but it’s not our baby.

So! What is the future of CheckPoint? Well, we basically had three options.

• Keep doing it ourselves, hope to retain a fraction of the viewership. To rely on the ad revenue for the views we would get, a risky option.
• Find a new home for the show, willing to pay us some amount of fee. Still a very real possibility, certainly. Something we are not ruling out.
• Put the show on an indefinite hiatus, and use the time to focus on our 2014 Kickstarter-funded year of sketches and live-streaming. This is where we landed.

Between meeting, writing, shooting, graphics, and editing, CheckPoint basically took Paul, Kathleen, and I an entire day. We feel that, in the face of the Kickstarter and all the amazing things we have planned for the live-streaming, we can better use that time, now that we have it.

Who knows, maybe we can make one of our live shows a sort of “CheckPoint Live”, where we lambast dumb gaming news in a more casual format. It’s on the table, at least.

In the meantime, I hope that clears everything up, but please do ask me anything else on my own Twitter, or the LRR account.