Ben Hanson is one of the most-loved people in games media. He runs MinnMax, a fun company where he and his friends talk about games in the form of podcasts. Before starting MinnMax, Ben was a video producer at Game Informer, where a lot of people started getting familiar with him, including me.
With the great media apocalypse and hundreds of websites getting either shut down or acquired, I wanted to learn from the veterans in the industry one thing: how do we survive?
Here’s my interview with Ben Hanson where we talked about the 2019 Game Informer layoffs, building MinnMax during COVID, its finance, why written media is dying, women in the games industry, and if going independent is the only way forward for games media.
If you would want to listen to the interview instead, click here.
Keep in mind all the “quotations” in the interview are paraphrases.
Pingal Pratyush: Did you check the interview that we did with Nathan?
Ben Hanson: I did. That was awesome.
Pingal’s Remarks: We did an interview with Nathan Grayson, ex-Washington Post and Kotaku, now the founder of Aftermath, an independent media covering games and internet culture.
We talked about the demise of Washington Post’s Launcher, the struggles of surviving in New York, the downfall of Kotaku, ads, the state and future of journalism, Google’s AI shenanigans, SEO, Jason Schreier, and Nathan’s best and worst gaming experiences.
After this, go check that out by clicking here.
Pingal Pratyush: Yeah, so now we’re going to interview a lot many people after this. You’re next, and I hope we get some great insights into the games media world.
Ben Hanson: I’ll try. I have a limited perspective, but I’ll share what I know.
Pingal Pratyush: For sure, that’s what we need.
Ben Hanson: Sure.
Pingal Pratyush: Great. I’m Pingal and we run Spiel Times, which is like a very SEO-oriented website right now. We’re slowly shifting to doing these kinds of things where we actually talk about stuff that doesn’t feed the algorithms, but stuff that people actually care about.
Ben Hanson: Yeah, for sure.
Ben Hanson and His Emmy
Pingal Pratyush: So I’m going to start with this interesting question. I read your interview in the West Central Tribune…
Ben Hanson: Oh, boy, okay.
Pingal Pratyush: …when you won your regional Emmy…
Ben Hanson: …nominated for.
Pingal Pratyush: (pauses) But I think you guys got it, right?
Ben Hanson: Well, it’s confusing. We were nominated for a regional Emmy for a documentary on the Oregon Trail, but before I was even working at Game Informer, I won an Emmy for another project. So it’s a confusing thing.
Pingal Pratyush: Which was “Boxes, Bottles and Banana Peels”?
Ben Hanson: Whoa, yes. That’s exactly it… going way back in the day.
Pingal Pratyush: You mentioned in the interview that Mr. Aric Harrier’s class was “one of the coolest things”.
Ben Hanson: (laughs)
Pingal Pratyush: You loved learning about video editing and production in his class. Do you remember that?
Ben Hanson: Boy! That’s a deep cut. Yes, absolutely. I remember that.
Pingal Pratyush: Taking you down the memory lane, I hope.
Ben Hanson: Yeah, for sure. It was in high school, and there was a video production class. It wasn’t a big high school. I grew up outside of a town that had under a thousand people in it. So, it’s just wild to me that our school, splurged in its budget, really went above and beyond in the budget for this video production class, where they had like, newish Macs for everybody to edit on. We had Final Cut Pro, the editing software for everyone to learn, and some okay cameras.
I made a lot of videos with my friends. The idea of that class and those equipment being available for free at school was a dream come true. I remember editing in that class, and just staying late after school again and again and again. I’d just be pushing it as much as possible to spend as much time editing. I was just thinking about it the other day of how lucky I am that I found that one thing that I’m really passionate about in life, because I remember just thinking like, “I could do this forever. This is the most fun thing; editing video.”
I just somehow don’t get tired of it, just the infinite potential of remixing life and making it fun, making them more emotional, tweaking the emotions, cutting out the awkward parts. That was just intoxicating for me as a kid. I mean, all these years later, you know, 20 years later, I still love video editing just as much. It’s a real blessing.
Pingal Pratyush: How do you think your in-person experience was at that time and age compared to how most of us learn things now? With the internet from YouTube and stuff?
Ben Hanson: (laughs) Oh no, is this the year-old “What was learning like in your day” question?
Pingal’s remarks: Yes, it was. I was so stupid I started explaining the question. Gosh! That was really embarrassing. Sorry, Ben.
Ben Hanson: I wish we had YouTube in high school so I could see more tutorials on Final Cut Pro because I think we just had instruction books you’d flip through to learn stuff, but obviously you could Google stuff too back in the day. Although I guess it was 2004 or 2005 when I took that class. I guess Googling was newish.
It was a little more hands-on, maybe it was nice, I think in particular to be with a big group of people that were also taking the class so you can kind of team up, encourage them to make silly projects. You can kind of bounce off each other’s skills. I’m a terrible actor, but for making videos in that class, it was like, “Okay, my funny friend is also in this class. So let’s get her on camera.” So, there are benefits there.
Pingal Pratyush: (smiling) This was a warmup kind of thing, let’s start the interview now.
Ben Hanson: (smiling) Sure, okay.
Game Informer vs MinnMax
Pingal Pratyush: From what I’ve read and how much I know about you, because I’ve been following you since the Game Informer days. You’ve always been fond of being on the ground, visiting different studios, doing interviews, traveling. How has that changed since you started MinnMax?
Ben Hanson: Ummm… kind of the lack of being on the ground. Yeah, I miss it. Is that the question, just the difference there?
Pingal Pratyush: Yeah, do you still do most of the ground visits or is it more sitting in your studio and doing your work?
Ben Hanson: It’s a lot of sitting in the studio, yeah. So back at Game Informer, I was the video producer there and so I would fly out and visit the developers for all of our monthly cover stories. I ended up visiting eighty studios for eighty cover stories and that level of insight was just incredible to have. Two days of visiting a studio, talking to the developers, often going out to dinner with the developers, you learn so much and you realize how little average people on the internet know about the games industry and developing games. I’m not saying I know anything about developing games, but I’m just fascinated to hear people smarter than me talk about it.
Since starting MinnMax, we’re largely remote-based. We do have a studio in Minneapolis, which is just kind of a space in my basement, really. We still get together every once in a while but I really do miss that focus from the time at Game Informer, getting to fly out to meet these developers and just have basically one-on-one focus for two days where we get to think about this game they’re working on, from different angles.
You know, “What would be interesting to people online? What is the message that would be interesting to get out there that the PR and the publishers and the developers wouldn’t highlight on their own?” I think it’s very easy to visit a studio and be like, “Okay, the main talking point in this game is that the water physics are amazing. So let’s make a video about that segment.” No, the publisher is gonna make a video about that. Let’s try and find some angle that is not going to be a red flag for them, but something they wouldn’t, or couldn’t be able to message on their own. So, yeah, I definitely miss that.
Since MinnMax, we’ve gone on several preview trips, where it’s like Ubisoft having a bunch of press down to play Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, stuff like that. That’s all well and good, but there’s so many other people in the press there that you suddenly feel like you’re no longer a pretty princess in the press and have all that focus from the developers.
I really do miss that. It’s something that, you know, we have plans of hopefully getting back to, of going out and visiting studios and creating more focused content that’s going to be a little bit different than the average preview of an upcoming game.
MinnMax’s Birth During COVID-19
Pingal Pratyush: But again, MinnMax was started in 2019, right? Then COVID happened. Did the pandemic affect the company, maybe your ideas, or you, personally, in any way.
Ben Hanson: Yeah, for sure. That was a huge pivot for us. We started in October of 2019. And, you know, we were recording in our old studio in the basement. The plan was to make it much more Minnesota-focused, to contract out with people around Minnesota to create content if not fully centered on Minnesota. Minnesota is the state I grew up in and MinnMax is named after. So, that was really the plan, and then COVID hit, and we had to pivot quickly to remote podcasts, which seemed like, “Oh, that’s a downgrade.” Now, looking back, I can’t imagine it any other way. Because that allowed us then to pull in talent from across the world to be on our content.
So at that point, we shifted from, “We’d love to do stuff and record stuff with these people, but they’re not in Minnesota, so what are we going to do?” and then realizing that, “Okay, we can get the tech, decent enough, where it won’t sound like trash and then just open the floodgates. Now we can bring in Jacob Geller out in North Carolina, we can bring in Kelsey Lewin out in Seattle, we can bring in Haley MacLean, who is up in Nova Scotia, we can bring in Janet Garcia from LA.
It really expanded our horizon in a lot of ways and I think gave us a huge energy boost and kind of widened the creative potential of what we can do as an outlet. We still have streams in person and podcasts in person every once in a while here in Minnesota when everything lines up. Because we still have a ton of great folks in Minnesota like Leo Vader and Sarah Podzorski. It’s a nice, hopefully hybrid [operation] at this point.
Reasons Behind The 2019 Game Informer Layoffs
Pingal Pratyush: I think during the same time, Game Informer had their 2019 layoffs, right?
Ben Hanson: Yeah, so that’s what launched the entire thing. It was in August of 2019 when GameStop laid off, I believe, 40% of Game Informer’s editorial staff and at that point, I realized, “I need to get out of here.” It’s one of those frustrating things too where the people they laid off were also almost uniformly the people who are the best on camera, and the most interested in being on podcasts.
So they laid us off, or they laid 40% of the staff off with the messaging of like, “We have to pivot more to digital. The future is podcasting.” Okay, well, who’s making these calls, because that’s the worst of the ever and this was all coming from, you know, higher [management] than our Editor-in-Chief at Game Informer.
It was just such a depressing time, and everyone was so unsure of what was happening. I certainly didn’t want to keep working hard to support GameStop. Not a big fan of them and the way that the whole thing went down. At that point, I realized that I was actually safer, leaving Game Informer, and then launching a crowdfunded outlet through Patreon, with MinnMax here and recruiting some of the people who were laid off who liked podcasting. That was the original idea. I’ll be as full-time as I can be, based on the funding that comes through and then we’ll contract out with these other people to come in and podcast and hopefully kind of relive the highlights.
Pingal Pratyush: Were the upper management disappointed with the kind of content that you were creating, or the production that you were doing? What really went wrong according to them? Did they ever explain that?
Ben Hanson: (scoffs) No. I think GameStop is just a revolving door of idiots, if I may. They had no idea. Maybe they would glance at occasional Game Informer content, but there was no message of, you know, “You guys should be doing more of this type of content. Why aren’t you doing this?” They just had no clue. They, maybe, looked at some numbers coming in and I assume that was about the extent of it.
It was so frustrating, because I remember there was a meeting with one of the people at GameStop who was kind of instigating the layoffs and he was trying to explain to us… because we were just so confused with like, “What do you want from us?” Because there’s so little communication between us. “What are you? What do you want us to do here?” And they’re like, “Oh, well, we just think we need to shift towards a digital future. So maybe instead of writing a news story, you record a podcast.” Okay, well, you just laid off everyone who is interested in podcasting from the company. So what do you want us to do here? And there is no answer. These guys are jackasses. They’re out the door with their money before their seat gets warm.
MinnMax and its Finance
Pingal’s Remarks: We at Spiel Times have slid from 2 million viewers in July 2023 to 100K viewers in May 2024. Times are hard, and due to Google’s constant changes, we’re barely surviving. The revenue’s so meager that we’re on the verge of bankruptcy. Help us stay afloat by listening to this interview on our Patreon, or help us buy bread and tap water by donating here: buymeacoffee.com/spieltimes
Pingal Pratyush: Got it. I see on Patreon that MinnMax listeners contribute a total of $22,780 a month now.
Ben Hanson: Yeah, public numbers.
Pingal Pratyush: I think it’s great. So, what does a monthly budget look like for MinnMax right now?
Ben Hanson: Hmm. (impressed) Good question. Breaking down kind of the pie chart, I’m the only person full-time at MinnMax. Then we contract out with eight other people regularly. We give those people the choice of, if they want to be paid hourly, or if they want to set a rate every month. Some people want the consistency of how much money is coming in every month versus other people. I think it’s totally understandable. They’re like, “Well, I’m going to be a little bit light on content for a couple of months, and then I want to feel guilty about it. I will kind of like, do a one-to-one ratio of, if I’m on a podcast for three hours, I get paid accordingly.”
Then we have our friends of the show that we pay for guest spots. So that’s kind of the person-power payment slice of that budget. Then there’s also software, you know, Adobe Premiere licenses, all that boring stuff, podcast hosting. On top of that, we have room in the budget every month for hardware, if we need to get a new computer part, someone wants to upgrade their computer, stuff like that. A microphone breaks, that type of thing.
That’s the basic idea. At the same time, we’re always saving for events like Summer Game Fest, so we can fly folks out to events. So, having a room in the budget building up is a very wonderful place to be in. I am very thankful for everyone supporting us on Patreon to make it happen.
Pingal Pratyush: Absolutely, yeah. I think you guys do kind of an ad spot in your videos as well. How do ads work at MinnMax, and if you have any more sources of income, other than Patreon and ads for the company?
Ben Hanson: Well, there’s YouTube, Twitch, and merch. YouTube‘s the biggest, I believe, of those three. I can jump through, but it’s not mind-boggling. I’m happy to share some numbers. Let’s see. On YouTube over the last month, we made about $1,000 from YouTube ads. Twitch, let’s see. Let’s jump into all this stuff. On Twitch, over the last month, we’ve made about $450. And merch is like, you know, $100 if we’re lucky.
So there’s those, then there are the ads that we run on the podcast, The MinnMax Show. We work with a marketing agency called Audioboom. They basically just reach out and say, “Hey, this person is interested in getting a plug on the podcast. Are you okay promoting this company?” And they’re really great to work with. Because frequently it’s like, “Eh…we’ll pass on that one. It’s not really in our audience’s wheelhouse, so that one kind of rubs me the wrong way.” So it’s nice to be able to let us do the research on these companies, before we sign off on plugging, like a HelloFresh on the podcast or something like that. We started partnering with them a couple of years ago and that’s been working out well for ads for The MinnMax Show.
And then we also have a middle ground between ads and the Patreon support. We have something at the $50 tier where we let people send over a promotional image. It doesn’t have to be promotional, it can be any image they want, it can be a picture of their pet or their face or their favorite game, and that goes on every MinnMax video throughout a month. We call that “The Wall of Heroes” here. Even though that’s included in the Patreon numbers there, it’s a nice message to get out there like, “Hey, if you’re an indie game or if you have a small company, you can jump in and for $50 a month, you can have your image shown in a slideshow on every MinnMax video.”
If we do the math on that, it rotates about every 11 minutes. We have over 300,000 views every month on YouTube so that results in millions of impressions for this promotional image for only $50. So, it’s fun to see people jumping in there promoting their travel agency, their record store, stuff like that, and it’s hopefully not too aggressive in your face for people watching MinnMax content. I’m proud of that one. I feel like, you look at how much a billboard costs and it’s like, “This is the amount of impressions and eyeballs comparable to a billboard and this will cost you $50 for a very specific audience here.” So, that’s nice.
Pingal Pratyush: Patreon is still the highest source of income, right?
Ben Hanson: Yeah. Oh, by far, by far.
Life in Minnesota
Pingal Pratyush: Got it. Regarding that, what’s life like in Minnesota? In overall and also financially, especially as an independent games media company. I ask you this because I interviewed Nathan and he mentioned that he pays $2,500 for rent in New York, which is wild! For me at least.
Ben Hanson: Yes, and that too he mentioned was a small apartment. Yeah, that’s a secret bonus for MinnMax as well which seems strange to talk about. Our structure as a company is where the only person full-time is me and I live in Minnesota, where the cost of living is not going to break the bank. You know, it’s probably middle-tier for the states in the US in terms of affordability, somewhere in the middle there. And I love Minnesota. I grew up in the country a hundred miles west of Minneapolis here. But I really love it here. It’s beautiful. The biking is great, friendly people. It’s got everything you need. It’s nice to be able to say I’ve traveled the world visiting game development studios, and I still love living in Minneapolis. So that is a nice secret bonus I feel, like for MinnMax is, “ Hey, if you support us, your money will go a long way.”
If it was a handful of people living in a super expensive city, that’s tougher to fund but the one person full-time is living in a pretty affordable city. That allows us to bring in more people, to go on more trips, to do more with that money than just dumping it into rent, you know.
YouTube vs Patreon
Pingal Pratyush: Whenever you produce any kind of episodes, do you ever think of profitability from a single episode? Or how do you see that?
Ben Hanson: Certainly not with like, YouTube ads or anything like that but, you know, I definitely think about the Patreon supporters and the most helpful thing we could do is convince somebody that we’re worth supporting financially on Patreon. With every episode of the podcast, hopefully, it’s not obnoxious, we can kind of nudge people toward, “Hey! If you want to support independent games media, you can jump in and support us on Patreon.”
Because just crunching the numbers between somebody watching on YouTube versus somebody jumping in on Patreon at the $2 tier, which hopefully is sustainable. If it’s sustainable for the community, it’s sustainable for us and so we prefer people find that tier that’s sustainable for them. So if somebody jumps in, and supports us on Patreon at the $2 tier, that is over 300 times as helpful as watching one of our videos on YouTube, financially.
So, I don’t think about it in terms of like, “Oh, this is gonna be big numbers on YouTube.” I’m more interested in, “Are we converting people to actually go to this URL that we mention all the time? Patreon.com/MinnMax with two Ns.” To convince people to go there, find a tier, unlock some benefits, and to feel fulfilled about supporting the whole ecosystem here.
Downfall of Written Media
Pingal Pratyush: Since we’re talking about independent games, media, do you think video-form reporting, let’s say on YouTube, dominates written content, particularly for smaller publishers?
Ben Hanson: I love having long-form written content. That’s such a relief. It’s so nice to be able to sit down, scroll through, read some stuff, read some long-form interviews, features, profiles. But yes, I understand that’s expensive to do, and it’s harder and harder to do it. At the same time, as much as I love that stuff, I feel like having YouTube has infinite potential for spreading your content. Most of the time, it won’t work, right? But I am so into that Roulette Wheel of, you never know. One video on YouTube and it could be just the perfect one for the algorithm at this time and this place, and it could spread like wildfire.
I think about that all the time for every video we upload to MinnMax’s YouTube channel. It could spread so far that we could double our Patreon support overnight, which would be such a wild thing, but it’s not unreasonable. The numbers aren’t impossibly huge at this point. So, I just worry about content that gets kind of isolated in a silo. I think of it the same way I think of podcasts that don’t have a video component. I love podcasting but I feel like, if you don’t have that video component, how are people supposed to find it? With YouTube, at least there’s that chance that it’ll spread, it’ll show up in somebody’s recommended feed, they can check it out, and then subscribe to the podcast. But if you’re just podcasting, and it’s audio only, you better have some great guests, have some great social media strategies, or get recommended through high reviews on some podcast service. And there’s a pretty slim chance of that happening compared to somebody finding it on YouTube.
I think about it in those terms. Written content, it’s awesome, it’s great. Find some way to get some sliver of it on YouTubeso it can potentially find a new audience. It could just be you reading highlights of it or just a podcast discussion about the feature that you wrote about a game. Just find some way to rope in that infinite potential of a YouTube audience to bring it back to your more siloed content.
Going Independent Is The Future?
Pingal’s Remarks: We’re trying to shift to video and original content as well. Till then, help us stay afloat and not break the bank by donating a dollar over at buymeacoffee.com/spieltimes
Pingal Pratyush: But with companies laying off writers and reporters, even great people like Alice Bell, Brandon Sinclair, and more, do you think going independent is the only route left for people like us who love writing and talking about video games?
Ben Hanson: I certainly hope not. You know, it has a lot of benefits. We are super, super, super lucky. We had that Game Informer audience to kind of give us a boost out of the gate and I’m really thankful that we’ve grown beyond that, in some ways where a lot of people found us just as MinnMax, and they’re not familiar with the Game Informer era. But we got so fortunate to kind of have that base to build off of. I don’t think our model works for everybody. It’s working well for us and we’ve been slowly growing since 2019 and I am thankful every day. But it’s a scary proposition to be like, “Well, this is the way forward, everybody spin off and go independent.” Because I just don’t think it can work for everybody. So is this a sustainable model moving forward? It’s a great question. I don’t know.
It works for certain personalities to spin off, do their own stuff, and coming at it from a different perspective, I do think the people who are fortunate enough to be stable financially from their content, that’s more personality-focused in the gaming arena. Be it on Twitch, or YouTube or Patreon, I feel like maybe some more interesting games coverage needs to come from that direction, instead of just being caught in the cycle of regurgitating press releases, doing reaction videos, and screaming about stuff. If you are lucky enough to have that support financially, from a community, you should slow down, take some more swings, share some more developer stories that aren’t getting out there, create more unique content, because you are very lucky to be in a position where you can.
On the other hand, I’ve talked to some journalists around the game industry space about, “I don’t understand why you’re not going independent. You could totally go independent.” And the answer is, “Yeah, but we need the legal protection of a larger organization. We need some of these classic existing models and organizations to protect us. We need to make sure all these T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted so we don’t get sued out of existence when we have a hard-hitting piece about Activision’s workplace harassment or stuff like that.” That’s certainly an issue where I don’t know how thorough hard-hitting pieces can be from independent small outlets, if they’re always scared of legal repercussions.
There’s hopefully a nice gray area in there where we can surface some developer stories at MinnMax, share some stories that publishers probably don’t want to get out there and at the same time, don’t have to worry about, say, Microsoft just washing us out of existence legally, you know.
Pingal Pratyush: That’s an interesting insight. I didn’t think about that.
Ben Hanson: Yeah.
Inevitable Shift To YouTube
Pingal Pratyush: What about people who are not popular? Let’s say, not much on Twitter or who don’t like to show up in front of the camera much, but they’re really good writers or really, really good at their craft. What would be your advice?
Ben Hanson: That’s a great question. I’ve never really written about video games, so I’m the worst person to talk to about this, but it scares me. Um, I don’t know. I’ve never tried to apply for a writing job in the game industry. I’ve always been a video producer and I’ve been really thankful to have those skills. If it’s possible, check out those YouTube tutorials and try to learn video editing. Try to broaden your skillset a little instead of being just solely focused on writing.
In a perfect world, obviously, that’d be great. A lot of people are hiring great writers and you know, you’re lucky if you can find them out there. Those jobs do exist still, even though they’re shrinking. Um, but if you can just have that base of, “I write about video games. I’m also a video editor and I can help out in this arena as well.”
That would be my tip because video editing isn’t that hard. You know, you can figure it out. If you spend a day with a YouTube tutorial, you’ve just doubled your chances of getting hired.
MinnMax Investment & Profitability
Pingal Pratyush: In your interview with Tech.mn, you said you were bolstered by fans of The Game Informer Show, obviously, which is something every startup dreams of. How did you come to the decision of relying on Patreon? Did you wait for Patreon to materialize before starting MinnMax? Did you invest your own money initially, and if so, how long did it take you to recoup your investment?
Ben Hanson: It took several months. It’s a good question. Founding MinnMax was like buying all of the equipment, the mics, the camera, all that stuff. It was about $10,000 of my own money, which took several months to recoup, but it felt really good when we got to that point.
In terms of Patreon, it was a matter of looking at what everybody else was doing, so, back in 2019, looking at outlets like Kinda Funny, obviously, it was huge. Looking at an outlet that I’m a big fan of, Easy Allies. It was incredibly helpful to call them up and I talked to several folks over at Easy Allies just to get a rundown of the do’s and don’ts, lessons from their years in the Patreon world. I was taking a lot of notes on that, and they were very insightful and very helpful.
We see them as our big brothers and sisters over there. I mean, so much of our Patreon was kind of looking at what they’ve been doing, the fact that our numbers are public financially on our Patreon, I just did that because Easy Allies did it, you know? It was very helpful to know that, okay, these outlets do exist out there, and being a fan of so many other video game outlets, I feel like it really helps because I can watch and listen to all these other outlets that I love, and that just constantly informs me of ideas of, “Oh, I think we can do better on this front. They’re kicking our butt on this front, or I think this isn’t as strong as they think it is and so if you punch up this over here.” So, it’s constantly taking lessons from the industry and applying it towards MinnMax to hopefully make it more sustainable. Constant iteration is kind of a key to MinnMax here.
Pingal’s remarks: Easy Allies don’t show their financial numbers publicly anymore. MinnMax still does, and I think that’s great for transparency and for a new viewer, builds a social credit like, “Hey, a lot of people are supporting them. These guys must be doing something great!”
At the time of publishing this interview, MinnMax had more subscribers on Patreon than Easy Allies.
Pingal Pratyush: In the same interview, you also said that you did not feel motivated working from home during your Game Informer days, but that really changed with MinnMax. Like you check Discord 300 times a day and find it very rewarding.
Ben Hanson: (laughs)
Work-Life Balance
Pingal Pratyush: How did you manage a healthy work-life balance when you were starting out? Did you ever feel like that one major mistake could ruin all of the hard work?
Ben Hanson: Yeah, I still feel that way. I feel like we’re gonna get hit by a bolt of lightning at some point. (laughs) But yeah, the work-life balance is a huge, huge issue. You can talk to my wife about it. (laughs) You can’t really, but in theory, you should. But no, it’s always getting better and better.
Hopefully, it’s never been disastrous, but I really love my work. So, it’s tough at times to unplug from that. It’s not like, “Oh, there’s so much to do.” It’s more like, “Oh, this is just fun.” There’s a lot of things I’d love to do on a Saturday morning, but making thumbnails for YouTube videos for MinnMax, I genuinely think is one of the most fun things I can do on a Saturday morning. Uh, maybe my brain is broken. But that’s the challenge.
I think the nice thing is, we’ve been really careful and cautious and conservative with our content. I think it’s easy to create content treadmills, is the way I like to put it, of, we have this show, we have this show, we have this show, and they’re all coming to you four times a week. Eventually, you’re just moving so fast, you’re not focusing on what content is actually striking a chord with people.
We have a ton of bonus stuff, obviously but regular shows, I guess it’s basically three main shows a week, which is doable, especially for an organization of our size and hopefully people aren’t being burned out. We do so much bonus content stuff on top of that, there’s always opportunities for heavy weeks and light weeks, but there’s so much content in the world.
We do constant polls and surveys with the community and the community is really happy. We did a satisfaction survey on Patreon in December and I think we scored a 4.8/5 for community satisfaction with MinnMax as an outlet. And if anything, they said that we should create less content than we’re currently doing, that people can’t keep up and that’s a really good sign.
So the wiggle room for the work-life balance is a really supportive community. We’re going to crank out our regular shows. We’re going to have fun bonus content. At the same time, we’re not sprinting all day, every day, to create content that might be a good headline, but no one’s going to be so wowed by this content that they’ll click through and support us on Patreon.
Hopefully, having more time in the week to slow down, plan some bigger stuff, line up interviews, line up trips, create the kind of content that will convert somebody from just being somebody who watches us on YouTube to being like, “You know what, this is a cool outlet. I want to support them directly on Patreon.”
That’s the meat and potatoes of this whole thing. That’s the incredibly important part and something that’s really helpful for us is that I message every new supporter on Patreon to ask them, “Hey, how’d you find us? Why’d you choose to support us? What type of content do you want in the future?”
And just those three questions, thousands and thousands and thousands of times now since launching, MinnMax, hasreally helped get us a better idea of what’s the content that is making people go, “Ah, I need to support them on Patreon.” What is that threshold we need to cross and it’s so rarely ever that somebody’s saying, “Oh, you did a Spoilercast about that new Marvel movie and it was so good I decided to support you.” Not that there’s anything wrong with the Marvel Spoilercast. I love them too and there’s a place for that. But more often than not it’s like, “Oh, that video that Leo made had so much heart that it really got me and I wanted to support y’all because of that,” or, “I just love the positive vibes of the group.”
It’s always different than what you think it’s gonna be but that type of constant data coming in for what is striking a chord with people, that’s invaluable for steering the direction of the company towards focusing on the content that has, the way I like to put it is:
If we’re doing it right, all of our content has a slight slope to it. It’s kind of a light funnel that is bringing people in a slight gravitational pull towards the Patreon. Never so much that it’s obnoxious or it feels like we’re nickel and diming people, but if all of our content can have a nudge for, “Hey, this aspect of the Patreon makes this content even better!” Then I feel like we’re in a nice sustainable place.
Women in the Video Games Industry
Pingal Pratyush: When you were starting MinnMax, you did a Reddit AMA on r/pcgaming.
Ben Hanson: Interesting, yeah.
Pingal Pratyush: In one of the replies, you said, “The biggest drop in Game Informer YouTube subscribers was when we posted one interview about women in the game industry… that always blew my mind.” Do you remember what that was about?
Ben Hanson: I do remember that. It was an interview about a great book in the game industry from Meagan Marie, a former coworker, if I’m remembering this correctly and it was about the legendary women in game development. (Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play)
We did that interview, but for the YouTube numbers, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it was one of those horrifying moments not because of our numbers, but because of just the state of society. We lost like hundreds of subscribers because we dared to post, “Hey, there’s a bunch of talented women in the game industry.” That was incredibly frustrating and you know, shitheads will always exist on the internet and there’s nothing you can do.
I’m really, really proud of the women that we have involved with MinnMax. It makes me really happy when we’re lining up the podcast every week or our content. Every once in a while, we run into those scenarios like, “Oh, this is a podcast and all women are going to be doing this one.” And it’s not like we’re forcing it in a very Avengers: Endgame moment of “all the women are in this shot”. It’s just that the best people to talk about this on the internet from our team is a group of women and that makes me feel really, really glad that the community is responding so well to all the women in our crew. So yeah, it makes me feel good.
Pingal Pratyush: The internet is filled with crazy opinions all around.
Ben Hanson: Oh, for sure.
Ben’s Favorite In Games Media
Pingal Pratyush: Who are some of the people in the games media industry that you truly admire and look up to for their work?
Ben Hanson: I really love Kyle Bosman and his “Delayed Input” YouTube series. He is so obsessed with publisher communication strategies. That’s such a dorky avenue, but I love that. I love Easy Allies and I love Michael Huber over there. We just had him as a guest filling in for somebody in our team going on paternity leave for a couple of weeks over here at MinnMax. It was fun to kind of cross those streams even more. He’s hosting our trivia show every once in a while, Trivia Tower moving forward.
Danny O’Dwyer, really love his focus, his history. He’s also such a geek for game development. It also feels like he’s another one of those people that just doesn’t get sick of this stuff, which is really fun to see. Alana Pierce, I’m a big fan of hers. The Play, Watch, Listen podcast, I think it’s fantastic. Even though she is in game development, she still is endlessly curious about it and I love that in a person not getting sick of this niche passion that so many of us share.
I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton, but those are some of the biggies.
How MinnMax Chooses A Charity
Pingal Pratyush: MinnMax picks causes to support. What is the process? Do you really believe in some cause or how do you assess who to choose?
Ben Hanson: Good question. Yeah, we like having regular charity drives. It’s a nice way to kind of boost community goodwill.
It’s just a great team-building exercise as well, if you want to get clinical about it. We focus on some Minnesota-focused charities. I like focusing on charities where you can zoom in a little bit and know that you’re having a big difference. We supported Hopewell Music in Minneapolis a while back with a charity drive. So to have a good sense of that organization, I visited their office, and I made a video about them. I worked in the non-profit world for years, so I’m very comfortable interviewing and understanding non-profits and stuff.
Anyways, but just getting to zoom in on a company like Hopewell, like, “Hey, your donations today, it directly goes to giving music scholarships to kids around Minneapolis.” At the end of that charity drive, we raised enough money to give like nine kids a scholarship to attend this music school.
That is the greatest feeling to have something that specific come out of these charity drives. Um, and so yeah, for our big charity stream, which happens every November. This last year, we raised money for Connections to Independence. We used to do Extra Life and we love Extra Life. We did that for like a decade. It was really fun. I felt like, “Oh, maybe we could find a more focused use for this money.”
It’s nice to support the children’s hospitals. We did it for so long, but is there a smaller organization that this money would go farther towards? So, this last year, we raised money for Connections to Independence, which is a non-profit that focuses on foster kids in Minneapolis. And they had a fundraising goal of like $5,000 for this month, and then we were able to give them over $60,000.
Pingal Pratyush: Wow. That’s crazy!
Ben Hanson: Yeah, all thanks to the community. It’s just really fun to be able to blow away these smaller non-profits and have them be like, “Oh my gosh, this changes everything.” I think they were bringing some foster kids on educational trips to Africa.
So, that was a situation where it’s like, “Oh, that paid for so many kids to be able to go on this trip.” It’s really a nice feeling to be looking around and trying to find smaller non-profits where there’s going to be a little more bang for your buck.
Advice For Newcomers In Games Media
Pingal Pratyush: That’s really awesome! Any advice for young game lovers who are just started playing games and they’re thinking like, “Oh, let’s write and talk about video games and maybe it will become a career in the future.” What’s your take on that?
Ben Hanson: Don’t bank on it. Don’t plan on it being a full-time thing. If you love games, you have some friends that also love games, by all means, start recording a podcast. It’s some of the most fun you can have with friends, to have that regular focus time every week, like a D&D session or something, you know? Just get together with friends, especially in person, talk about games, laugh about games, laugh about your lives, get that stuff recorded. The tech isn’t that expensive, hosting isn’t that expensive. You can put it up on YouTube if you want to spend a little more effort on it. But keep it as a side thing, you know, if you’re lucky enough for it to grow, that’s great.
Then you can eventually make that leap and make it your full-time thing. But planning on that out of the gate, it’s not a great move. Uh, it’s not a great strategy. It’s a very scary, very competitive world, but do it for the sake of doing it because it’s fun and if it happens to grow, that’s cool, it’ll be a fun side project to try and make that side content grow, but be very, very careful before you jump in with two feet.
I mean, even for MinnMax, when we launched it, my plan was like, “Okay, we’ll probably make a little money from this, but I will fill the gap for the money we don’t make by just doing freelance video production work.” That was going to be my plan. And we were lucky enough to launch and it was like, “Oh, this can pay for my full-time salary and then we can still have room for bringing in contractors.” So, we really lucked out, but that was even my plan after 10 years in the industry, I still wasn’t confident enough to be like, “This is my full-time thing, no matter what.” I was still trying to hedge my bets on my video production skills, you know, so slow and steady would be my advice.
Transitioning From Games Media to Game Companies
Pingal Pratyush: Awesome. Many people in the games media industry, they shift their jobs from like writing about games to working for a major publisher for valid reasons, like job security, insurance, added benefits, etcetera. Obviously if you ever choose to join one of these companies, they would benefit a lot from someone like you, let’s say in a creative team, their internal newsroom, etc. Have this thought ever come to your mind?
Ben Hanson: You know, that’s very flattering, thank you. It’s not like, “I’m getting job offers,” uh, ever. I don’t think a publisher, I’m trying to think, has ever tried to recruit me. How valuable is this experience of building up a community, is kind of a tough thing to wrap your mind around. I don’t… I don’t know.
Pingal Pratyush: I know people who have done community building and then they go into these big companies and they become community managers.
Ben Hanson: Yeah, it’s interesting. I definitely loved Game Informer. I still love Game Informer. At the same time, I was starting to wonder after years and years there, like, “I have certain frustrations.” So, I did apply to, you know, a couple big publishers along the way and did job interviews. I guess like, one in particular, and didn’t get it. So, I dabbled with that path myself.
I’m kind of glad that it all didn’t work out, because then I was able to stay in a field I’m much more interested in and I can actually speak my mind freely, which is a real gift to be independent like this. Because I think just focusing on one product, on one game, on one series, and being so careful with your words and with every tweet, and just the approval processes, and the meetings… that makes my skin crawl. That sounds absolutely terrible. I’m very spoiled by how fast and loose we can be here at MinnMax and I can’t imagine leaving that.
Pingal Pratyush: This is like the final question and then I’ll just ask you a little about the games and all, okay?
Ben Hanson: Sure.
Downfall Of A Job In Games Media
Pingal Pratyush: In the same interview on West Central Tribune, you said that the only downfall with a job at Game Informer that you’ve found was that you have a job that everyone wants.
Ben Hanson: Ooh… yes. Financially, yes.
Pingal Pratyush: Throughout the years, have more things added up to the list?
Ben Hanson: Oh, any more downfalls? Uh, that was mainly focused just on the financial aspect of supply and demand. If everybody wants your job, they can not pay you that well. I was happy with how much I was paid at Game Informer. I don’t have any huge grudges there for a Minnesota living, you know?
Other downfalls in the games media stuff… I mean, yeah, you have to be pretty online. I think I’ve gotten a lot better about not checking Twitter. I have like a Twitter newsfeed and that’s it. I send tweets out for my personal account, but I don’t scroll. That is kind of the sweet spot that I found is I never scroll on that stuff. Cause it, I think breaks your brain.
Um, and so that’s certainly a downside. It’s amazing and I’m not looking for sympathy here, I swear, but it’s amazing how sensitive and emotional it can be. To put stuff out there, to read comments, just people freely and rightfully speaking their mind on Reddit. Every once in a while there’s that comment that’s just like, “God, that’s bumming me out for a couple days thinking about that that person has that perspective on me or our content.”
So yeah, It’s just tough to imagine how sensitive people can be. Being on this side, it’s sensitive and things are going really well for us right now and I’m really thankful. I think about it all the time of when, not if, but when MinnMax starts to crumble and it all starts sliding downhill, I’m going to have a really, really tough time with that emotionally. Trying to, to savor the enthusiasm and goodwill of the community now, I feel like is the best you can do.
Games in 2024
Pingal Pratyush: Great. Any games you’re excited about this year?
Ben Hanson: Astrobot, baby! Astrobot all the way. That’s going to be, now that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is out. I mean, Astrobot has to be my most anticipated game of the year. I love that VR game. I liked the, you know, PS5 pack in game, but having a full, big Astrobot platformer sounds so fun!
In addition to that, I’m trying to think. God, I feel like we’re going to learn some more at Summer Game Fest here, of likewhat the actual roadmap looks like. What about you? What’s, uh, what’s your go to?
Pingal Pratyush: Uh, I was really excited for Assassin’s Creed: Shadows before they revealed it. Because I usually liked the Assassin’s Creed games, which were stealth and all before they pulled in all the RPG kind of stuff. Let’s see, it still seems good.
Ben Hanson: Yeah, that does seem interesting for sure.
Pingal Pratyush: Yeah, but again, let’s see. Are there any major games coming up that we know of right now? I don’t think so.
Ben Hanson: Well, I mean, not major. I think, another one I’m looking forward to is The Plucky Squire. I think that’s still coming in 2024. It’s from the artist who was at Game Freak (James Turner), who was the art director for Pokemon games for a while there. But the game just looks incredible, of like a shift between 2D and 3D and jumping out of a book and running around a little room. But Plucky Squire and Astrobot would be my top-tier for 2024 hype at this point.
Pingal Pratyush: I think Devolver will be revealing that at the Summer Game Fest.
Pingal’s remarks: I meant to say, Devolver will speak more about it at the Summer Game Fest. Still learning, and a long way to go.
Pingal Pratyush: I was excited about Little Nightmares 3 as well, but then it got delayed. So, all we have to do is wait now, right? Let’s see.
Ben Hanson: Right.
Pingal Pratyush: All right. Thank you so much for spending almost an hour with me.
Ben Hanson: My pleasure. I’m glad we can make it work. Sorry, I was kind of worried about my time there, but it’s a stressful time before heading out for Summer Game Fest, but I’m happy we made it work here.
Pingal Pratyush: Definitely, thank you so much. I hope this conversation was good, at least?
Ben Hanson: Yeah, it’s always flattering. I greatly appreciate you reaching out.
Pingal Pratyush: All right. I’ll get back to you when we are ready with the transcript.
Ben Hanson: I mean, do you have time in mind of how long it will take?
Pingal Pratyush: It’s 8 PM right now.
Pingal’s Remarks: 9:30 am for Ben.
Pingal Pratyush: I’ll sit through tonight and let’s see.
Ben Hanson: Oh boy. All right, sounds good. Really appreciate it.
Pingal Pratyush: Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Ben Hanson: You too. Bye.
