Enjoying our work? Now's a great time to join us over on Patreon as we've got a 20% discount running through the end of the month on our memberships! Avoid the dreadful heat and watch a bunch of Patreon exclusive videos we've created, along with enjoying a number of other benefits like sponsor-free videos, written columns and more. www.patreon.com/c/SecondWindGroup
We've also got a community game night coming up with Minnmax on the 12th of August and our mid-year 12-hour marathon fundraising stream on the 16th of August!
Thanks for your support as always and have a great weekend!
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Q2 Report and Breakdown
Hey folks!
It's time for yet another quarterly report and I'm happy to say it's pretty much all good news this time around!
/ REPORT BREAKDOWN
Note: We've added unpaid contracts to the report which means these are contracts we've already signed, but have yet to complete and be paid for. These amounts are marked with ( ) in their columns and listed in the summary. They are not included in the net profit, loss, or warchest in the report.
I'm very happy to report that Second Wind is back to being profitable as of Q2 2025! This was the goal I set for us at the end of last year and I'm proud that we've been able to achieve it.
This was achieved in part by the entire team taking some pay cuts to adjust for our current Patreon income, but we've also continued to see strong sponsor performance, our YouTube revenue has stayed consistent, and of course Lost & Found has quickly become a big revenue driver for us.
If you notice a drop in Patreon income on the report compared to Q1, this was expected as we have a lot of annual resigns in January that give us a nice big boost at the start of the year.
Our goal is still to get back to $45,000 a month on Patreon, and we've made a sizable dent in achieving that goal over the last few months. Thanks to everyone that has signed up or upgraded this year to help us move in that direction.
The big change you'll notice in this report is our Lost & Found income, which is our new work for hire arm of Second Wind. We kicked things off with The Darkest Files at the start of the year as a pro-bono project to get us on the map. Our first paid client was The Horror at Highrook, and now we're currently wrapping up work on the next game from Surgent Studios, Dead Take.
We're also excited and honored to announce today that we've been commissioned to produce a documentary for ArenaNet to help celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Guild Wars franchise. We leave for Seattle this weekend to get that filmed and it will be out later this year.
Lastly, we're working on getting some additional revenue streams going by FINALLY getting our audio podcasts monetized through Spotify (monetizing podcasts is a pain), and doing some experimenting with TikTok by creating specific channels for some of our Shorts series.
We have two ready to go now with a channel specific to Have You Seen This Game? and another for Dungeons and Dragons shorts by Jack and Jesse. We are planning to port Fully Ramblomatic episodes to the platform as well, that channel will be available soon.
It has been a lot of hard work to undo the damage to our business from last year, but I'm extremely proud of the team and the community for pushing through it and we're back on solid ground with a steady path forward for the business.
/ UPCOMING PLANS
For the rest of the year, we're going to be mostly focused on continuing to refine our current shows, merchandise, and some other aspects of the business like our collaborations and audio podcasts which we've finally gotten monetized through Spotify, so you'll see that on our next report as a new revenue stream.
I think we have an extremely steady and solid line-up of shows right now and we want to focus on those for the time being rather than trying to launch anything new right now.
However, we've been having a lot of fun with the experimental videos perk that we now offer on Patreon each month, and the team is excited to continue doing those, and who knows, maybe some of those will become regular stapes of the channel.
As for shows you've been waiting to see more of.
We have a new episode of Storycraft from Jess Hoops dropping this Thursday, and on Monday you'll have a new episode of Game Arcadia from Jenna Stoeber. The goal is to get one of these out a month, so expect more consistency from those shows going forward.
Season 4 of Adventure is Nigh just wrapped as well, which means we're now in the planning stages of Season 5. We'll have more updates to share on that later this year!
We're also deep in editing on the Adventure is Nigh x Balatro one-shot we announced earlier this year. We plan to have that out to you before the end of the Summer.
The interview podcast I have been working on as a Patreon exclusive is getting proper branding soon and will be released publicly on audio platforms. No plans to have it as a weekly release or anything like that, but will do episodes when I have a good idea and subject for an interview.
We also have a ton of events planned for the rest of the year. Here's some upcoming dates to put on your calendars:
8 More Hours of Persona 5 - August 2nd
Second Wind Mid-Year Fundraiser - August 16th
Gamescom Opening Night Live - August 19th
Second Wind Night of Horror - October 30
Plenty to look forward to on Second Wind for the rest of the year.
As always, thank you for sticking with us and supporting us, and we welcome your feedback, ideas, or suggestions!
Until next time,
Nick Calandra
Editor-in-Chief
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Over on our Patreon we've got some exclusive and experimental content that we've been posting for the last few months! New episode of Yahtzee's Lore series, an experimental video from Jack Packard, Jesse proving he knows nothing about hockey, and plenty more to come. All available now at the $5 tier along with many other benefits!
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CHANNEL UPDATE + Q1 REPORT
Hey folks!
It's that time again for another one of our quarterly reports. Financial breakdown is in the image above, and below we'll go into it in a bit more detail, as well as our upcoming plans for Second Wind.
Bit longer report than usual so enjoy the read!
/ REPORT BREAKDOWN
I'm very happy to report for Q1 2025 that we've made good on pretty much all of our goals we had for the start of the year.
We reduced our costs to account for the change of Patreon income from last year, we have had strong sponsor performance, we got the DFTBA store up and running, and Lost and Found has been going very well for us despite only starting up a couple months ago.
We completed our work on The Darkest Files, and we're about to wrap up work on The Horror at Highrook. We took on The Darkest Files pro bono to get our foot in the door and give ourselves a case study to work with, and The Horror at Highrook is our first paid client.
That game will be released on May 1st, and you'll see our work attached to that for launch.
We're also about to close a deal for a much bigger project as well that we can't disclose right now, but we're damn excited about it.
We've been able to get our margin close to back to breaking even and with the work we have incoming for Lost and Found and sponsors for Q2, we should be back to being profitable.
However, we as a team decided to take pay cuts across our entire team for Q2 to make sure we're not straddling that line going forward. I do want to be clear that we took this step as a cautionary measure, and not because of any dire circumstances. The decision was made as a team due to the current economic climate and the volatility of both the games industry and our own Patreon exit reports.
We're expecting sponsors to be quieter for Q2 with all the current financial uncertainty in the US. We also saw a big uptick in people's exit surveys indicating job loss, reducing subscriptions to plan for potential financial hardship and so on.
Yahtzee and I took the biggest pay cuts as we promised we would at the start of Second Wind, and nobody from the team was let go with these pay cuts. Everybody is OK here.
Overall, everything is going in the right direction for us as evidenced in the report attached above and Patreon has stabilized for the most part which of course helps us plan ahead for the future.
/ UPCOMING PLANS + PATREON GOAL - $45,000 / month
For Q2 we're going to be very busy. I won't share all of our plans here as we'll have a fun channel update video to share in early May, but we've got a lot cooking.
To kick things off though we're giving ourselves the goal of getting our Patreon back up to $45,000 a month. This amount would essentially make sure we're covering our base costs every month between Patreon, YouTube ad revenue, and sponsorships.
The other money we pull in from merchandise, work for hire projects and anything else we do will help keep replenishing our war chest to keep us secure for the long haul.
We'll be making a big push on our Patreon for the next couple months including giving it a visual refresh, some additional promotion on our channel, and doing some event streams to drive interest.
We've been working on adding a lot of extra value to the Patreon over the last few months, including bringing ad-free videos down to the $5 tier.
Here's some of the new things we've been doing exclusively for Patreon:
Monthly Yahtzee Lore video (next up: Sonic)
Podcast interview series from Nick (Tonda Ros and Abubakar Salim out now, and more on the way)
Monthly experimental video from a different member of the team
NEW At the $10 tier we'll be adding in a new fun group video each month. First look at these in our upcoming channel update.
For the public we've been working on some new stuff as well quietly:
New pilot for a potential video series from Jess Hoops. First look coming in our channel update.
New pilot for a potential video series from Jenna Stoeber. First look coming in our channel update.
Pre-production on a new Adventure is Nigh one-shot campaign. First look coming in our channel update.
Regular video essays from Marty Sliva.
Recently launched Discovery Queue with good feedback so far.
For some general things we're planning for May and beyond:
Fun collaboration event streams with other independent games media outlets.
The return of Game Night streams + more focus on community events.
Taking a look at our weekly streaming schedule and refreshing some things + new ideas.
Our annual Second Wind fundraising stream event in June.
Hopefully that gives you a good overview of where everything is at right now. The team is doing well, and we're excited about all the different things we're working on.
As always, we're super appreciative of all the support you've given us. We love making this stuff as much as you love watching it and hanging with us on streams.
I also want to give a personal shout out to the team for all the hard work they've put in this year already and working together to overcome some early challenges for the company. No other group I'd rather be working with every day of the week.
Thanks for reading this update and any feedback you have is welcome below.
Nick Calandra, Editor-in-Chief
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Throughout April we'll be bringing some new updates and content to our Patreon!
We recently added sponsor / ad-free videos to our $5 tier alongside all the other existing benefits, we just released a brand-new Yahtzee Lore video on Mortal Kombat which is exclusive to Patreon, AND later this week we'll be releasing a potential new podcast series on Patreon featuring an interview with the developer of Blue Prince, which is the highest rated game of the year so far!
We'll have a dedicated channel update video later this month with some additional announcements and changes. We hope you'll check out the Patreon and throw some support our way if you enjoy our work as we continue to make the Patreon even more valuable for your support!
If you're not on Patreon, the Kingdom Hearts lore video released at the start of this year is now available for everyone on the channel.
Thank you!
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[Audience Feedback Request!]
As April approaches we're looking at doing a little Patreon refresh now that the Spring rush is slowing down a bit with game releases.
While Patreon isn't our only source of funding as we have sponsors, merch, YouTube ad rev, and work for hire projects, it is the one that provides us the most stability and allows us to plan ahead to keep making cool new things for you.
Even $1 a month collectively from a portion of our audience goes a long way in supporting things like Adventure is Nigh, Documentaries, more long-form essays, new experimental series, etc.
One of the changes on Patreon we've been looking at is our sponsor-free videos, a perk at the $10+ tier that not many have taken advantage of.
We're looking at potentially moving the sponsor-free videos perk down to the $5 tier so that more people take advantage of it, and ideally, we can convince some of you to join us on Patreon for the first time.
Our $5 tier already offers weekly columns from Darren and Marty, ad-free podcasts, a monthly exclusive experimental video from our team, podcast write-ins and more.
For now, we're just looking to get a pulse from the community on these changes.
A) Are sponsor-free videos a perk you would take advantage of if it was brought down to the $5 tier? This would include YouTube Memberships as well.
B) If you are not currently a Patreon supporter, would this be something that would encourage you to join?
A lot of the feedback we've already generated is that people generally like our sponsors because we make them fun to watch and are well-placed at the end of our videos, which is great! So, if you have ideas for other perks that might interest you, we're looking for suggestions there as well.
Thanks for your time and feedback! If you decide to join Patreon today we're also running a promotion for 15% off your first month or first year. Use code A0824 to take advantage of that!
Have a great weekend,
Nick Calandra
Editor-in-Chief
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Today we’re excited to announce Lost & Found, the new work-for-hire arm of Second Wind.
From day one, we planned to do work-for-hire projects to help keep Second Wind sustainable. Thanks to your incredible support during our first year, we were able to hold off on that and just focus on our core content.
Now that things have settled down, stabilized, and we’re into our usual weekly grooves again, we’re finally ready to start on this next part of our journey together.
Lost & Found will provide clients with multiple areas of support including premium asset creation, trailers, dev diaries, custom projects, social media assets, and outreach strategy.
Our goal is to provide affordable support to indie developers to help their games stand out in an increasingly overcrowded market. We’re in a unique position to bring a content creator’s mindset to indie developers looking to catch people’s attention, as we ourselves have years of experience and know what we’re looking for when deciding on what games to cover.
Lost & Found will be completely separate from any of our core Second Wind output, with its own social media pages and YouTube channel. And any of the games or projects we work on will not be covered on Second Wind’s official channels in any form.
This does not extend to our personal social media accounts, and clients may still do ad campaigns with us - which of course we will properly disclose as always.
This work-for-hire arm will also not impact any of our work on Second Wind as this is being led by myself (Nick) and Javed, with Omar and Matt providing support as needed.
Our core focus remains on Second Wind and all of the shows, podcasts and livestreams we provide every week.
Patreon is and will remain our core source of funding for all of the work we do, and we’re grateful for each and every one of you that has decided to support us. We’ve continued to add additional benefits to our Patreon tiers as time has gone, and plan to keep introducing new ideas and perks to make your subscription to us as valuable as possible.
If you want to keep up with the games we’re working on, you can follow Lost & Found over on Bluesky and subscribe to the Lost & Found YouTube channel (@LostandFoundSW). This channel will act as a showcase of our work and curation page for the titles we provide assistance to.
We’ve already been working together with our first client, the extremely talented team at Paint Bucket Games, on their upcoming game The Darkest Files.
The Darkest Files is a historical investigation and courtroom game based on true crimes during the Second World War. Investigate cold cases, search for clues, interrogate witnesses, immerse yourself in the crimes, and defend your case in court to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The trailer linked here (https://youtu.be/paO80ZUjEaI?si=Hk_GB...) was developed completely in-house by Javed Sterritt with assets and support provided by the Paint Bucket Games team. We’re also helping them with social media strategy, asset creation, and outreach strategy as they quickly approach their March 25th launch date.
If you’re a developer, publisher, or anyone else that is interested in working with Lost & Found, feel free to reach out.
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Thanks for all the love and support of our Animal Well Documentary release today! We've got a new shirt design up from our very own El Cheshire to support the release of the doc over on DFTBA! store.dftba.com/products/animal-well-documentary-s…
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Adventure is Nigh, Season 4, finally premieres THIS SATURDAY here on Second Wind. It's been a long wait, but it will have been worth it! Next week you'll also see the return of Marty Sliva's show, The Archive, with a look back at Peter Jackson's King Kong video game, and our Animal Well Documentary is wrapping up editing which means we'll have a release date to announce next week!
As always, if you enjoy the work we do consider supporting us over on Patreon to get additional benefits like ad-free videos, a monthly experimental video, merch discounts and more!
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Second Wind is the home of informative, interesting, and entertaining content from creators like Yahtzee Croshaw, Jack Packard, James Read, Nick Calandra, Darren Mooney, and more.
We publish premium videos, podcasts, livestreams, and written columns on a near-daily basis, including beloved shows like Fully Ramblomatic, Design Delve, and Adventure is Nigh!.