wilwheaton

At GenCon last weekend, the most frequently asked question I got was "When do you start the second season of Tabletop ?"

The next most frequently asked question was, "What are you going to play on the second season?"

My answer to both of these questions is: "I have no idea, because we don't know if YouTube is going to fund a second season."

What usually followed was a series of confused noises and some stammering before the final question was asked: "How do I help you get a second season?"

Here is the answer:

The best and most effective way to support the show -- in fact, the only way that Google even cares about -- is to subscribe to the channel, like and comment on the episodes (if you, you know, actually like them) and encourage everyone you know to do the same thing.

Google cares about interactions like that on their Premium Channels (like G&S), and while we all know we're never going to get the same numbers as the longtime YouTubers who are getting five million views per video, I think that if we can stay up in the six digits, we'll get another season.

It's amusing to me that we're not dealing with a studio or a network, but we still have to hit certain numbers to get more funding (just like we would if we were on broadcast television.)

A lot of people have asked me why we don't just do a Kickstarter for season two. We own the IP, so of course that is an option, but it's not our first choice. Google and YouTube have been fantastic partners, and we'd like to continue working with them. So Kickstarter or Indie Gogo or other crowdsourced funding are things we know we could probably fall back on, but if we have enough support from the audience, we won't have to.