I forayed over to the Uneasy Alliance Reddit page (
https://www.reddit.com/r/UneasyAlli..._have_been_out_of_the_loop_for_long_time_but/) and I noticed this post from Kyle about what he does outside of Easy Allies that I thought was interesting. Here it is...
Well, about half that makes perfect sense to me and the other half kind of seems short-sighted to me. On one hand, Easy Allies affords him the unique opportunity to do whatever he wants basically whenever he wants without being exclusively tied to a company. That's an insanely awesome position to have that flexibility all the while collecting a consistent check.
On the other hand, if your other part-time job you've primarily been working at for over a year now is also at the same place you've been working part-time at for 2+ years that seems kind of a bizarre way of looking at things.
Also, saying he'd ONLY own 1/9th of something seems pretty incredible when put against his past employment opportunities outside of EZA. I'm sure he saw less than 1/9th of Gametrailers/Youtube Gaming/Keighley gigs ownership/profits. Unless he goes solo, which might mean no studio to record in and perhaps a loss of a bigger chunk of the Patreon money if he is doing that full-time, Easy Allies is about as cushy as it gets when it comes to ownership by a mile.
The 60k thing kind of rubs me the wrong way as well. I feel like Easy Allies has long suffered from believing they have a "ceiling." They've been 99% of the time over 40k each month since like March of last year (and 100% of the time over 35k since April 2016 which is only a month after EZA was formed) and they still to this day (hopefully the meeting went well today!) haven't defined what their "ultimate" studio goal is or anything after. They have a fanatic and rabid community that they just are blindsided by at almost every occasion. They raised 32k in nine hours a few months ago! When you give us something defined to support at EZA, we've come through in spades. And the thing is, this all feels organic to me. They've fostered a great community and they create unique and amazing videos that every day more people are discovering.
This is all to say, if Kyle doesn't want to make Final Bosman II, he certainly doesn't have to and should not. As someone who found this group because I stumbled on to a Final Bosman back in the day at GT, a half-baked version sounds lousy to me if his heart is not in it. But still, that's one of the amazing things about Easy Allies as opposed to other jobs where you are constantly doing shit that annoys you for little appreciation, this has been fine at Easy Allies.
It's just a weird thing that he is looking at the "value proposition" of it all. Everything he and the rest of the group does adds "value" to Easy Allies. As we've seen especially in the past few weeks, it's a snowball effect. As more people discover them, more people subscribe on Twitch($) and Youtube($) and potentially more people donate to their Patreon($$$) and that opens up the possibility of larger and more sponsorship opportunities if that is what they are looking for. It's also not a prerequisite that the next "thing" he does has to be self-produced or whatever if it going to run him ragged and interfere with other opportunities. I adore everything I've seen from Box Peek, but it is insane the amount of time he has invested in this mostly solo project in something he doesn't have absolute ownership of it that is important to him.
I just don't know for sure and I'm obviously not there, but Kyle has insanely amazing creative abilities and Easy Allies seemingly seems to check a lot of boxes. He has vastly way more ownership than any other job before, absolute full creative control with no hard deadlines and now, the potential resources of a studio that he'll have large input in how it is designed and also 8 co-workers who he seemingly enjoys and that are all motivated on everyone having success as they all share in it.
Saying all that, taking that "leap" in to commitment one way or the other is much easier said than done. It's a hell of a unique situation he and the rest of EZA are in and it's awesome that they re continuing to have such success.