Yello's Personal Thoughts
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September 22, 2025 - The uphill battle of passion projects
Passion projects are hard, man. Yet the fulfillment is so intoxicating. The big passion project in question is Couch Quests: a game show where we stitch together various video games and create our own themed experiences out of it. My friend Jacquay is the mastermind who originally came up with the idea. In fact, I was the first to hear the first concept over a year ago. I thought the idea was super exciting, but I was admittedly confused about the logistics of it. Fast forward to now, and we have a legit indie show with cast, crew, equipment, and a bunch of local supporters. It feels like a miracle how everything fell into place. So let me tell you the journey so far.
After my friend told me the initial idea in early 2024, we kept it in the back of our minds until a local friend and actress named Rydia AKA MizSylver invited Jacquay to the PokeProblemsPodcast with TheWolfDoctor. After recording, Rydia and Jacquay both expressed interest in some sort of live gaming event, and so Rydia became the first member of the crew as the host.
They recorded the podcast in Urban Media Arts, which also happened to house a big studio room, which was perfect for...idk...a live gaming event? Perhaps a game show?? So that's when we knew it was time to try out this crazy idea. We began learning how to use their professional equipment, including cameras, mics, audio mixing, cable management, etc. It was all very enlightening and exciting. The staff were also so welcoming and enthusiastic about our bright little idea.
My other local friend Tess, who was a coworker of mine, also offered to join the crew with a minor role in production. She also built a custom couch just for us! Around the same time, she invited me and Jacquay to a little gathering, and there we met her good friend, Ash. Throughout our mingling and playing through UFO 50 (amazing game btw), we eventually brought up our budding gaming show idea and he was immediately interested. He outwardly offered to help us, which we gladly accepted. And with that, our initial crew was set.
We began workshopping everything about the show, eventually coming up with the name: Couch Quests with the initial tagline of "The Game Show for Minigame Mayhem". We thought through the basic flow of the show, branding, potential games, prizes, etc. The passion was burning hot.
Through months and months of prep and connections, we shot our first episode in December 2024 with the usual hiccups of a first attempt, but the important part was that everyone had a blast, both the cast and crew. It was my job to edit all the raw footage into a watchable video on YouTube, which debuted in February 2025. Looking back, it's very rough in my eyes, but I couldn't be more proud of what we managed to pull off. And most notably, we had proof to keep going.
And so we kept at it, improving the flow of the show, introducing a live audience, streaming to Twitch, 3D printing custom tokens, introducing more IRL elements, adding another local friend Grace to handle the social; generally obsessing over refining the Couch Quests formula to be the best it could be. To say that this project has consumed my life is an understatement, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Everyone who's ever attended our show have always been impressed by the amount of effort we put in, praising the entertainment and production value. Even my online friends have been super supportive of this huge project that I can never shut up about. The problem is...we're still far from this being our main gig. We've all invested SO much time, money, and energy into this and while we've received some support here and there, the uphill battle can sometimes feel unforgiving.
Being appealing and profitable is a recipe that even I have yet to figure out with my own YouTube channel. Our audience is still extremely small and the views are definitely not there yet. However, whenever people do actually give us a chance, they're always raving about our show. So I have full faith that we can grow to be a unique space in the community. There are many random video game challenge shows out there, but we have yet to see a themed video game show that's almost like a theatrical performance. And we may be the first of its kind.
As I'm writing this, a bunch of necessary change will happen with the future of Couch Quests, which I find equally exciting and terrifying. But rest assured, all of us will fighting for this project for as long as possible...it'd just be nice to earn some money from it, ya know?