Indies FTW: My favorite indie series on Youtube

I really should be working on my novel right now. I will at some point... I just wanted to take a break after work and some errands I had to take care of today. I still think the stigma exists that whatever indies produce is crap. They didn't go at it the traditional way. As an indie, some people hate you right off the bat and think nothing you do is worth anything. Now this blog post isn't about me. I'm an indie author but I'm just barely ahead of pace to sell 400 books this year. While I'm stoked that my number in 2013 is way up from the 156 in 2012, I'm going to talk about some indies that really made it big just by pushing up in the rankings on Youtube. Here's three great indie series that I think everyone should check out.

1. Kid History

Kid History can be enjoyed by everyone. Their videos are hilarious. Basically, the group of guys and girls from Utah asks their kids to explain how some stories that their parents told them went down and then the adults act it out using the kids voices. Don't pretend you're too cool to like this kind of stuff. It's funny. They also have a series of Kid Snippets where they ask two kids to just talk about what would happen in a certain situation. Here's their latest Kid History video. You can watch more on the Youtube channel BoredShortsTV.

2. Mario Warfare

Mario Warfare was funded by a Kickstarter a while back. They had two episodes made when they completely ran out of money and asked to be funded via Kickstarter so that they could continue. Imagine Mario with mobsters, guns, karate, and a shoutout to all sorts of other games (Donkey Kong appears in episode 3 and I know they have some more outside characters written in for future episodes.) The makers of Mario Warfare asked for $20,000 to finish up the season. They raised $38,647 over their one month Kickstarter campaign and the first episode is currently over 3.3 million views. I'll put the first episode of Mario Warfare here and you can decide if you want to watch episodes two and three (I know I'm trying to be patient while they work on episode four.) If you want to watch more, they make these on the Youtube channel beatdownboogie.

3. Video Game High School

Have you heard of Freddie Wong? He made a bunch of cool videos on Youtube basically just showing people what he and his roommate Brandon could do with special effects. He has some seriously badass videos and if you haven't checked them out... you really should. In 2011, Freddie and Brandon decided to make their own series called Video Game High School and they ran a kickstarter to fund it. Their month long Kickstarter campaign raised $273,725. Not bad for an indie video maker taking a shot at their first series. They released one episode a week and the episodes were amazing. The show also featured other well-known youtubers and actors. The sauce boss from EpicMealTime is the principal. The guy who played Chuck on Chuck (you know... the Nerd Herd secret agent) was a teacher at the school. Freddie made a brief appearance as well in a few of the episodes. I can't really go into detail on how much this series rocks. I'm not even going to try to give you a brief description. As a guy who considers himself a geek... season one of VGHS was ridiculously awesome. I'll throw up episode one on Youtube but all of season one is available on Netflix as a linked together movie instead of short installments. Freddie and Brandon are making season two right now and their Kickstarter campaign for season two brought in $808,341. That's a crazy amount of money for an indie film maker. If you want to see more of their videos, check out the channel freddiew.

And there you go. I've given you all the tools you need to waste some serious amounts of time if you like any of the three series I clued you in on. You're welcome. Go support these indies and watch some epic Youtube. Oh and if you want to support another indie... GO BUY SOME OF MY BOOKS! I have links all over my blog for a reason. Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble... I have stuff all over the place in lots of formats. :-P