Statement from Second Wind Regarding Frost's Recent Comments

Here are statements from 9 of the 11 owners of Second Wind regarding Frost’s recent comments. The two remaining owners, Matt and Javed, are Australian and (hopefully) asleep right now. If they have anything to add to these statements, we’ll include them in this message.

Yahtzee Croshaw

I've been asked to comment on this, and this is the first and last thing I will say: Frost does not speak for me, I am perfectly happy as part of Second Wind and with Nick as a coworker. I can't speak for Frost's experience but if he wasn't happy he was free to leave at any time, as are we all. I wish him well and that he'd focus on his future rather than trying to stoke petty drama in ways that reflect badly on him more than anyone else.

KC Nwosu

Frost and I spoke at length after his resignation (upwards of 6 hours) in the hopes of reaching an understanding as to why leaving was his only option. I suggested and organized the moderated call between Nick and Frost in the hopes that they could come to a meaningful understanding with one another before parting ways with the pie in the sky chance of forgiveness and resolution (another 6 hours). The majority of that talk went well, but sadly Frost used that call as fodder for YouTube drama. A lot of what Frost has said since has been a skewed version of the truth which I told him myself I found very disappointing. For example Frost is the one who called for the informal vote to fire Nick after the team met and agreed that we put Nick on probation for his social media behavior. Frost then went on to say in a Twitter post the vote wasn't representative of the entire group…(then why did you call for it??)

He has ignored all of the internal changes we've been making to address our complaints about leadership and direction, some of which he specifically came up with and we began to implement. Frost didn't want to wait around for us to do better; he doesn't believe we can. I find that upsetting but it’s within his rights. However the continued focus on Second Wind is unwarranted and baffling to me, it strikes me as his way of forcing us all to do what he wanted in that vote. Nick is not without fault. Internally, I was one of his loudest critics, but I support giving him the chance to correct his mistakes which I can confirm he has been trying to do. Nick does right by the team for the most part and the picture Frost paints is one sided, inaccurate, and worst of all harms the group as a whole while claiming to be a defender of us creatives.

JM8

A lot was raised in this video, but I can only speak to my own experience with Nick and being a co-owner of Second Wind. In my four years of working with him, Nick has NEVER told me what to do in regard to Design Delve. Conversations about what we think might work well for the show (topic- and episode-wise) were always happening, but I never did anything I didn't want to do; all creative decisions were completely up to me.

It’s true that I’ve had my grievances with Nick's management style in the past, but these issues have all been addressed through internal restructuring and reallocation of his responsibilities for the betterment of the company and the community. This was voted on by the entire team and was in motion two weeks before Frost left. Because of this, a lot of the sentiments in the video felt disingenuous. Many of Frost’s points were taken out of context or presented in a way that implies he speaks for people he simply does not, and I believe this was done to bolster the “evil Nick” narrative he’s trying to perpetuate. In reality, the situation is nowhere near as dramatic as it is being framed. At the end of the day, we’re a young co-op company, and we’ve been ironing details out as we go, but I have complete faith in this team and this community. <3

I wish Frost the best of luck with his future endeavors, as I consider him a good friend.

Jesse Galena

Frost brings up some concerning points. I don’t know everyone he’s talked to or every experience he’s had. However, the number of false statements, bad faith arguments, and out-of-context snippets in his claims that I know are untrue makes me suspicious of the things he says I was not privy to. Since I joined Second Wind earlier this year, the amount of work I’ve seen the folks here do to improve our personal and company-sided weaknesses gives me faith in them as individuals and us as a team. I encourage you to read what the rest of the team says to get a fuller picture. We all get one life with an unknown and finite amount of time with it, so I won’t spend any more of mine on this. I’ll spend my time doing important things… like figuring out how to animate a laughing door.

Jack Packard

Firstly, in Frost’s video I am the Lead who said “We’d be fine without Yahtzee.”

Frost and I were talking about hypothetical situations, so I treated the question the same as I would treat “what if Yahtzee gets hit by a bus?” To which my answer was “we would keep going.” Frost taking this out of context to “prove” my lack of judgment is ridiculous.

To me, the biggest issue I have with Frost’s video is the way he distances himself from any decision…as if he was not an owner and had no say in how we operated.

He was a part of the formation of the business from the start, and he was part of 2 weekly staff meetings and a monthly Owners meeting. His claims that Nick isolated staff are demonstrably false in that alone. His claims that Nick is an “anti-creative” iron fist is laughable as I’ve seen, first hand, the back and forth Nick takes with the creative staff…myself included.

The one claim that I will give him is that none of us are/were qualified to handle the business end of things. Yeah, I have a literal clowning degree.

But we’re still here working on it. When we heard from the staff that there were communication problems, we stepped up to fix them. When we (finally) heard from Frost that he wanted to try things with Cold Take (credits/thumbnails) we made it happen.

It’s a shame that Frost felt he couldn’t work with us, because we were working with him.

Marty Sliva

Goes without saying, but I can only speak to my personal experiences. In the ~5 years I worked with Nick and the team at The Escapist and now Second Wind, I never once felt pressured to sway my editorial coverage of a game positively or negatively for outside reasons, and never once heard of that from anyone else. The slightest whiff of anything like that would’ve raised a shitstorm from myself and the rest of the crew.

As far as Gamurs stuff goes, I still have a ton of love and respect for what the editorial team at The Escapist is doing with the site, coupling SEO that keeps the lights on in 2024 with some great original features, op-eds, and criticism. That said, I truly do not believe a future existed for the video side of things at The Escapist that would’ve been sustainable and creatively fulfilling without overworking the skeleton crew that would’ve hypothetically remained back in November.

I love Second Wind, enjoy working alongside the team we’ve put together, am proud of what we’ve made and what we’re continuing to make, and admire the hell out of this community. Are we perfect? No, of course not. We’re a group of passionate, creative humans who bring all of our individual flaws and baggage to the table, and we often disagree on things. But given the positive changes we’ve enacted over the past few months and continue to build upon, I truly believe our best days are ahead of us.

Jesse Schwab

I stand with Nick and Second Wind as a whole. I can only speak for meetings and conversations I was a part of. That said, a lot of the complaints regarding Nick or Second Wind's management, unless shown evidence proving otherwise, are contradicted by various hearsay between management, creatives, and employees thereof. While the most contentious point, that being Nick, does hold weight in regards to clear issues, these are concerns that have been addressed in staff meetings (which Frost did attend), and we as a company have been actively resolving. When these adjustments were brought up to Frost in said meetings, it was clear that his problems with Nick were beyond repair, despite the majority of Second Wind believing otherwise in Nick, the company's direction, and our treatment of employees. It's unfortunate how it went down, as well as how Frost continues his crusade. I hope he can move on from this ultimately petty drama, and continue to make his amazing content that we've all seen in the past- as we all at Second Wind will strive to accomplish ourselves.

Omar Ahmed

I was the lead editor for Gameumentary and The Escapist’s doc projects from Divinity to EVE, but over the years I began to realize that editing these wasn’t giving me the joy I sought from that job and I expressed this to Nick in a call. We had other talented editors more passionate about these things, whereas I found infinitely more enjoyment working on Adventure Is Nigh. It was a bit of an emotional call as the docs were Nick’s baby and he loved the pieces I made, however he was more than willing to allow me to fully focus on those things that I could pour my heart and passion into… and I’m not even an on-screen talent. I know for a fact that he has made the same concessions for others here.

The recorded call with the ex-Gameumentary team featured in Frost’s video is undoubtedly shitty and was a poor way for Nick to address any claims they had. I didn’t know that team, however, I have worked with Nick Calandra for over six years and can attest that the version of him in that call is not representative of the person I’ve known throughout my professional career. Nick has always been supportive of the creative and career goals of myself and those around us even when faced with corporate opposition. I’ve been fortunate to advance from a part time editor to head of video production in no small part due to Nick’s championing of my worth regardless of who we worked for, which has been something I’ve been incredibly cognizant of passing down to the other creators and talent that we’ve worked with.

When Nick’s rigidity in direction at Second Wind had become an issue, the team gathered to address it and Nick was open to redefining his role here. I truly believe that the changes we’ve made are good and healthy for Second Wind as a whole, and that includes Nick. He has his faults and we’re dealing with them, but I truly believe that he’s a good person and an important part of Second Wind.

Also as someone who went on all of those documentary trips, I can attest that none of them were paid for by the game companies aside from the EVE shoot which we were explicit about.

Nick Calandra

Regarding the Gameumentary call clip I absolutely should not have said what I said and there's no excuse for it. It was wrong of me to devalue someone's work in that way, and I regret it and learned from that experience.

Gameumentary was set up with no contracts as a project between friends, which should not have happened as we were dealing with money.

With the Kickstarter done, there was no money to continue Gameumentary. So, my plan was to sell the brand to Enthusiast Gaming, and in doing so, they would continue to invest in the documentaries and hire on the two main editors as I had locked in the Larian Documentary by that point.

At the time, all the business details were under my name. I paid the insurance for the gear, the taxes, the website hosting, had handled all of the Kickstarter finances, and more.

After that call, the four in that call decided to leave, Enthusiast Gaming purchased Gameumentary, and Omar was brought on to work on the Larian doc.

Final Statement from Second Wind

In our opinion, Frost has shown that he is no longer willing to work with us as a team therefore we will be permanently archiving the “Cold Take” Channel in the Discord.

While we’ll always be open to reasonable questions and concerns, we won't entertain muck-raking or re-hashing drama over Frost’s videos.

We’re looking forward to getting back to focusing on what you’re all here for — making silly, informative, and entertaining videos about toys.