Podcasts and Other Misc

OK, so been away a while. Sorry about that.

The blog was also broken and my friend Andy pointed that out. Fixed now. I really need to fix the underlying PHP code to not allow certain characters that tends to break the underlying XML code. It's all time.

So what have I been doing? I've been finishing my book - I'm recording it now as an audio book too. I've written a short story using the same characters and started plotting book 2.

I'm workin on an Iphone App a friend designed. It's been interesting, learning Objective C. I'm about done with all the changes requested, although the next thing is to get DLC working and that's a couple of weeks work all by itself!

But I'm still in the movie business, working for Gribble on Real Time Stage based applications. I've delivered some stuff already that I think will make life easier for the guys here.

This also means I'm still doing the AZ-LA commute most weekends, listening to lots of stuff on my iPhone, which brings me to the subject of this blog post.

Gamer Podcasts. On. My. God. Most of these are just so terrible. I mean just not good.

Generally they are 3 or 4 guys who know each other, have some common ground and who spend most of the 30 minutes to an hour making jokes at each others expense and generally having a riotous time of it, making a few comments about games and such on the way.

It's just awful. These guys are *constantly* laughing at themselves, because, well, they are hilarious, don'tcahknow?

After trying several podcasts - most of which are the same - I wrote down some rules of shit Not To Do.

1. Stop damn laughing at EVERYTHING. This is not an exercise in how funny you can be to the other troglodytes. YOU may think it's funny and they might even think it is too. 99% of the people listening won't though.

2. Stop talking over each other all the time. Have some damn respect for what the other person is saying AND LET THEM FINISH IT. Other wise everyone just talks all over the other people and it's annoying trying to figure out who is saying what.

3. Stick the point - or even have a point? If you are going to talk about something, have something to talk *about*. Have a point you are making. So much of this stuff is 10 minutes of people introducing each other and having a little laugh at each other and then some incoherent rambling. If you have a guest, then have some damn questions for him (or her)!

4. Make the point something relevant to the reason for the podcast. If you have a podcast about games, then Make The Conversation About Games. Not about some grudge clan match you having going on with another podcast, or about what you were doing over the weekend.

In fact, since we are going there, lets just spell it out. You Are Not A Celebrity. No one cares what you did on the weekend, so stop telling us about it as though we are interested. We are not. You are not that interesting of a person, which is why you are doing a podcast and not being employed to host a TV or Radio show. Doing a podcast doesn't make you a celebrity and instantly make you interesting. Please understand that.

Now having said that, I still want to hear what you think. Especially as a Dev, I *definitely* want to hear your thoughts on the game, how it felt, what you felt when you played it, the marketing and so on. This is gold. Please talk about that some more. Make your points - people *are* listening to that and are interested. This is not, however, a trial run for standup. If you want to do standup, please go do standup.

5. Edit the damn thing. Seriously, actually LISTEN to this before you dump it up to Itunes.

6. Do not make it more than an hour. To be fair, most don't. Some even make it 30 minutes. That's ok. More than an hour of banal masturbatory chat makes baby Jesus cry. Yes it does.

7. Engage your fans. If people leave comments on your facebook page, TALK ABOUT IT. That is one way to actually engage people. One podcast gives shoutouts for those who leave comments on Itunes. This is a good thing (even though the rest of that podcast is god awful).

That's just off the top of my head. Honestly we can all do better.

I'm gonna try some dev podcasts this weekend on the drive home - watch this space for comments:)

Posted at 08/02/2010 02:59:20 PM PST by Jake Simpson
Groups : Game Development