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The Podcasting Bug – Part 1

May 14, 2015 by Belghast

Love of Spoken Word

I grew up with I guess what you would call a love of both the written and spoken word. The moment I got access to my first copying machine, was the moment I first tried to create my own comics and magazines devoted to whatever I happened to be into. When I got my first word processor I went through a renaissance of sorts in trying to publish information about the games I was playing and distribute it freely among anyone who was willing to take it off my hand. So when I started blogging significantly later in life it was of no real shock. I had been “trying” to publish my own content for years, just doing so with limited success. I would be willing to bet that other bloggers “of a certain age” can tell very similar tales of youthful exuberance. While I grew up in the MTV generation, my sentiments will more than likely always lay with the era when print media was king.

Another constant in my life however was Radio and Public Television. I spent most of my childhood watching Nova and Mister Rogers Neighborhood, and when I rode around in my fathers truck it was almost always tuned to the radio station playing Paul Harvey. When I started choosing my own radio stations to listen to I found the best use of my time to listen to NPR and use that morning lull as my way of catching up on the world. From there I discovered so many broadcast programs that were more entertainment than education, and I was absolutely hooked. In many ways podcasting is the extension of this love for the spoken word. Some bloggers catch the bug, and feel like they have to move into doing something more than just writing. This happened to me a little bit over a year ago and now I have two different podcasts to show for my obsession. Many other attempt to maintain three for four different shows devoted to different segments of their experience. If this is happening to you, I thought I would take a moment this morning to talk about some of the issues I had to deal with when approaching my first show.

Format

One of the first decisions you are going to have to make is what exactly you want your show to be about. Just like with your blog you have to make a decision as to what you want your format to be. Single game or single topic blogs and podcasts will be significantly more popular than generalist ones, however in my experience your audience will also be considerably more fickle. If you listen to a Wildstar podcast religiously for example, and you stop playing Wildstar… then your reason for listening to that podcast also goes out the window. If you listen to a more general podcast you ultimately end up listening for the cast of people, and those sorts of listeners tend to be significantly more loyal. That said all of the biggest podcasts that I know of tend to be devoted to a very specific niche.

For me personally I knew that there was no way in hell I would be turning this into a career so I was not extremely concerned about trying to get the biggest possible audience. I am interested in a lot of different things, as are my friends… so for me it was a no brainer that we created AggroChat to reflect the conversations we already had on TeamSpeak on a regular basis. In my experience podcasts tend to fall into four broad groups as far as the actual format goes. I have listened to great podcasts that fall into each of these categories, and not so great podcasts as well. Ultimately you have to pick whatever works best for your cast, which leads us to the next point.

Topic Focused

I chose to refer to this as topic focused, but more often than not this tends to mean a “News” show where the hosts cover a series of predetermined topics. This requires you to keep good show notes and that they get circulated before the actual recording of the show. Believe it or not we actually started AggroChat trying to follow this format, but quickly realized we were not the “planning” type people. These tend to be the most “predictable” shows as far as recording time goes, since you have a clear list of goals that you want to accomplish in each show.

Conversational

This is ultimately the format that AggroChat became, because we are bad at having structure. The idea here is to record a somewhat natural conversation with a group of people. Topics flow in and out of the discussion and segway naturally. The problem here is that this only works if the folks you are recording with are very very familiar with each other. While the first format relies heavily on planning, this format is all about interpersonal chemistry. I personally love this format, but I am sure there are just as many people who are annoyed by it. This is not a format you can carry off if you are assembling a group of people that do not regularly spend time together.

Narrative

This is the podcast that tells a story. There are many different versions of this but probably my two favorites are This American Life and Radio Lab. This is the format that requires extreme planning but adds a whole new dimension… that is significant amounts of post production editing. When it works you have this wonderful audio journey through the story you are trying to tell. When it doesn’t work, you end up with jarring gaps. This is one of those formats that I aspire to try some day, but just don’t have the technical ability yet to really make it work. If you are an audio editing wizard though this might be your natural format, mixing in clips and music to support the tale you are trying to weave. The folks that can do this one will have my constant and undying respect.

Interview

This format is probably the most straight forward and at the same time extremely flexible. The concept is simple, in that one or more hosts asks questions from one or more guests. The challenge is in scheduling a constant flow of new guests to sit down and record with you. You can put as much planning into this format as you need to, or you can do it completely off the cuff. When I record “Bel Folks Stuff” for example I ask a few standard questions but the rest is taken from queues in the conversation and I try and go wherever the conversation wants to lead. When Braxwolf records Beyond Bossfights he seems to have a master plan laid out in exactly what he wants to ask his guest. Both work and both are completely viable methods, so ultimately you have to figure out which version works best for you. Chances are you can even make a hybrid approach work a well. This format relies mostly on the ability of the hosts to “coax” a performance out of their guests.

Casting

There are lots of different styles of podcasts and each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. The more people you add into a podcasting cast, the more chaotic the end result. The fewer people you have, you lose some of the depth of having multiple opinions chime in on topics. The “Solo” podcast is its own beast that I personally am not a huge fan of. It always feels like I am being lectured to more than joining in on a conversation. I am going to talk about a few of the styles that I have experienced and some of the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Solo Podcast

This is the traditional “one man show” to borrow the showbiz term. You have an idea that you want to run with and you just start recording. The problem here is that like I said above these shows tend to be extremely unbalanced sounding. The solo podcast works well if you are telling a story, and going to be referring back to audio or music clips to help flesh out your narrative. These shows also work amazingly well for five to ten minute “news update” type formats. Where the format tends to grind on is when dealing with a thirty minute or longer show of just one voice talking. The positive is you can literally record whenever you want to, and are not limited by other people to make your ideas work. The negative is… you have to carry all of the weight on your own shoulders.

Duo/Trio Podcast

I feel like the majority of podcasts fall into this category, where you have a preset group of two to three voices that present topics every single week. This is the cornerstone of the podcast for a reason, because it works extremely well. In three voices especially you can get just a wide enough range of opinion to make most topics work, but not have too many competing voices to let a discussion descend into chaos. The challenge here then becomes scheduling. Unless you can find a time every single week or whatever your recording schedule happens to be… it becomes a juggling act trying to get all of the key players in the room at the same time to record a show. I know many shows that will record multiple episodes in the same weekend and stagger their release to make up for scheduling conflicts. I know personally we have done this twice with AggroChat and they made for some very long evenings. Once you get into a routine then more than likely things will stabilize and get significantly easier. Duo works well but the problem with Duo is when one person is gone… you have a solo podcast. With a Trio you can limp through with just two people relatively successfully.

Ensemble Podcast

The ensemble cast is the most forgiving when it comes to scheduling conflicts. It tends to draw on a large list of potential co-hosts and arranging as many of them as you can on a given night. This is ultimately what AggroChat has turned into over time having had ten different people who have appeared with semi-regular frequency during the course of our time recording it. Ultimately however in order to make it work you are going to need a large group of friends who are interested in podcasting. The strength of this format is that you can incorporate new people easily and in a pinch you can record with significantly fewer people than normal. The problem being that once you get over five people on a podcast it starts to get extremely chaotic. We do our best to mitigate that problem with our format, but ultimately AggroChat is what it is… a rambling chaotic mess sometimes. I feel the casting is extremely sustainable as recently Rae expressed interest in stopping the podcast for the time being, and we were able to work in a couple newer voices in her place.

Interview Podcast

This one is a very different beast in that essentially it is a solo podcast… with one additional guest that varies each time you record. This is the format I chose for my Bel Folks Stuff podcast, and it has its own set of interesting challenges. The key problem for me has always been scheduling people. When dealing with a few people on a regular basis you can pick a single time to record that works for everyone. When you are constantly changing who your “partner” is on a show by show basis you end up having to work with the new persons schedule. This has been pure hell for me at times considering a lot of the people I have wanted to talk to are in vastly different time zones. This has completely destroyed any semblance of a release schedule for me, and as a result I have purposefully kept from submitting the show to TGEN because I never know when I will get time to record one. I personally find the format gratifying as a host because it allows me to have interesting long form conversations with “folks” that I care about. Due to all of the problems I would highly suggest against this being your “primary” podcasting format.

Release Schedule

As with blogging the key to building a reliable audience is through regular and predictable release schedule. There are people who start their day by reading my blog, because they know it will always be there waiting on them. Similarly there are a series of podcasts that I start listening to Monday morning as I begin work because I know they will be reliably waiting on me. As such I have found that the interval is not nearly as important as simply sticking to something. I personally jumped in the deep end and started immediately with a “weekly” show. This means every single week like clockwork you have to crank out a show, edit it, and get it posted and publicized. AggroChat requires less editing than most shows out there, and still without a doubt this dominates my Saturday night and Sunday morning getting things ready for the world. There are many nights that I go to sleep about 2 am after editing, and then still have to get up the next morning and deal with the publicizing. This is the last point I am going to talk about today so I thought I would talk about a few of the release schedules that I have seen work.

Weekly

Like I said this one is at times sheer madness. You are signing yourself up for a radical shift in your lifestyle to incorporate making a podcast into each and every week. Depending on the type of podcast this can be easier or harder. For example we use an ensemble cast, and Kodra is more than willing to “host” but I have never really cross trained anyone else on the whole “creation” process. The positive here is that people LIKE listening to new content every week. Your audience will grow faster because you are creating more content for them to consume. We even have some insanely loyal listeners that have gone back through our entire back catalog of new 56 episodes. Just realize that the weekly show is a massive challenge, and you have to be fairly stubborn to make it work.

Bi-Weekly

I hate the term bi-weekly because it means two things… twice a week or every other week. In this case I am referring to the every other week schedule that several podcasts use. This is still a strenuous schedule but gives people an “on” week and an “off” week to recuperate and plan things around. I have been exceptionally lucky that I have a wife that supports the madness I am involved in, but for a lot of married couples locking away a night every week is going to be a problem, especially once you factor in children. The bi-weekly schedule tends to be this happy medium making it equal parts flexible and manageable while still churning out enough content to get folks “hooked” on your format quickly.

Monthly

There are a myriad of issues with the monthly format. For starters you have to be extremely careful when you schedule exactly when you want to record. Theoretically you need to record with regular interval meaning you would need to release the first week of every month or some similar schedule. The problem is life often sabotages you, and while it sounds good right now that we will record in three weeks… there might be a birthday or an anniversary or some other hurdle that gets in the way. I am horrible at keeping calendars so there is no way I could do a regular monthly show. I release “Bel Folks Stuff” on a semi-monthly schedule, but I have actually missed an entire month before. The big problem I see with a monthly show is that in theory you have to always have a great show. When you do a weekly show, you can recover from having a shit week pretty easily. When you are only releasing twelve shows a year… they all pretty much have to be golden to keep folks interested.

Recording Your Podcast

When I set down to talk about all of this I quickly realized that I would have to chunk this up over the course of multiple posts. In this first part I focused on the “design” of your podcast. In the next part I am going to focus on the nuts and bolts of recording your first episode. The final part to follow after that will talk about the nuts and bolts of hosting. My hope is that this inspires folks to go off and create their own podcast, but also inspires them to realize there is a lot of planning that goes into making it work. As I am drafting the next pieces I would love to know if there are any specific things that you would like me to take a detour through and cover.

Foundation of Folks

April 9, 2015 by Belghast

Statistics Funk

One of the problems with creating content is every now and then you will have something that you are very proud of, but the community doesn’t seem to be all that interested in. That is not to say that I am not proud of most of the things I am involved in. I love what this blog has become, and I love AggroChat… but that seems to be less about me and more about the group dynamic that we have assembled. However I feel like “Bel Folks Stuff” was one of those projects that I poured more of myself into than most. The idea was that I would grab interesting people and have natural conversations with them where we discussed whatever happened to be on their mind. I feel like for the most part that mission has succeeded, and I am very proud of the six episodes we have so far. In the episodes I have talked with:

Unfortunately after the release of the latest episode I did that thing you are never supposed to do… I did a deep dive into the statistics. In many ways this secondary podcast has been a labor of love, and right now it gets several orders of magnitude fewer listeners than AggroChat. So I question… what I did wrong with it? Maybe I have simply done a poor job of advertising it? It isn’t part of The Gaming and Entertainment Network so that right there is one strike against it. I release them with questionable regularity, which is another strike against it. I also question whether or not it was a good idea to treat it as separate from the other things that I do. I have wondered for awhile if I should have just released it as part of the AggroChat content stream.. as a sort of bonus episode or something. In any case… since looking at the stats I am exceedingly bummed about the limited audience. Maybe there just is not the appetite for listening to gamers rattle on? Anyways… this isn’t going to necessarily stop me from making more but I also feel like my guests have been awesome in their willingness to do the show… when there really isn’t much benefit from it.

Foundation of Folks

For some time now, I’ve had various people tell me that I use exercise any connections I have within the games industry to turn the “Folks” podcast into an industry interview show. I suppose I could do that, but the problem is I am afraid that would fundamentally change the nature of the show. It might be idealistic, but I wanted to create a show without pretense about its purpose. I wanted to have people on and just talk, and whatever topics we happened to cover naturally is what we would end up talking about. If I have people on the show that are known for this or that, there is the pressure to ask them about what they are famous for. By the same token, I would feel obligated to give them time to plug whatever hot project they happen to be working on. At that point we have a traditional interview show and not what I was hoping for. Maybe it is strange but I was hoping to have authentic conversation with a bunch of people, and almost forget for a time that we were recording the conversation.

I guess I question if I could talk “industry” folks into that sort of notion. So far the people I have had on the show I have a deep connection with already. These are people that I have gamed with, blogged with, or exchanged more tweets than I can count. Right now it feels like I am just having a conversation with a friend. I worry that I cannot keep up that dynamic with people I am not quite so personally invested in. Then there is the problem of how would I even sell this notion to someone, when I obviously cannot guarantee much in the way of listeners. That is the obvious sell for most big podcasts… is “talk to me and I can give you X number of ears”. I don’t have that going for me on any level. So yeah right now I am in this existential funk about “Bel Folks Stuff” and even though I love doing it… I am questioning if it is worth the scheduling headaches and the extra work on my part to keep it up. I want to keep it up, but damn… just bummed.

Second Static

Last night when I got home… I was wallowing in my frustration over the podcast… so much so that I forgot that last night was to be the inaugural running of the second static group within the Free Company. The guild has been insane, and we are apparently so active and so prevalent that we jumped from 16th to 6th in the FFXIV free company activity standings. I will say for some time there has not been a single city I have been in that I did not at least bump into one person with the [GREY] tag. In order to help get the second static off the ground, myself and Kodra has offered to fill in as whatever role they needed us in. I ended up main tanking to Damai’s off tank as we managed to work through several content items. So while I started the evening in a bit of a malaise I finished it pumped about the prospects of having two active static teams within our free company.

We started off with Garuda Extreme, which I know very well… just not well enough to explain adequately apparently. This always seems to be a thing for me… I can do something, but I can’t necessarily tell you how to do it. For awhile we tried using the Duty Finder to fill our missing slots, but honestly had significantly more luck creating a party in the Party Finder. We met a few nice people on the server as well. We managed to clear Turn 1 and Turn 4 of Binding Coil of Bahamut as well. I was pleased that we one shot 4, since I remember having a significant amount of trouble with it initially when Ashgar and I tanked it. To add to the confusion for the sake of this arrangement… the roles were flipped from what I am most used to. The positive is… I feel like I could actually farm four over and over in an attempt to get my bear mount. I need to figure out which piece of high allagan I am missing so I can focus down those. I would really love to wear that full set of gear. Anyways the end of the evening was definitely better than the day, so I am thankful that I have such an awesome group of people to spend my game time with.

MooCowadin

March 2, 2015 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff 5 – Evening with Qelric

We are going to put on our timey wimey stuff hats and pretend that this show is being released during the month of February, as it was originally intended. When I record a Bel Folks Stuff I tend to give the victim as much time as possible. So I approached Qelric back in January to talk about this show… and she every so graciously accepted. The problem is that life happened in the time between, with her getting an absolutely horrible case of chicken pox towards the beginning of the month, and me dealing this this insane bronchitis mess towards the end. The result is we recorded the “February” episode in March… and that I supposed is just fine so long as it came out in any form.

Qelric is quite literally one of the only youtubers I watch with any regularity because she brings to her craft a style that you don’t generally see on youtube any more. She presents extremely content dense videos in a news like format, making them far easier for me to digest without the rambling exposition. If you are not familiar with your videos, I highly suggest you check them out. On top of this however Q is just a downright interesting person, and we have interacted for what feels like years. I had a delightful afternoon/evening sitting down to record this episode. Before we knew it a couple of hours had passed and we had a mammoth hour and a half long show. The awesome thing is… even after the mic stopped recording we wound up talking for another thirty or forty minutes. I love it when the conversation is natural and flowing. Hopefully you will all enjoy this as much as I did recording it.

[download the podcast]

Moocowadin

Yesterday was a surprisingly busy day, with dealing with the publishing of two different podcasts and a normal blog post. As a result especially while waiting for Qelric to get online, I wanted to play something but did not want to get too terribly engaging. With the introduction of the Heirloom system and the 6.1 patch, it has greatly increased my desire to alt. My number one frustration while trying to level a character is trying to make sure I have level equivalent gear. I realize that gear is never as important as I seem to make it, but I like to have at least as good of a weapon as possible while pushing through the levels. Now previously I had some heirlooms, but I had to choose which character would get to use them. Even with the ability to send them cross realm, it became a mess trying to track who had what and I was constantly afraid I would end up losing heirlooms in the mail… because I have done this before. The new system however is pretty much ideal for me, since I can generate copies of heirlooms on any and all characters.

When The Scryers server merged with Argent Dawn I set about creating eleven place holder horde characters, since I did not know how the actual merger would work. It makes me extremely happy that I can have 11 Alliance characters on Argent Dawn and 11 Horde characters on The Scryers… and use them to play with my AD Horde friends. I have always been one of those players that tried to span the faction divide whenever I could and through various community efforts I developed just as many bonds on the red side as the blue. I always feel like a louse however for never really spending much time leveling a character on the “other” side. As a result I started working on Belgrace my Moocowadin yesterday while waiting for Qelric and while recording the podcast. As of this morning I am now level 18 and starting the Ratchet area. It is insane just how fast the levels come when you are completely kitted out in heirlooms. The only slot that I do not have is the ring, and I am simply not a good enough fisherman to get that.

A Confidence Boost

Over the last few weeks since the launch of the Final Fantasy XIV 2.5 patch I have greatly tapered off the amount of time I am spending in World of Warcraft. It has become a Tuesday/Thursday experience for me largely which means simply showing up in time to raid. Now granted I am logging in periodically throughout the week to run garrison missions but in the grand scheme of things that takes ten minutes or so at a time, and I am really not online that long. I’ve felt kinda horrible because one of my long time friends has been slowing improving her ilevel gear wise on her priest. Every so often she would give me an update and yesterday she told me she had hit ilvl 626. I knew the answer before I asked it, but I asked her if she had managed to do any LFR yet? As I suspected she said no, that she was wary of raiding… and didn’t think she was ready for it. I hopped on Lodin my hunter, that could still use gear from Highmaul LFR and offered to queue with her for moral support.

Finni had raided before during the early days of World of Warcraft, and as such the bulk of her experience dated from the 40 man era. So when she thinks “raid” she equates it to super serious business. Fortunately and unfortunately at times… Looking for Raid is anything but serious business. Within what felt like fifteen minutes of queuing we were through the first section, and she got a much needed confidence boost… and thankfully a little bit of gear. I remember the first time I queued for Looking for Raid upon coming back during Pandaria. I was scared as hell because the concept of a raid for me too was “serious business” time. Thankfully we have this wonderful system that allows players without the time to dedicate to at least be able to get in and see the fights in one form or another. She ended up walking with a few upgrades, and I did as well… and can now queue Blackrock Foundry on my hunter. I think we both benefited from yesterday equally, because it seems like she won’t be quite so frightened of the LFR queue.

#WoW #Paladin #BelFolkStuff

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H1Z1 Early Access

January 16, 2015 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff #4 – An Evening with Petter

This month the Bel Folks Stuff podcast focuses on the amazing Petter Mårtensson. Petter has been an extremely busy man, and has had a ton of side projects over the years. In his normal fashion he even offered to guest on Aggrochat if we could ever work out the time zone issues. Our listeners could know him from any number of places. For several years he worked for the european gaming magazine GameReactor both as a writer and as an on-air anchor. Similarly while dormant for several years, he is the man behind the Don’t Fear the Mutant blog. On the podcasting front he has been extremely active in the CSICON network serving as a host on several different shows including Claims the Normal, Three MMOSketeers, Enochian Frequency and most recently Who’s Who.

In addition to all of this he was involved in creating the A Tale of Internet Spaceships documentary talking about the culture behind EVE online. Now he is also writing a monthly Final Fantasy XIV column for MMOGames. Like I said… he is an extremely busy man and I am thankful he took the time to sit down with me and have a length conversation… mostly about non-gaming stuff. I think the most interesting thing about the conversation was the delve into Futurism and the things we would love to see. We also geeked out a bit about Doctor Who, which apparently is something that happens on every podcast now that he hosts the Who’s Who show. Definitely was an interesting conversation, and I hope you all enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it.

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H1Z1 Early Access

Yesterday Sony Online Entertainment launched the H1Z1 early access. This was originally supposed to go live on Steam around noon, but various delays pushed it back into the late afternoon. When I got home from work it was available and I figured $20 but satiate my curiosity was a fair price. However the game apparently is very much “not quite ready for primetime”. The above screen is what greeted me when finally after my World of Warcraft raid I fired the game back up. Early in the evening I was not able to get into the server select screen at all so I guess in a way it is progress? I am sure this is another case of “underestimated demand” and I seriously cannot blame them. Throwing a game up on Steam early access as your initial forray into alpha… is pretty damned daring. Right now the game has roughly 2000 reviews, roughly half of those are positive and half are negative, so if only a small fraction of the population comments… that means they sold a ton of early access copies.

I love the concept of a zombie survival game… the problem is I don’t want to have to deal with the world pvp aspect of games like Rust and Dayz. So when this game was announced I had zero interest, until it was confirmed that there would be PVE only server environments at launch. Hell I didn’t even mind that the original icon in the server browser list was a teddy bear. I am a carebear, and I am okay with this notion. While it is immature to taunt the player base that has proved to make up the overwhelming majority of MMO players… I can deal with it. I am sure H1Z1 is going to be a mess for the near future, but hopefully at some point it will be playable and interesting and allow me to play a base building game in a walking dead style world. If it gives me that… then I am largely going to be happy with it and will consider it $20 well spent.

Mar’gok Attempts

Early in the week on Tuesday we had a really phenomenal night or raiding, meaning we cleared 6/7 on normal and 2/7 on heroic. This freed up last night to work entirely on Imperator Mar’gok. While we got a bit of a late start due to key players running a bit behind, we accomplished just that, an entire night of attempts. Mar’gok is one of those fights with a lot of moving parts, and it is simply going to take a lot of repetition before we have our “click moment” when everything falls into place. We however did make good strides in that direction. Essentially there is one transition that is wrecking us… that we need to figure out how to do more smoothly. Once we have that transition down I think we will down the boss. All of that said we did manage to start getting him down into the 40% range each time, which tells me we are likely on the cusp of victory.

It feels really good to be doing current content in World of Warcraft. During my time back in Pandaria I attempted to raid with a group that was in theory several content patches behind. There is just something demoralizing about doing that, and especially since we never seemed to make any real forward momentum that would lead me to believe that at any time we were likely to get to current content. When LFR served as my primary source of upgrades… I had to ask myself why was I even bothering with the constant nights of wiping. This expansion however has been a completely different experience. I really want to kill Mar’gok but I have the utmost confidence that we will, and likely before the Blackrock Foundry raid opens. I am just bummed that I won’t be around Thursday night next week… because more than likely after reviewing the logs we will make some tweaks and finish this raid.

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