5punk

Last night Grimmie came up with a rather splendid suggestion. Inspired by the podcasts by [url=http://www.videogameshow.org/]VideoGameshow[/media], a vaguely structured (this is 5punk remember) discussion of games and gaming news to be podcasterised. Apparently VideoGameshow is just this and is very popular. The reasons it might work for us are that it's funny, and we are, they go off on tangents, and we do, and they know their onions, as do we.

I think at the very least it's worth a one-off experiment and if it proves popular among 5punkers maybe making it a monthly thing. With luck it could catch on with lurkers and randoms and attract a few more 5punky sorts.

So comment and suggest please. Some things to consider:

Do it while playing a game to be discussed? Could be funny, but could also degenerate into a podcast full of 'omg you just killed me!!1'.
Set an agenda beforehand? It couldgive us a little bit of structure and a starting point, but it might detract from our random, meandering conversations.
Try to avoid 5punky nick-names (BEEF, TEEF etc) to avoid confusion, or use them to get across our style?
Have a structured attendance or use whoever shows up?
Which software to use?
Would you listen?
Would other people listen?
Why can dogs lick their bollocks but I can't?

I don't have answers to all those questions, but one thing that occurs to me is that it might be good to structure each episode around a particular game, but basically only expand a little on what we do already. I envisage it going something like:

1. Gather participating 5punkers on TS
2. Have a natter about general stuff that's going on in the world of gaming, the internet and inappropriate humour, as we usually do while waiting for someone to find a server, acquire the latest patch, get beer etc
3. Play a game of some kind, or maybe even a couple of games like last night
4. Games stops, have a bit more banter about the game we've just played, what worked, what didn't, what made us laugh and what gave us the rage.
5. Edit the good bits into a short Podcast-friendly format
6. ...
7. Profit.

Haven't yet listened to the video game show stuff, but I think that this might work for us because firstly it's only a little more structured than what we already do and the gaming bit will help in providing some kind of decent content.

It's a 5punky Podcast, so it should use our general style, although perhaps some brief explanation of our often food-based nicknames for games is needed. In fact, if one person is coordinating/presenting each week's podcast, then they could do stuff like that in the intro. Also, while we don't necessarily need a formal agenda, the organiser might have an idea of a few topics which we could discuss and, if appropriate, steer the conversation in that direction.

Just my unconsidered brain farts on the idea, but I shall ponder it in more detail.

My experience with podcasts is that people will listen to almost anything if you put it out as a podcast, so this seems like a good idea. I'm not trying to put down your witty repartee of course.

Also it might be a good idea to try to avoid something you have to edit. Otherwise someone has to decide what's good and what's not and also do the actual work.

Just a couple of thoughts.

WHAT 5PUNK THINKS WILL HAPPEN:

High-larious comedy shenanigans and teamspeak banter to amuse and entertain the internet


WHAT WILL ACTUALLY HAPPEN:

Bouts of silence broken periodically by horrible puns, shouts of "THOMAS!" and "LIKE A BOSS!"



Nah I'm just kidding, this could be pretty fun. I'll make the theme music!

Shada wrote:WHAT 5PUNK THINKS WILL HAPPEN:

High-larious comedy shenanigans and teamspeak banter to amuse and entertain the internet


WHAT WILL ACTUALLY HAPPEN:

Bouts of silence broken periodically by horrible puns, shouts of "THOMAS!" and "LIKE A BOSS!"



Nah I'm just kidding, this could be pretty fun. I'll make the theme music!

It's a good point though, joking or not. We can be pretty funny, but if it's just a stream of in-jokes and stuff about what's happening in game it'll be shit. This is where we could fall down - having some self control so that it's not just a mess.

Format of the VGS, for reference:

Banter - Usually while people are waiting for others to turn up, just random shit they babble about

Title theme tune - I have asked Shada to magic one up using his skillz

Intro from 'host' - Introduces who is there that day, so people can remember reoccurring names

Affiliates advertisements - They're part of a group called "Gamercast Network" and do a little pre-written spiel about what the other podcasts are doing that week.

Articles - Host asks each person in turn if they have any 'topics' to discuss, ie gaming news, or new games they've played.
I think this one would be great for us, especially if we can get a person interested in each particular genre. Ie. shooters/mmo/beards for a bit of a cross-section

Tangents - Yeah, it often splits off into tangents, what people are doing in real life, dumb thoughts people have during an article discussion, bad puns. We won't have any problem with this, I'm sure.

Mailbag - They advertise an email address, "mailbag @ ...com" and a skype username for people to send messages to, to ask stuff. Considering they're at episode 205 at the moment, they have a bit of a fanbase, possibly something to consider if we get regular listeners

Forum stuff - Anything that listeners have posted on their forums that they've found interesting

Gimmick thing - As a tradition, they used to give out "Shattered Dream Pies" to people or things that had happened in the world that were bad. This included bad games, natural disasters, retarded news items etc. On the flip side they also gave out "Ham Sandwiches" to people or things that had done good.
As far as I can remember, this came out of a tangent of one of their earlier episodes and stuck, I'm not saying we should just come up with something gimmicky, but if we find something funny, making it a regular feature wouldn't hurt.

Closing - w/bloopers

---------

Thoughts:

Skype is really good sound-quality wise.

Audacity is an okay sound-editor. Garageband for Macs is a brilliant sound-editor.
They used to heavily edit the podcast to take out the crap, but now try and do it in 'one take'.

Having half-an-hour from our "Game of the night" might be fun, as a feature, but I'm not sure the whole thing should be based around our cries of pain.

Ask people to come with at least one thing to talk about, even if it's something we've seen in Trev's news forum, or a recent game we've played so we can give a mini-review style look at it.

Using nicknames for games is okay, and let's face it we're so used to using them it'll be more natural, so long as the first mention of said game on each podcast is the correct version - to avoid confusion.

The VGS have an introduction to show who's there, if people can match a nickname to a voice after a few episodes, then it's not so bad if a new person joins, or if an old person is at a ninja concert.

Stick the podcast on a few different free directories, from what I've seen most podcasts in the UK are very specialised and only talk about one game in particular, we're a varied community and I think we ought to use that to our advantage, and talk about all sorts of things in our 30/60 minute slot. Most of the other gaming podcasts in the UK are done by big companies (last I checked) like Gamespot or PC Gamer mag - there's an opening for uncensored, community banter.

Sounds like a good plan there Grimmie. I really think that this has some potential, despite most 5punky ideas fizzling out before getting anywhere. It's not too far from what we already do, and requires a minimum of technical input that could delay things.

A few more things I've considered;
Locking the participants in a channel to prevent random 5punkers joining in without realising.
Setting a maximum number to avoid it becoming chaos. Five sounds good off the top of my head.
Choice of participants. This is going to be another one of those awkward situations which might get a bit un-5punky. I think most of us know if we would or wouldn't be any good on a podcast, so hopefully it won't be a huge problem, and with five people it's not a huge problem if some people have more lilting tones than others. The presenter though should be constant and hand picked, I think. Maybe a couple for the sake of cover.

Thoughts: SPECIAL 'LIVE' BRUMBASH/JOCKBASH/PROFLAN EPISODES!

spoodie wrote: Also it might be a good idea to try to avoid something you have to edit.

Very not this. No matter how hard you try, the occasional silence, non-funny fluff up or loads of people talking at once are inevitable. Thats not to say that it will need extensive professional levels of tweaking, but some basic chopping of totally rubbish bits will make it a shitload better.

Thoughts-

Attendance - a regular presenter or two and whoever shows up sounds good to me.

Maximum number of people, this might work against things like baconz where we get more than 5 people for it, generally we don't get enough for a lot of games for it to be chaos (we might however if we schedule it as being casted) I can see the need to restrict numbers, but too few and it will be quiet.

Do we pick games we haven't played before too? Just to give initial impressions and keep a diary of a few minutes of update each podcast to update the world about what everyone is up to, or why we stopped playing because it was shit.

Agenda - we could play a shootin game and talk about it, but also other games. Example would be we play baconz and talk about it but also about the medal of honour re-invent and beta, or speculate about battlefield 3.

I think we'll need to provide structure which we meander through with the presenter occasionally prodding people about new things so it all gets covered.

Joose wrote:Very not this. No matter how hard you try, the occasional silence, non-funny fluff up or loads of people talking at once are inevitable. Thats not to say that it will need extensive professional levels of tweaking, but some basic chopping of totally rubbish bits will make it a shitload better.

Fair enough. I was just thinking that you'd want to minimise the effort, to begin with at least. Also I was thinking more to avoid approaching the recording as if you're going to record a whole load of stuff and edit it down to the highlights. That'd be a lot of work and ramshackledness can be entertaining in itself. My favourite podcasts are unedited and not because the speakers are faultless pros.

Another gaming podcast you might want to check out for inspiration is One Life Left. It's a radio show on an obscure London based station that's put out as a podcast as well.

HereComesPete wrote:Thoughts-

Attendance - a regular presenter or two and whoever shows up sounds good to me.

Maximum number of people, this might work against things like baconz where we get more than 5 people for it, generally we don't get enough for a lot of games for it to be chaos (we might however if we schedule it as being casted) I can see the need to restrict numbers, but too few and it will be quiet.

Do we pick games we haven't played before too? Just to give initial impressions and keep a diary of a few minutes of update each podcast to update the world about what everyone is up to, or why we stopped playing because it was shit.

Agenda - we could play a shootin game and talk about it, but also other games. Example would be we play baconz and talk about it but also about the medal of honour re-invent and beta, or speculate about battlefield 3.

I think we'll need to provide structure which we meander through with the presenter occasionally prodding people about new things so it all gets covered.

I was thinking that a whole podcast of us playing games was a bad way to go. Just being on TS during games can piss me off due to the amount of "aaaaaaaaaaghIgotshotbastardfuckcamperfaglolololol" that pretty much prevents any kind of conversation either by taking up all the comms or by interrupting anything longer than two words. Have some of that in by all means, but as more of a feature rather than the whole thing. Apart from Fred, which is funny as fuck to hear people screaming at. All just my opinion of course.

This is a Good Plan™

It might indeedy grow legs and become a popular podcast. I agree with dog pants though, in-game recording would be mostly unintelligible racket, so maybe just using snippets of in-game comments could be used.

I don't think we should restrict ourselves to just game sessions though. We may want to talk about an up-coming game, or a game not many of us own.

I know Lanarchy.co.uk do a similar podcast, i helped them sort it out. I know it got very popular quickly, as the demand surprised me and I have to host them on a server which can handle the bursts of bandwidth required when a new one comes out.
They've done a few now, you can listen to them here, might give some inspiration: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LanarchyPodcasts

As with any 5punk plans, i expect this will be a bit of a mission to get going. However if we stick it out i recon we could churn out something worth the effort

Not that I'm furiously procrastinating at all, but I just saw the 5punk page on facebook, and that could be a good place to try and promote any podcast we did come up with. We could even develop a social media strategy for it.

I had a listen to a bit of the Lanarchy.co.uk podcast and it seemed pretty good. Have to remember to add it to iTunes.

I should possibly add the caveat that whilst I obviously have an interest in a 5punk-cast, I don't actually listen to any podcasts of any nature, let alone gaming ones, and so my comments are coming from a perhaps ill-informed point of view.

So what do we need then? Next weekend it's a bank holiday apparently, and there's a good chance I'll be home alone. Perfect for drinky 5podcasts.

Software
Subjects
Cast
Game

Please suggest.

Apparently Skype works for the voice, and something else to record it. A vague list of game-related topics to meander through (new game, retro game, what's wrong with action platformers?), who wants to be in it or recommendations of who you'd like to hear, what game we should play for the 'listen to us play like mongs' section.

Come on, lets try to make one of our hare-brained schemes work.

Grimmie wrote:Skype is really good sound-quality wise.

Audacity is an okay sound-editor. Garageband for Macs is a brilliant sound-editor.
They used to heavily edit the podcast to take out the crap, but now try and do it in 'one take'.

Having half-an-hour from our "Game of the night" might be fun, as a feature, but I'm not sure the whole thing should be based around our cries of pain.

Ask people to come with at least one thing to talk about, even if it's something we've seen in Trev's news forum, or a recent game we've played so we can give a mini-review style look at it.

Using nicknames for games is okay, and let's face it we're so used to using them it'll be more natural, so long as the first mention of said game on each podcast is the correct version - to avoid confusion.

The VGS have an introduction to show who's there, if people can match a nickname to a voice after a few episodes, then it's not so bad if a new person joins, or if an old person is at a ninja concert.

Stick the podcast on a few different free directories, from what I've seen most podcasts in the UK are very specialised and only talk about one game in particular, we're a varied community and I think we ought to use that to our advantage, and talk about all sorts of things in our 30/60 minute slot. Most of the other gaming podcasts in the UK are done by big companies (last I checked) like Gamespot or PC Gamer mag - there's an opening for uncensored, community banter.

In fact Grimmie already pretty much answered my questions days ago. Which is good, because I'd like him to host it. We've all got Skype, I'll look into editing myself if nobody else is inclined.

Fancy it Grimmie? I'll volunteer myself to speak up, although (and I suspect most people are the same) I don't know how interesting my voice is.

Aye, I hate the sound of my own voice though, so editing should be interesting.

Anyone care to add an interesting mix of accents? Deject? Mr J? Bali? I like that idea.