[Episode 30] Breakin' It Down

[Voodoo]

http://image.colonyofgamers.com/imcast.png (http://www.immortalmachines.com/)

PAX East is over, and the world is... well, honestly pretty much the same. The Immortal Machines podcast is not the same, however, as Episode 30 brings some changes with it, which we'll be happy to detail for you if you'd like to hear.

It was a small crew around the table for this episode, with only my co-host Robert and our ever-faithful producer Clayton able to join me, but we promise that the thus-somewhat-briefer episode is still crammed full of love and joy. ...Well, it's full of something. Open it up and find out! The bulk of the discussion looks back on PAX's first trip to Boston, which was a mixed bag but still certainly positive on the whole. Attention is also given to some older titles that Robert and I have been enjoying with the aid of some enhancements: specifically, Freespace 2 with the Freespace Open (http://www.fsoinstaller.com/) project, and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl with the STALKER Complete 2009 (http://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-complete-2009/news/stalker-complete-2009-release) overhaul. If either of these has previously escaped your attention, let me entreat you to check them out, as they are both excellent examples of a loving community keeping a great game alive past its "shelf date".

Ordinarily I would next tell you about our Retro and Indie titles for the episode, but I'm not going to! You'll find out why when you listen. Suspense! (Spoilers: They're coming soon.)

Before I run off, two more links that I mentioned near the show's closing: the newest version of Dwarf Fortress (http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=1ij35dabjj1241ij07aust8ja6&topic=51948), and the 6-years-in-the-making 1.0 release of Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe (http://www.openttd.org/en/).

Without further ado, Immortal Machines is.... Breakin' It Down (http://www.immortalmachines.com/?p=212).

Hosted and Summarized by Eric [Ravenlock]
Participants are Robert [Trebor], and Producer Clayton [Voodoo]

Direct Download (http://www.immortalmachines.com/public/podcast/Breakin_It_Down.mp3)

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[The Continental]

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe! God damn, I played the ever living hell out of TTD back in the day. If anyone wants to give the multiplayer on this a try, I'd love to.

[CappinCanuck]

Not sure how I feel about the show being broken up. I was never one to mind the longer podcasts. But I suppose if the talent likes it better :)

The only bad part I foresee is having to download multiple files throughout a week, loading them on the mp3 players and such, rather than 1.

[Voodoo]

Not sure how I feel about the show being broken up. I was never one to mind the longer podcasts. But I suppose if the talent likes it better :)

The only bad part I foresee is having to download multiple files throughout a week, loading them on the mp3 players and such, rather than 1.
The main purpose is to get more exposure to the indie title, mod and retro title that we cover. With them being released apart from the main podcast, it will give those sections a lot more exposure, especially to people that are looking for information about a particular indie game, mod or retro title. :)

Plus, this provides an elegant solution for the length of the podcast as well as more frequent updates to our feed. ;)

[Ravenlock]

We're absolutely open to feedback about the new format - as Clayton says, a few things that went into the decision to try out a new way of doing it. In the combined show we were covering a lot of fairly diverse topics that didn't necessarily connect to each other in any way, and sometimes all lead to lengthy discussions. With them broken out into separate pieces, in addition to pulling more attention towards them, if a listener wants to hear the main discussion and the mod sounds cool but they already played our indie game and they don't want to hear me ramble for 20 minutes about it, they can skip that part. ;)

And since we only record every two weeks (and sometimes less often), having content to trickle out helps us avoid having the feed "go dark" for weeks at a time as a regular occurrence.

But as always, we're producing content we hope people will enjoy, so if folks like this, we'll stick with it, and if they don't, we'll try something else. :)

[nabokovfan87]

I kind of agree and disagree with captain. I enjoy the fact that things are split apart simply because (to be honest) I usually skipped over those segments because it was something well before my time, or just so outdated to be irrelevant to my tastes anymore. Kind of like reviewing or discussing atari 2600 games in todays landscape.

I feel like with the 10-30 podcasts I listen to a week something you all might see has perfectly normal is extremely forumulaic and just boring. I don't mean anything I am saying as an insult as I am in an extremely rare case (funny how that usually happens), but just to throw the concept out there.

To be fair though, splitting things up would do something that I think is beneficial to the show. Keep an eye on the download count, particularly if something is getting little to no downloads week after week, perhaps inform us of that and then ask why and perhaps improve the show. Let's let the number decide?

[Ravenlock]

No offense taken, nab, that's part of why we did it - we talk about what we like talking about, and that's what we're going to continue to do, but obviously we'd like to make it easy for people to consume the content they want to, and we recognize that not all our segments are necessarily going to appeal to everyone. :)

It'll be a little odd, maybe, to get truly tiny podcast episodes out of it - I think the indie one forthcoming is under 20 minutes - but hey, with every other gaming podcast running 2+ hours now, maybe something bite-sized will be refreshing. ;)

[nabokovfan87]

Lol, I know I said this before, buy you would be suprized at how many people have the exact same sentiment as you do. Give a check out to the IGN RSS feed. its around 7 or so different podcasts, 1 a day on each respective console and pc, and then 1 video per day along with 1 strategy video. I like the thinking of convenience, just makes me laugh how circular everything is these days.

[Ravenlock]

Well, by "every other gaming podcast" I admittedly only mean the ones I listen to, but that's not a small number. ;) There was a time when IGN's stuff was on my radar, but frankly the quality went downhill awhile ago and I took most of them out of my iTunes rotation.

My current playlist is primarily Giant Bomb, Rebel FM (and their Game Club), Gamers With Jobs, In Game Chat, Idle Thumbs, Retronauts, and Active Time Babble, most of which routinely crack the 2 hour mark and none of which are ever under an hour. Prior to that I also listened to GFWLive (long since dead) and 1UpFM (also now defunct, kind of turned into Rebel FM), and they also followed the long form model.

So compared to the shows from which I take most of my contextual knowledge, smaller, modular episodes is in fact a departure.

[Voodoo]

So compared to the shows from which I take most of my contextual knowledge, smaller, modular episodes is in fact a departure.
...and experimenting a bit.

Our shows aren't released on any sort of set schedule. For instance, you can't expect to see a new podcast posting by Immortal Machines within 2 weeks of the prior episode. This has been, well, unheard of with our recordings. It was only when King Gorilla was doing the IM podcast was the episodes being released weekly but we soon found out it takes a considerable amount of commitment of time and responsibility to attend the recordings.

Learning from those lessons in 2008, I decided that it was best to keep a approximate 2 week schedule between our recordings with episodes released approximately 2 to 5 days after. So far it has worked out fairly well. The thing is, though, is that our show doesn't really regurgitate information...

The main topic is always something that all participants have reviewed, agreed to talk about and are interesting. We always do the 'what have you been playing?' in the beginning, which is fairly standard on any gaming podcast. There's the indie section that covers a different indie title each episode and often a game that isn't covered in the Free & Worth Every Penny nor The Independent features on CoG. The retro section talks about a certain title in the history of PC Gaming, which may or may not be of interest to certain people but it is interesting to other. Then the newest section covers large scale mods that are available.

The problem was these sections don't seem to be given enough exposure for their own right. For instance, if someone is looking for a Battlestar Galactica Mod for Sins of a Solar Empire, we've got a part of our podcast about it. If it was a mod we covered in Episode 30+ though, there would be a stand along IM Podcast episode entirely devoted to that mod. Previously, they'd have to go through other podcast contents that they may or may not have interest in. If our Battlestar Galactica podcast get's their interest, perhaps they will download the other sections or perhaps not. Maybe they will just wait for the next our next mod podcast instead...

So, I'll be watching the download numbers. We are going to try this format for at least the next 3 episodes and see how they do in comparison to the standard megasize...

For Episode 30:
Main Podcast 4/10 = 55 mins
Indiecast (Minecraft) 4/14 = 14 mins
Retrocast (Command & Conquer) 4/18 = 26 mins

Anyways, hope I kinda made sense, nabokovfan87...

[nabokovfan87]

...and experimenting a bit.

Our shows aren't released on any sort of set schedule. For instance, you can't expect to see a new podcast posting by Immortal Machines within 2 weeks of the prior episode. This has been, well, unheard of with our recordings. It was only when King Gorilla was doing the IM podcast was the episodes being released weekly but we soon found out it takes a considerable amount of commitment of time and responsibility to attend the recordings.

Learning from those lessons in 2008, I decided that it was best to keep a approximate 2 week schedule between our recordings with episodes released approximately 2 to 5 days after. So far it has worked out fairly well. The thing is, though, is that our show doesn't really regurgitate information...

The main topic is always something that all participants have reviewed, agreed to talk about and are interesting. We always do the 'what have you been playing?' in the beginning, which is fairly standard on any gaming podcast. There's the indie section that covers a different indie title each episode and often a game that isn't covered in the Free & Worth Every Penny nor The Independent features on CoG. The retro section talks about a certain title in the history of PC Gaming, which may or may not be of interest to certain people but it is interesting to other. Then the newest section covers large scale mods that are available.

The problem was these sections don't seem to be given enough exposure for their own right. For instance, if someone is looking for a Battlestar Galactica Mod for Sins of a Solar Empire, we've got a part of our podcast about it. If it was a mod we covered in Episode 30+ though, there would be a stand along IM Podcast episode entirely devoted to that mod. Previously, they'd have to go through other podcast contents that they may or may not have interest in. If our Battlestar Galactica podcast get's their interest, perhaps they will download the other sections or perhaps not. Maybe they will just wait for the next our next mod podcast instead...

So, I'll be watching the download numbers. We are going to try this format for at least the next 3 episodes and see how they do in comparison to the standard megasize...

For Episode 30:
Main Podcast 4/10 = 55 mins
Indiecast (Minecraft) 4/14 = 14 mins
Retrocast (Command & Conquer) 4/18 = 26 mins

Anyways, hope I kinda made sense, nabokovfan87...

Makes sense, and I completely understand. Places on my rotation (former and past) like espn, revision 3, sarcastic gamer, and ign all have the same type of setup where you spread things out, or things are short bites instead of large once a week/once in a while things. I was just pointing out the irony in how cyclical everthing is.

To what you said though, perhaps there is a segment where people can find out about a bg mod, email. Quite honestly, and I mean this with all sincerity in the world, the podcasts I enjoy the most have the least amount of format. Something like IGC where they talk and hit record really gets me intrigued into each episode, while something like Kotaku podcast bores me to tears, not to mention everything they say pisses me off. Then you have something like giantbombcast where "whatcha been playing" is 2 hours long, just because. 2 hours of "well I played this for a bit, picked up this, then this..." It's madening to me how that even because a segment instead of an introductory sentence, hell, just make it a topic of discussion and not disguise it as a "whatcha been playing" segment, because we all know you want to just tell us either "x is good", "x is bad", or the far more interesting "you will never believe what I found/happened this week!"

Needless to say, I quite enjoy your show, and that's why I am here posting and listening, keep up the great work, and please don't take anything I am saying to heart, other then watch the download numbers.

[Ravenlock]

Correction: I slipped up at one point and said that Jeff Green was angry at Civ IV's always-online DRM; hopefully it was obvious that I meant C&C 4 since that was the context of the discussion, but if it wasn't, now it is. ;)

[Ravenlock]

We’ve made no secret on Immortal Machines about our love of mods and mod tools. Giving gamers free reign to exercise their creativity by providing the tools to build virtual worlds is one of the best things any developer can do.

Every once in awhile, they go ahead and just make that the game. And that can be even better.

Markus Persson’s Minecraft (http://minecraft.net/) is a remarkable title, resembling nothing so much as a landscape of infinite legos, beckoning you to create whatever your heart desires and share it with the world. It loads right in your browser, so getting in game and convincing your friends to join you couldn’t be easier – but there’s a chance you already know that, because that’s just what the Colony of Gamers crowd has already done (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=16493).

When you’re done listening to the episode, please go take a look at that thread. Check out some of the screenshots of the amazing things that have sprung from the community’s imagination and spare time. Then go check out the server for yourself – it’s free to try, and if you want to support the game financially you’ll also get access to a “survival mode” that turns the whole thing into a roguelike of sorts, which I understand is terribly hard and also brilliant.

I could say more, but… well, here, I did: in the Episode 30 Indiecast (http://www.immortalmachines.com/?p=222).

Hosted and Summarized by Eric [Ravenlock]
Participants are Robert [Trebor], and Producer Clayton [Voodoo]

Direct Download (http://www.immortalmachines.com/public/podcast/Minecraft.mp3)

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[nabokovfan87]

Correction: I slipped up at one point and said that Jeff Green was angry at Civ IV's always-online DRM; hopefully it was obvious that I meant C&C 4 since that was the context of the discussion, but if it wasn't, now it is. ;)

Lol, I thought you just had some fancy copy of Civ IV, good to know.