6 responses to “Listener Poll: Quality of Game Interviews or Quantity of Game Interviews…”

• 

  Jay Huff October 2nd, 2010 at 21:56

  Just wanted to leave a comment, great content and thank you for your hard work, I myself listen to your podcast mp3 and the audio quality is fine for me especially on a mobile device.

  I definitely enjoy the interviews and the stories of small developers that discuss their game process and technical details, it’s a daily inspiration to me.

  Keep up the great work, and audio is number one for me. Cheers :)b

• 

  Joseph Burchett October 3rd, 2010 at 13:04

  I will be very honest that I stopped listening to the podcast long ago… Simply because of the audio quality. When I say quality I don’t mean the clarity of the audio (that’s fine) more so the production value and the way you approach the interviews.

  The show is by no means bad, but it could just be that I have been spoiled by so many high quality and well produced podcasts out there but I guess my standards tend to be a bit high with this sort of thing. Your shows tend to be more of a “on the road” style… Meaning that your interviews tend to always have lots of background noise, which I find very distracting and the interviews are on the fly, with no “magic” applied. What I mean by “magic” is that like no real quality editing, setups, just straight out interview… Kind of a bit dry.

  It be nice to hear some intro music, a nice set of questions asked which allow for a nice flow between topics. Clearly a well edited show can take hours, but if done right you can have some super high quality stuff. Maybe try setting up some more in house controlled interviews?

  Tons of really great and high quality game dev shows have been popping up, perhaps you can take a listen to those and get inspired? I run a game dev podcast myself; gamedevradio.net, then there is irrational behavior http://irrationalgames.com/insider/irrational-behavior/ and irrational interviews http://irrationalgames.com/insider/irrational-interviews/ probably one of the best produced shows out there. A life well wasted is often noted as being probably one of the all time best podcasts out there because of it’s high production value http://alifewellwasted.com/ it was inspired by http://www.radiolab.org/ then there is Industry Broadcast http://www.industrybroadcast.com/ then there is the digipen podcast https://www.digipen.edu/news-and-events/podclass-the-digipen-podcast/ short sweet and well done. Those are just a few examples…

  If you guys are really looking to re-invent yourself or just wanting to try something new id recommend taking a listen to a few of those shows (and search for more… plenty I didn’t list there) and try experimenting. But I probably still will not listen because I am just not a fan of the “on the road” setup… find background noise way to distracting. Doesn’t mean I don’t check your blog for every new release!

  Podcasts are becoming more new and interesting these days, why not try something new? Interviews are great but why not put a little spin on it? My goal with my game dev show is to explore new areas of game dev that are rarely touched and to offer the content in many different ways (been on a bit of a hiatus but returning soon!) Of course you guys will always have users, but if you want to stand out and get even more listeners try and shake it up a bit… OH and get on twitter, trust me it helps 😉

  Apologies for the long post 🙂 Keep up the great show!

• 

  IndieGamePod October 3rd, 2010 at 15:45

  Hi,

  Thanks for the great feedback. I’ve been listening to the podcasts a few times after initially recording them…and I agree…the background noise can get very annoying.

  At the GDC Online conference, I’ll work on finding more quiet places to interview 🙂

  As for the “on the road” feel…I agree, it may have been over done. I have done Skype interviews before…the benefit of going “on the road” is that it is so much easier to find a high concentration of potential interviewees at conferences.

  I’ll work on a hybrid approach…where there are “on the road” interviews as well as longer interviews via Skype.

  As for additional things…yes, I’m working on adding more interesting content/posts in addition to the interviews.

  I’ve been doing that more this past month. I aim to have at least one game dev related blog post each week…in addition to the 2 interviews released each week.

  I’m also working on setting up a dev contest…we’ll see how that goes.

  Also, keep in mind that a full social games book was released on the show…as well as open source flash/php code to make games.

  I’ll look into ways to highlight some of the non-interview features of the show.

  Thanks again for the feedback 🙂

• 

  Joseph Burchett October 3rd, 2010 at 17:13

  quality over quantity 🙂 it may be easier to get interviews more quickly at conferences but a skype interview gives you time to prepare, something goes wrong you can edit it out or re-do it, create cleaner audio by mixing separate tracks together and so on. You’d be amazed how easy it is to contact a dev via twitter and to setup an interview (everyone loves to chat!) If you release one interview like every two weeks that is super high quality with music and the works I am sure you’d get a lot of people staying (not to say they are leaving now). Instead of churning out two interviews every week… You must be super active like 24/7 o.o I couldn’t do that… It’s not about how many interviews you can churn out but how informative and well produced they are 😛 But really this is just my opinion on the matter. I know everytime id release an episode it would spread like wild fire on twitter… Biggest complaint is that I never seem to dish out enough 🙁

  I am not saying you guys don’t do a good job, like I said I visit your site everytime a new article pops up, love the blog posts you guys do, it’s just the actual interviews need to be mixed up a bit. I think doing what you said about doing a hybrid is the way to go. conference show one day and a skype call another? And yeah, id be forever grateful if you could find a less noisy location to do the interviews 😛

  -Joe

• 

  Don October 3rd, 2010 at 19:50

  Hi there!

  I would first of all like to thank you for all of the hard work in putting together this show.

  I have actually been a listener since your first Joe Lieberman interview in 2006. I don’t have any specific complaints that you haven’t already seen (audio quality). But as someone who is just starting out as an indie game developer, I would love to hear interviews of other small developers (1-3 man shops) and learn about how they do marketing, their finances, etc. Personally, I don’t find a lot of the experimental games interviews useful since a lot of them are students who are just looking to get jobs in the industry and I’m looking to make a one-man business out of this.

  But all in all I find that this is an excellent podcast and I still comeback and listen to interviews both new and old. I think you should be proud that you have come this far and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this show!

  Thanks,

  Don

• 

  IndieGamePod October 3rd, 2010 at 21:58

  Hey,

  Thanks for more feedback…in terms of business aspects…definitely check out some of the folks I interviewed about virtual currency.

  Based on the feedback, here’s what the show will focus on moving forward…
  a) Technical/design details behind a game including interesting/innovative design principles needed to succeed on emerging platforms like the iPhone, Android, social networks, etc.

  b) Business details of game studios/developers

  c) Focus on making sure the background noise in an interview is minimized/removed

  d) Balance between interviews at conferences and in-depth Skype interviews

  e) Look into finding a small music snippet for the beginning of the show

  Feel free to post other suggestions to add to the list 🙂