A little over a week and a half ago I asked TWIVGB compatriots Ben Abraham and Ian Miles Cheong if they wanted to join me in restarting the CDC podcast series. I’ve wanted to do another ever since I last appeared on episode 3. I love talking to intelligent people, intelligently about… well anything really, but the subject here is video games. Given the time of year, I figured it was only fitting that we discuss the year in a retrospective of events, stories and games. I knew the three of us wouldn’t be enough. It took a lot of work and this was a very busy year. Ian suggested both Kirk Hamilton and Denis Farr. Both said yes, which was both surprising and headache inducing.
Kirk lives in Pacific timezone, myself in Eastern, Denis in Berlin timezone, Ian in Malaysian and Ben off of the Sydney clock. Sufficed to say setting up a time where everyone could be awake and available was a challenge. The day before I was getting ready. I was prepping. I was reading every single TWIVGB from this year and taking notes. I had honestly forgotten when some of these events had taken place and thought they were from a different year.
The remarkable thing about all of this, it was a stealth podcast. In that no one outside of the five of us knew what we were doing until after it was done.
The recording session was enjoyable in itself, all 4 and half hours. It ran on so long that we talked about breaking it up into two parts. It ended up too long that I had to break it up further into three. The year was big indeed, but even longer was how much we had to say on nearly every single thing I had written down. Afterwords Ian and myself talked for another 6 hours just for the hell of it. Over the next few days would cause me no ends of headaches as I would first get a recording program for next time that wouldn’t crap out after 5 minutes, finding and learning an audio editing program that would do what I needed it to do. I couldn’t find one, it takes two different programs to put things together. As I said for nearly 3 days straight on twitter: we all need diction lessons. The amount of pauses, umms, uhhhs, you knows, likes and all-around stuttering was maddening. Especially after each one I had to pause the playback, highlight the offending section, make sure it was only that and not part of another word and delete it. If it sounds a little choppy at points, that is why.
As for music, thankfully Ian suggested some great fair use music, which I forgot to credit in the show notes.
Opening Theme: Close – The Alpha Conspiracy
Closing Theme: Wishing Never – The Alpha Conspiracy
The podcasts were finished Sunday morning, the day after Christmas. Then I had to teach myself a new skill and understanding: how to upload the things to the server so people can download them. That was a mind-numbing experience. (Google you are worthless at explaining FTPs among other things. (iTunes will be up whenever they say so.))
Throughout the creation process of this podcast was inexperience. I was a lackadaisical host in I let the conversation drag on in points, though in retrospect of what we got out of it, that might have been for the best. I had to wait for other people to send me the audio files, the server data or some of tidbit explaining what I had to do. I don’t foresee having these problems the second time around, even with different guests, because I know what I’m doing now. Yay me.
There are a lot of fun details and behind the scenes shenanigans it took to get it together, but really it all comes down to the final product. You can download it here:
Critical Distance Confab Episode 6 – 2010 Retrospective
Once again thank you Ben, thank you Ian, thank you Kirk and thank you Denis for participating, putting up with me and the overly long podcast, especially keeping Denis up and Ben away from Red Dead Redemption.