Two years ago, I did a handful of interviews with critics that laid much of the foundation of what we consider modern independent video game criticism. They were intended to be the next few episode of the Critical Distance Confab. For various reasons they got back burned (mostly because I couldn’t stand listening to my own voice in editing) and we weren’t going to use them.
Since then, I’ve moved my position to pure background technical monkey regarding the podcast. It’s for the best. Let’s be honest, while I may be an okay panelist I outright sucked as a podcast host. In my time working on the podcast, I’ve had to learn a huge amount of the ins and outs of how everything actually works. I’m quite proud of being able to fix most technical problems regarding it in very short order. It required years of poking the various parts with digital sticks figuring out not just how to script all of it but learning what each part in fact does so I can change it at my own convenience.
In any case, Mattie Brice has taken up the title as the third official host of the Critical Distance Confab. I wish her better luck than I had in actually getting recording sessions to come together.
We’ve also moved to a monthly schedule with the target being the 15th of the month. Due to unforeseen events Mattie wasn’t able to record one for June. So, last week, we dipped into the archive to pull out an old interview with the blogfather himself, Micheal “brainy gamer” Abbott. The podcast was more about the early history and BarinyGamer’s part in it as well as his personal philosophy regarding criticism. That made the podcast a bit more evergreen than usual.