QCF vidblog feedback needed!
Hey everypony!
We've been working on transitioning from writing news about Desktop Dungeons to trying to establish the QCF Design blog more in preparation for us moving on to new games eventually. One of the things we're trying is a sort of video-podcast of us sitting around chatting about a specific topic in game design/development/play. Last week we tried to record us talking about sexism and in-game representation and what we did on that topic with DD, the recording wasn't wonderful or too structured, so Rodain wrote a great article about it all that's been featured on Gamasutra, Indiegames.com and RPS, plus gotten lots of social network love.
This week we managed to upgrade our recording a little and this is the result:
It's not a public video yet, so please don't share. We'd love crits and comments on what we're talking about, how we're talking about it, the video in general and if this seems like a worthwhile thing that you'd listen to/watch of your own volition.
We've been working on transitioning from writing news about Desktop Dungeons to trying to establish the QCF Design blog more in preparation for us moving on to new games eventually. One of the things we're trying is a sort of video-podcast of us sitting around chatting about a specific topic in game design/development/play. Last week we tried to record us talking about sexism and in-game representation and what we did on that topic with DD, the recording wasn't wonderful or too structured, so Rodain wrote a great article about it all that's been featured on Gamasutra, Indiegames.com and RPS, plus gotten lots of social network love.
This week we managed to upgrade our recording a little and this is the result:
It's not a public video yet, so please don't share. We'd love crits and comments on what we're talking about, how we're talking about it, the video in general and if this seems like a worthwhile thing that you'd listen to/watch of your own volition.
Thanked by 1edg3
Comments
Some feedback on the format: seeing your faces when you talk might be better, I find the DD in the background to be somewhat distracting, but maybe that's just me.
Edit: Agreed with @francoisvn... cmon guys, you're celebs now. We wanna see your famous faces ;-P
The bit that was relevant and more interesting to me was your talking about what you'd do with DD if you were to make it free to play, but you guys seemed quite non-committal about that. I imagine the sexism one could have had an advantage here, where you might have been talking about how you solved a problem and implemented it in your product, rather than talking about something that might or might not actually be, and therefore doesn't really have a firm stance yet. (Or, at least, not a firm stance that I'd bring up in a conversation, because I kiiind of feel what was mentioned was pretty much the same kind of thing I'm likely to get from many other indie developers. But then perhaps I've been keeping my ear out for these discussions or something, so I don't feel anything new was mentioned? I dunno.)
On a broader point, I think the videos would be much more interesting if you talked about something that actually caused divisions or arguments within your team, or that you had to deal with personally, or possibly in a novel way. Because then, instead of everyone agreeing with one another, there's more of a discussion going on, and much more to talk about afterwards.
Also, as I said, I also found it more interesting when you were talking about hands-on stuff as a practical application of your ethics/beliefs/ideas. When I listen you guys talk, I do it because I want to know more about what it's like to be the bad-ass goat people of QCF Design. What kind of unique challenges do you face? How has your experience been with the team composition you've got (which -- I'm no expert -- seems kind of unusual)? What kind of roles do you play? What are the consequences of your interactions in your roles? Are there particular things you find you struggle with, and how do you deal with them? What kinds of things do you think you'd do with DD if you had more time? Was time even an issue? Or is the game pretty much perfect in your eyes?
I get that Free To Play is quite topical, but I just felt as if I didn't laugh much, didn't learn much, didn't get angry; and aside from enjoying hearing your voices again, I kind of left the video the same as when I started it, except a bit disappointed. :(
(Also I think there was quite a bit of noise in the recording. I didn't have any trouble making out what you were saying, but there did seem to be some background hum or something. That might have been the whirring of my computer fans though, in which case, my bad. I don't know if that's something easily fixed.)
That said, I don't normally listen to podcasts or watch commentary videos regularly. I watch them occasionally when friends link me to them with capital letters saying how amazing something is, but I don't leave something playing while I work or anything like that, so it's totally possible that what I'm hoping to learn from these videos is different to the "norm".
I don't think we can perfectly match what you envision because our audience scope is a little different (we want to throw the net wide to a non-developer audience too, AFAIK, though that could do with its own discussion and confirmation). But in terms of overall personality and aesthetic, I hope we can get into stride as we go along and create something more sharply defined and memorable.
I'm confused about the noise you're talking about, though. I removed most of the whirr and mic hiss and the backing track should be covering up some of the more egregious ambience (though there's a recognisable hadeda at one point). Are you definitely not talking about the slight echo the voices have?
Biggest annoyances in production value:
- Audio quality
- Audio softness
I dont know how the recording was done, but it could have perhaps been better if you set up a mumble or TeamSpeak server and each used headsets in separate rooms, and then removed noise and such using Audacity or the likes. I feel like this is meant to be more podcastey, but it comes across as a short opinion jab. Perhaps if you talk further on the topic or talk about a handful of topics to make it a bit longer it would be better I think (could do mail bags, or similar too) - I like these sorts of talks and things to be synced on my ipod and I can listen to them for the majority of my 30min~1hour commute to and from work.
In terms of the discussion forum, how things were discussed was spot on, if you can keep talking about interesting topics it would work out great. Similarly if something new emerges on a previous topic you could touch back on it briefly to get revised thoughts.
I want to echo the topic thoughts and feel from @elyaradine in paragraph 2, that is similar to the feeling I had where it afterwards just felt like the whole discussion part beforehand was sort of "well, we have to do this" and then the important bit you actually cared about was the DD news. I think you will need to focus on topics you are all deeply passionate and strongly opinionated about more often in these to have strength in your round-table discussion style.
I'm not sure what it is you guys were trying to accomplish and who this was for, here's what I think it would accomplish with respective audience sets:
A) DD fans: Cooool they are thinking of doing DD mobile in this and that way, let ME tell THEM how they should do it. (fanservice check)
B) Joe public: I have no idea what they're talking about, why is there a game in the background? I might just check it out. (marketing check)
C) Game designers/devs: There's no new information here, nor was there any meaningful analysis of this F2P thing. They might copy other F2P models for their game and want to try not be evil. That's cool. (didn't really do anything).
Like, that was generally my feeling - I don't feel like there was anything added to the F2P discussion, nor was there any analysis of existing examples, or enough of a compilation of existing F2P examples/models for me to feel like there was much of a point to this... There was a strong enough opinion that "those F2P models are evil", but nothing that said how to better do it or if doing it better was *actually* better (financially or ethically or marketingly speaking)
Oh and the ending felt like it was just cut off, either you guys just had a time you wanted to stick to, or you didn't really know what else to say, or... Something. Guess it's a symptom of being unstructured and utterly spontaneous? Maybe some structure and planning would clear that up? And give the whole thing a direction.
On the other hand, the article about the female goblins was a lot better because it talked about what you guys actually went through and did and there were results and real tribulations :)
Hope that helped :)
Edit: Just wanted to add, if you're going to talk about how to monetise DD, try to add in what your expectations are if you take this option or take that option, and how that would affect the income from the game, from your experience with DD itself, as well as from analysing other F2P titles. I'm not saying you guys must have all the answers or give an accurate forecast, but at least try to figure out what would be the better way to monetise and why, why this is better for this and why that is better for that, etc. That'd be more educational and interesting :)
Good luck!
It's also just general rule of thumb that you want all speakers to be in a same environment / with the same quality of phone, and since we want to be able to produce these blogs quickly and effectively I have a vague fear that recording over TS is going to create an average loss of quality and increase of work.
We may be shoved into that situation over the next few weeks depending on schedule and plans, so a good time to test.
... so yeah, we had another recording session this afternoon. Increased mic sensitivity, changed locations of recording device and people. It's not the best yet, but it's better (may have gone too far in other directions, but I hope experience over a few sessions will give me a better ear).
We've also gone for a more focused topic area and increased our depth and attention on fewer points total. This should improve content.
Thanks for the feedback all. Production and substance are on their way up, we'll have another vid for you to see soon. :)
We've gone the route of more intensity on given topics, so the vid is a few minutes longer and hopefully deeper on the content front. Production still isn't brilliant but I've fixed up some stuff like volume and rid it of the worst quality stuff. Already have some better ideas and I'm going to try get my claws on slightly better equipment to deal with our "four people in an echo chamber" problems. :D
It also actually requires more of my attention, so I'll be watching it again and posting some thoughts about it.