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Why are so many Malifaux podcasts so long?


phetish

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So...

I enjoy podcasts as much as the next guy. I enjoy Malifaux as well, so it would be a natural connection to want to listen to some Malifaux Podcasts, right?

But it seems that virtually every single one of the Malifaux themed podcasts is crazy long. 1.5 hours seems to be on the short end, with most averaging 2 hours, with some running as long as 3 hours.

Why is that?

Derek

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You're not alone Phetish. I prefer to read over listening to things (except when Zero Punctuation is involved, but those are only 5 minutes long), so I love transcripts I can chew through in 5-20 minutes, but don't care for 2 hours of chatting.

I know many do, and more power to them. It's just not for me.

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I'm in the camp that longer is better, as long as the content is not totally empty, and most of the Malifaux podcasts I think are doing a good job.

There is only one that reminds of some of the lower quality Warhammer Fantasy podcasts I stumble through, the podcasts where they are asking each other what they ate, of whether an episode of Walking Dead ended the way they thought it would, or how a friend of a friend's new job is going, or anything that looks like they are just padding the length, or dont know how to plan/edit content.

I don't want the content to be indistinguishable from random conversations one might overhear at a restaurant, but otherwise welcome the long podcasts.

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How do long do people generally feel a podcast should be then? is it short and often? or longer but less frequent ?

Thanks for asking! Personally, I would prefer shorter, more often podcasts. My favorite podcasts are 20 minutes, and 1 hour long respectively. The first is laser focused on a single topic (not Malifaux) which changes each week but remains under the broad theme of the podcast. The second has a broad theme with 4-5 shorter segments which explore topics within that theme (again, not Malifaux themed)

I don't want the current Malifaux themed podcasters to feel like they have to change for me and me alone, although I am that important <---- that's a joke, folks :) However, I won't listen to a podcast that is over an hour long. If it is 20 minutes long, it will get my devoted attention for that time. At an hour, it will have to be something that I listen while doing laundry or something. If it is over an hour long, it's just not gonna happen.

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I think it all depends what you're going for.

When I started A Crit of Gamers, an hour was chosen because it's hard for me to pay attention to a podcast for longer than that as a listener, and that also means it's much more likely you can get through one in one sitting (as opposed to half on the drive in and half on the drive out).

I didn't go shorter than an hour because then I might feel too clipped.

Each person is, I'm sure, making the same assessment on what they record and/or listen to.

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How do long do people generally feel a podcast should be then? is it short and often? or longer but less frequent ?

My morning (and evening :( commutes are ~1 to 1.5 hours long, which means that podcasts that fit in that range are great. I do love a few of the longer Malifaux podcasts, and in those cases I'll just listen to it both in the morning and evenings (and probably while walking the dog as well).

I find this works ok, as I can pick them up where I left off; these podcasts aren't like school lessons that need to work off continued understanding of what was presented earlier in the lesson. I don't really need to remember that Podcaster A was talking about his love for McMourning earlier in the podcast, when Podcaster B is going on about how best to use Molly.

My biggest pet peeve with podcasts is sound quality. If there's screeching* or static* or one overly loud mic (and the other mics are quiet), than I'm likely to drop the podcast for my ear's sake.

*These items are acceptable as the occasion skit sound effect, but too much ruins a podcast. Also too loud can be a pain as well.

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Malifaux podcasts are so long because we, as Malifaux players, love to talk about different interactions and our impressions of models. I've had many conversations about the game lasting longer than the game itself. Add in the random element of different metas and you have a recipe for a whole lot of talking especially with more than 2-3 people on the podcast itself. If everyone has a 10 minute impression of a model and they each express it in said 10 minutes you are up to 20-30 minutes without random thoughts derailing the whole thing. That said I wouldn't mind putting a quick podcast together with others to talk about 1 model per episode and try and keep the time to about 30 minutes or so. Could start working our way through book 1. Just saying.

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Because we are geeks.

Geeks love to share the passion and love they have for the things they geek over, and it's pretty difficult to shut us up - we bounce off each other, and it takes little encouragement to send us off on another train of thought.

It's like being in a room with a number of critters that are the enthusiastic cross breeds of puppies and bouncy balls!

I love listening to passionate people enjoying the hobby. Keep it up guys, however you want to go about it - it's free content for the rest of us and it certainly gets me through painting sessions.

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... the enthusiastic cross breeds of puppies and bouncy balls!

That's it, I'm off to the lab. This has to be done.

I never really thought about it, but I tend to listen to them in sections, usually about 30-40 min a time while I'm doing something else like painting.

Spreads the crazy out over a whole weekend that way...

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Its a very good question without, at least in our case, a very good answer.

From a Malifools POV when we started the whole thing was supposed to be some mates down the pub recording the chatting they do about games and as time has gone on we've sort of managed to stick with that. However this does lead to longer winded shows as all of us like to chat. They then get especially long when we include one of the infrequent segments that we do 'Diary of a Malinoob' for example.

To get around this problem we have tried to get two episodes out of a single recording session, but because of the conversational nature of the recordings you tend to end up with references back to things we had talked about earlier in the evening, which if you spilt it up make no sense.

Back around episode 30 we asked the then audience if they thought the show was getting to long and unwieldy and the vast majority of the feedback was no, longer was better so since then we haven't tried to restrict ourselves.

If we were to change formats to a segment based format I guess we could reduce the time but as we already update weekly it would actually mean less content for the existing listeners and I don't see that as a good thing.

So to the OP I'm sorry that the format we use doesn't work for you, hopefully someone will come along and do that more laser focused cast that you are looking for

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Something I find very interesting is how most comments (even by the podcasters) seems to be very much audience focused.

As you may (probably don't) know I run two podcasts, the first which was never Malifaux focused but instead was about the game supplement I was making for Malifaux (MaliQuest) and is now focused on the game that has grown into CRyPTs: www.newfairbank.podbean.com

- this podcast was aimed at 20 min bite sized slots, however because of limitations with the card duelling system of Malifaux that grew to roughly 1 hr.

My other podcast Hobby Sofa www.hobbysofa.coda.net (new home, we have about 3 more episodes that I'm in the process of migrating over) is more about gaming and hobbies and general, but both primary hosts were v1 players. This tends to run for about 2 hrs per show.

In both of these cases, I'll be honest that audience opinion doesn't come into it. We're not being paid or anything for doing this, in many and most cases we are paying out of our own pocket to make these, but we do it because we enjoy doing so.

So why are they the length they are? Because that's the length that for me(us) is suitable for me(us). If people want to listen in then that's great, but that's a by-product for me, not the goal.

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Yeah our podcast we recorded at the weekend came in just over 2 hours. I personally like others enjoy long shows as I listen to them at work. I do listen to shorter ones such as the NFL Around the League podcast which is usually around 30-40 minutes but then once it's finished I wish it was longer lol.

But I totally agree with Joel, we're talking about things we're passionate about and it doesn't take long before we start going off on tangents...

Maybe I can start putting a short structure list on podbean with timestamps next to topics so people can jump to what they want to listen to if they don't want to listen to the whole thing.

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