While I’ve thought it was treading water and losing momentum for the last 2 months or so, in the last 4-5 weeks Jumping The Shark has done just that, and has sunk like a stone; sadly, I’m afraid that No High Scores is in much the same quality free-fall. The injury to Bill Abner’s hand has really hurt things, and I know it has to be killing him to not be able to contribute the way he’d like right now.
At any rate, I’d always thought of the show and blog as one shining star (Abner) but with a strong supporting cast. Sadly, with Abner having to reduce his role (hopefully temporarily) due to the hand thing, the rest of the crew have been really exposed. Danielle is fine–I enjoy hearing her take on gaming quite a bit, but she can’t carry this, and the other three (including Barnes) have become frequently unreadable on the blog and the podcast has fallen off noticeably.
I hope this thing can be saved. I’ve rooted for them and supported them. But for now this just ain’t working. Get well soon, Bill.
Well, Bill is back on JTS this week, just in time to deliver fifteen more minutes on Dark Souls! Ugh.
I download JTS every week, but so seldom make it through an episode. Too much laughing without any actual funny, too many Bill monologues that are at least three times longer than they need to be, etc. My favorite episodes are when Tom guests. There’s something about that particular mix that brings out the best in all involved.
I might be the only one sticking with Weekend Confirmed anymore, but I keep forgetting to mention/crab about a couple of recent things.
First, if anyone is still listening, did anyone get the vibe that Garnett and Ariel Angellotti are an item when she was on a few weeks ago? I thought she was great, by the way. I like her on the podcast, but if she and Garnett are together romantically (and I might be WAAAY off on that) I think he should probably have disclosed that. I’ve long felt that he was a little too close to the folks at Q Games to be objective, but if he’s dating someone that works there he should be up front about it. Again, I could be off on that relationship, but I did notice that he spoke of them doing a lot of things together while she was in L.A.
Another thing that struck me recently was on last week’s episode with Billy Berghammer has the guest. Xav was there as well. Xav was voicing some concerns with Halo Anniversary that were easily ignored or even had options built in to deal with. For example, he thought the new Forerunner terminals weren’t in the spirit of the original game. Fine. Billy pointed out simply that most of what he was crabbing about was totally optional and Xav sort of flew off the handle and lashed out at Billy, calling him a “fucking forum troll,” or something to that effect. It was weird and uncomfortable to listen to and if it had been said to me in that way, I think I might’ve asked for the podcast to be stopped so we could sort that shit out off the air. Xav took another snip at Billy later in the podcast too. I don’t know what the deal was, but Xav definitely had sand in his crack that day.
Oh, another thing about Weekend Confirmed: they finally dumped the music break! All it took was playing an atrocity called “Stanky Dick” in which Christian Spicer’s “comedy” troupe “rapped” about all the ways one could get a “stanky dick.” It’s even worse than it sounds, trust me. Not funny in any way and really poorly done on top of it. Like you could hear them sort of laughing and screwing up some lines of the “rap,” but apparently none of it was worth doing another take. I’m all for blue, filthy humor, but there was nothing funny about the “song” at all. The only good thing about it is that it appears to have killed the music break completely. Garnett felt the need to apologize for the thing at the beginning of the next week’s episode. Hell, the immediate reactions to the “song” from the WC crew after it played were shocked and not positive. That was actually pretty funny. No one leaped to defend it the next week either.
Which episode had Stanky Dick? That sounds almost awful enough to get just to hear the reactions.
Then to send it over to Scott Aukerman for Jukebox Jury.
I’ve seen Garnett on the Bonus Round lately. He looks like he should be driving a new Camaro. I worry about the man a little bit. At the very least, somebody needs to forcibly hold him down and give him a proper haircut. Even an Air Force Regular would be better than whatever he’s doing to himself.
I bailed on Weekend Confirmed after it became clear that Garnett was not the part of 1Up Yours that worked. I’ll check back in if Mangod or Gaming Jesus or anybody else with a nickname shows up to actually butt heads with his loudmouthed ass, but otherwise…I mean, if I wanted to hear a man shout wrong things about stuff that he would know better if he bothered to do a little bit of research, I could just record myself. I guess I can’t get as drunk as him.
As for Angelotti, I’ll say that it’s possible, as I remember even as far back as I was listening that his girlfriend is from not where he lives and she’s currently housed in Tokyo and Garnett seems to spend a lot of time there. Also, her latest twitter status (which I can’t seem to link directly since the redesign, along with them hiding the goddamn RSS feed link) seems like just the sort of dipshitty thing that Garnett would say (I hold a special loathing for anybody who calls anything the Texas anything, because I kind of get a lot of that here). That said, I don’t really care. Garnett acts like he wants to stick his dick in any woman over a feet on the Liefeld scale, so I’m not sure how you’d tell the difference. Regardless, I gave up relying on his objective opinion for anything about anything so long ago that I don’t really care if he’s cutting PixelJunk games some extra slack (also, it’s been over a year since I turned on my PS3 because, dammit, I’ve got to get through this 360 backlog, so I’ll never play one of their games at this rate anyway).
And if we’re talking about that Cool Party Guys abortion, Lee should be more than ashamed. He should have all of his music immediately confiscated and somebody with an approximation of taste needs to abuse him until he gets his shit right. Somebody needs to drop the real juice on him.
Thanks for the update MSUSteve. Sounds like they’ve eliminated one third of the things that made me drop that podcast. Progress! Do they still do the dumb remix songs featuring snippets from previous podcasts? That’d be another third.
Also, funny about the song that killed the musical break. Did he not listen to it beforehand? Sounds like none of the other guests did. Actually, kind of sounds like a passive aggressive move to create an excuse to ditch the feature without admitting that it’s a bad idea per se.
In other gaming podcasting discussion, I present the following:
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Will Smith (the one from Tested.com) should be on the Giant Bombcast more often. He seemed delightfully cantankerous in his last appearance. Replace Patrick with him. Nothing against Patrick, whom I like well enough, but he’s no Will Smith.
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I’m dropping IGN’s Game Business Podcast. Gary and Collin are okay, but I’m still just not feeling a lot of energy here and I listen to a lot of podcasts already.
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I’ve gotten to the point where I only listen to the “What we’ve been playing” part of the Jumping the Shark podcast. The topics just haven’t been too interesting and engage in a lot of game reviewer navel gazing. I’d much rather they replace that segment with a weekly news review/commentary. Also, Bill needs to cut it out with the Dark Souls talk.
WC did drop the remixes as well. That’s kind of a shame, I thought they were rather funny.
I’ve given up on the IGN game business podcast as well. I like Gary and Colin, and I’d like to have an actual game business podcast, but that podcast was like some random news segment cribbed from some random gaming podcast. No research, no particular expertise in business and economy – so what’s the point?
LMN8R
4469
On a positive note, the rebirth of 1UP’s “Games, Dammit” has been great so far. Jeremy Parish recognized that the “dudes talking about news and games they’re playing” is so played out, so they’ve re-tooled it to be very similar to Retronauts. Just not retro. Every episode has a singular focus around one topic and they discuss it for an hour. So far they’ve covered Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed, and Skyward Sword. Good stuff all around!
Again, it’s downright fascinating to watch people guess and grope about someone I actually know.
Quaro
4471
So many awesome games lately, but great podcasts seem to be lacking.
Missing Idle Thumbs so much. Where’s the cast to replace that? Dying to hear a cast like that on modern games like Skyrim and Saint’s Row and Minecraft.
Ashley/Elliot/Green/Croal would be a welcome return to my iPod too. The Irrational podcast is great for what little it is though.
Weekend Confirmed is still on my iPod but but like most podcasts I skip the parts or episodes that aren’t clicking so they don’t bother me.
I like Giant Bomb. The best/worst thing about it is that it so unconstrained, one of the few shows where they’ll just dive into a game or topic for hours and hours if it happens naturally. Sure it sucks when it happens to be something you aren’t into but once again, tap-tap skip ahead, done. And it’s so very much worth it for when it’s something you ARE in to.
Reposting this for anyone who missed it: http://huffduffer.com/search?q='remember+when'+coulton+popular+science
Jonathan Coulton and John Hodgeman covering E3 2005 in a 3 part podcast, just delightful really.
I’ve been enjoying the PC Gamer podcasts recently: professionally produced, funny and knowledgeable crew, no annoying personalities or speech impediments. As good as anything else being produced at the moment.
Sebmojo
4473
I like Eurogamer podcasts too, though they get a little deep into game biz inside… uh… cricket for me. Ellie Gibson cracks me up.
Actually I mainly like Ellie Gibson, though the Tom’s (Bramwell and Champion) are decent.
Thraeg
4474
Yeah, I would really love to find something to fill the Brodeo/Idle Thumbs gap of game discussions that are both intelligent and funny. On the other hand, the dearth of good stuff has led me to fill in the gaps on my commute with history podcasts instead, so yay for self-improvement.
Three Moves Ahead is the only one left that I listen to every episode of, though I’ve cut off a few partway through. The regular panel is entertaining and articulate enough to hold my attention even when the game under discussion isn’t one that I have much interest in, but some of the developer guest episodes have been really dull, particularly the Victoria II and Achron ones.
I listen to some episodes of Games Dammit depending on the panel and topic. Jeremy’s a great host, but some of the supporting cast can grate on me.
I’ll have to give PC Gamer another shot – it’s been a year or two since the last time I listened to it, and it’s probably changed quite a bit in that time.
This is precisely where I am with JTS. I like the regulars a lot and enjoy the ‘what we’ve been playing’ but the topic segments lately have been almost painful. Agreed – replace it with news review that would in all likelihood spark more interesting discussion.
Yeah, developer interviews are a crapshoot, and easily our two worst shows were dev interviews (not the ones you cite, either). I like doing them because we like to understand how games work and why they are designed the way they are. And a really good interview can bring questions to the front burner. Personally, when devs talk about other people’s games (Soren Johnson and Ken Levine, for example) we have excellent discussions. But not every dev is comfortable doing that.
Though this is almost all under Rob’s control, eventually we’ll probably return to the “theme” shows that we did a lot of in the first year of the show since new things have been introduced in those themes, we have a lot of new listeners every month and we still need to do a good tactical RPG show. But who knew the iPhone would be the new DS, with good tactical and stratgy gaming? (Well Tom and Julian knew, but that’s why they’re both smarter than me.)
Always a work in progress and we appreciate all the feedback we get. I get a few emails a week, Rob gets a few, plus a lot of comments. And I check this thread regularly.
Troy
Thraeg
4477
Yeah, Soren’s run as the show intern was fantastic. And there have been other developer interviews that came out fine. I wouldn’t chalk it all up to talking about other peoples’ games, though. A big chunk is just a question of individual personality, articulateness, conversational style, and ability to mesh with the show.
A return to theme episodes sounds good to me as long as an interesting theme presents itself and you don’t fall into the trap of forcing it, which is part of the reason I dropped Jumping the Shark from my rotation. There’s nothing wrong with a more laid-back discussion of what you’ve been playing, recent news, questions from listeners, etc.
Is it just me or does Ryan Davis seriously hate Will? Will’s stints on the Bombcast and their Lantern Runs has quite a bit of Ryan berating Will that goes beyond joking.
Personally I like Patrick. It’s good to have some new blood so to speak and the guy knows his shit on what’s going on out there in the industry.
Vesper
4480
Has PC Gamer improved their audio quality at all? That always kind of bothered me when I last listened to it.
I’m also lamenting my podcast rotation these days. I still listen to Weekend Confirmed because I like Cannata. Garnett always pushes the devil’s advocate thing about 200% too far, Xav is hit or miss. The last few episodes have been decent and I’m really happy with the music break going away. All of that being said, I’m not afraid to hit stop when travesties occur.
I might have to give Games, Dammit & Eurogamer a try. Giant Bombcast I can sometimes tolerate, but I really don’t like the poor PC game representation. Also, whenever they talk about achievements, skipping story/cutscenes and that kind of thing it makes me want to stop listening.
