Complaining about GFW-radio drifting off topic is like complaining about drunken hobos drinking. They could clean up but aren’t they more entertaining the way they are?
Ok, sorry about the tortured metaphor, that took way too long to conjure. But honestly them going off topic is the reason I kept listening in the first place.
I’m bothered by some game enthusiasts having such a myopic view of games. Having the flexibility to relate gaming to the larger world is what makes the show unique, even if that sometimes means they’ll speak more to the tangential than not.
To what are you referring? The general idea, or did someone say something here specifically?
Technically-speaking, considering that they don’t have very many Games for Windows games to talk about, they by necessity have to be off-topic to put out a show.
A few people complained about GFW’s meandering focus earlier in the thread. I understand that the approach they have could be somewhat divisive, but myself, I love it. I don’t check in on GFW for my up to the minute gaming news and discussion. I listen because I want to hear Shawn Elliott, Jeff Green, and Robert Ashley talk about what’s going on and what they’ve been up too.
What I can’t stand in many other podcasts is when they crack up all over one another over lame jokes, and can’t stop being intentionally wacky, and yell all at once like the back of a school bus.
Even when they meander on their subjects, 1up Yours and GFW both do a pretty good job of keeping the production on track - remembering that people are actually going to be listening to the thing after it’s been recorded.
GFW Radio is the only podcast that I look forward to listening to, and I’m always sorry when it’s over. I don’t care that much about hearing a 2 minute discussion about gaming headlines, and I don’t care that much about hearing hardware numbers, and I don’t care that much about what uses waggle and is for babies.
What I do care about is hearing intelligent people have long and nuanced coversations about context (I like the game stuff, too). None of the other podcasts I’ve listened to come anywhere near the topics that you guys spend most of your time talking about, and it’s a huge hole in the market that you are filling. When you have guests, you get much better material out of them than other podcasts, too.
I would love to pay you guys to do 4 hours of podcast a week instead of 1.5-2. If you got Jeff, Robert, Shawn, etc together with occasional guests (I’d like to hear Tom on there sometime, by the way), I would happily give you $10 or $15 a month, and I bet I’m not the only one. Granted $10 a month doesn’t pay for 16 hours of anybody’s time, but still…
I really enjoyed doing the GFW podcast. It was a good time. I think its developed a style of its own which is rather refreshing. My only regret is I didnt manage to turn the conversation to questions gamers and devs have about game reviewers/journo’s and get some old war stories out of those guys, of which they have legion. Next time!
I really enjoyed that one, Rod. Thought you lent a great perspective to the discussion. Hope to hear you on again soon.
I haven’t listened in a few weeks - it’s a last resort at this point. I’d say I can most easily ignore the wackiness, but when they shout at once for brief stretches and I can’t even hear anything, I turn it off.
Gaming podcasts are a staple in my weekly listening routine so I have to chime in here.
GFW Radio is, by far, my favorite show. To me, the mix of personallities is perfect. The group is just so relaxed about the whole thing which allows the humor to be entirely natural. The most recent episode with Rabbit from GWJ (Episode 8/7/08) encapsulates everything that I love about the show.
Gamers With Jobs is also a great show. That Elysium guy sure is hoot. For a bunch of “gamers with jobs”, I’m constantly amazed at how much time they spend playing MMORPG’s and Sins of a Solar Empire (minimum 4 hour play session). Man, I want their job.
The GiantBombcast is my guilty pleasure. I loved the HotSpot when it was Gerstmann and Gallup. Now that Jeff and company are in full swing, their show has gotten extremely opinionated and it’s much better for it. The views they take on games really sway much differently then the those found on IGN/GameSpot/1UP and it’s pretty refreshing.
Next, 1UP Yours. With all it’s lineup shifts and tribulations, it’s still my official “weekend confirmation”. Sometimes, it’s hard to love it but it’s still a consistantly great show. Anytime John’s on, the show seems tighter. Garnett’s a tolerable goof and Shane’s a necessary evil but, largely, it wouldn’t be 1UP Yours without 'em.
Lastly, while not completely a gaming podcast, my favorite one of the video variety is the Totally Rad Show. That show is just 100% fun with 0% pretentiousness…and I love that.
I tried Bombcast the other day and I couldn’t get through the whole thing. At a minimum, every other comment seemed to have to be ultra-snarky, and they spent so much time on hemp milk that I had to skip forward forward. I had to do this numerous times because they kept fucking talking about hemp milk.
I’d started out with GFW/1Up Yours, and I thought I had some minor issues with them … But once I expanded out looking for other podcasts, I realized just how together their show was.
I love GFW. It’s one of the three podcasts I look forward to most and it is the gaming podcast I look forward to most.
PC Gamer is better these days now that Greg Vederman and Norm Chan are gone. Less of them means less enabling of Dan Stapleton’s boner for shitting on consoles, which means they can actually talk about games more often. It also means there’s more room for Logan’s unique brand of lunacy.
I totally understand your reaction to this latest episode zen. I was pretty irritated at the 15 minutes of hemp milk tasting myself. Not only was it boring, but it was gross listening to them smack their lips and gulp down milk substitutes. Even so, I’d urge you to check out a previous episode before you write it off completely. Even in this milk fest episode, I appreciated their takes on recent games like Soul Calibur IV. Their views certainly diverged from the 1up lovefest (for Soul Calibur) and while I don’t particularly care either way, I do like to hear different perspectives and I appreciate Bombcast providing that.
I’ve tried GWJ based on all the positive impressions in this thread and I do indeed like it. That said, I found Elysium’s (sp?) take on co-op gaming to be completely untenable. He essentially argued that because he doesn’t like co-op gaming, it shouldn’t be included in future games because the resources used to create that feature divert resources that could make an even stronger single player game. I disagree with this for a few reasons, most notably that I absolutely love co-op gaming. I find it odd that someone’s argument could be so seated in pure selfishness though. I, for example, do not enjoy adversarial online multiplayer games, but I would never advocate that such modes should not be included in games. I realize that many many people enjoy that style of gaming and I would never espouse an opinion that those modes should be axed simply because I don’t happen to like them. Elysium tried to back pedal a little on what he said, but it was clear to me that he really and truly believed the because he doesn’t like co-op, it shouldn’t be a priority to include it in future videogames. That just left a bad taste in my mouth.
I just finished up last week’s GFW Radio and I really enjoyed it. I thought Julian from Gamers With Jobs was a very very natural fit with that crew. I mean, it wasn’t like he was just a good guest. It was like he belonged there. Of course I was pumped that Robert “Bobito” Ashley (a.k.a. Dr. Max Chill, M.D.) was there and his tangent about lactating Yoda had me in stitches. Great episode of the Brodeo.
