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Sunday, April 12, 2009

What I've Been Listening To: April 5 - 11, 2009

Even as my time to listen to podcasts has shrunk of late, my favorite podcasts seem to get longer. Brent came out with a 2 ½ hour podcast and Van Hemlock and Sisters Julie and Fran came out with 1 ½ hour podcasts. Next week promises to be the same for me, with work still hectic and trying to write the last two installments of the “Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner” series. While I kept up with my podcast listening pretty well this past week, next week promises to be filled with lots of podcast goodness. So many podcasts, so little time.

Here is what I listened to over the past week.

Van Hemlock #46 (Hosts: Tim Dale and John Shute) – Another great podcast started with a review of the news. The news ranged from coverage of games in development like Warhammer 40K, Star Gate Worlds and Jump Gate Evolution to stupid politician tricks. The latest news came from Canada and Germany.

In episode 46, the hosts discussed The Daedalus Project. The project looked at MMO gamers over a 10 year period and recently went into hibernation. The results Van Hemlock and Jon talked about were fascinating. As someone who has worked in the market research industry for 12 years, I didn’t find anything too wrong with any of the duos analysis of the research methods. I do work more on the technical side, so some people might disagree, but I don’t think by much.

Virgin Worlds #142 (Host: Brent) – I’m just going to say this: 2 ½ hours of Brent covering the Game Developers’ Conference on-site with Shut Up, We're Talking's Darren Love in San Francisco. If you are into geeky technology and game industry news, give this podcast a listen.

The Instance #141 (Hosts: Scott Johnson and Randy Jordan) – 38 Studio chief (and former pitching great) Curt Schilling made an appearance on this episode as Scott and Randy discussed announced content being removed from patch 3.1 and Blizzard’s April Fool’s Day pranks. A real interesting discussion on whether Blizzard's April Fool's activities contributed to the patch 3.1 issues. A quick-fire response to email questions from listeners occurred and may become a new segment of the podcast.

Epic Dolls #63 (Hosts: Leala Turkey and Katerina) - Stompalina from the Rawrcast joins the hosts to discuss raiding. The trio discuss raiding from three approaches: casual (Leala) intermediate (Katerina) and hard-core (Stompalina). Once again, the Dolls have produced a podcast with a subject that applies to all games, not just the World of Warcraft.

No Prisoners, No Mercy #28 (Hosts: Sister Julie and Sister Fran) - The good sisters settled down a lot compared to their last few podcasts and I think produced a better podcast with episode #28. Sister Julie has always been a borderline shock jock in both her writings and the podcast, but I think she does better when she keeps the content on the edge.

The highlights of the podcast were the discussion of the announcements about the new streaming gaming technology coming out of GDC and a discussion on listener reaction to Sister Julie’s and Sister Fran’s reaction to The Watchman.

EQ2's-day broadcast from March 31, 2009 (Hosts: Dellmon and Zanadi) - The hosts discussed the upcoming SOE Fan Faire 2009 in Las Vegas and Game Update 51. Dellmon had a bit of a buzzing problem that diminished as the broadcast went on.

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