Great way to put it. All of the individual words are spoken a bit slowly and with clear emphasis. That has the up side of making everything sound… well, clear. On the downside I did catch myself thinking “I know where this is going, hurry up and get there!” (Again, being familiar with the subject matter would be an influence on that. If it was new to me the speed might be good as it’d allow me digestion time.)
I like the “fairy tale” description because its the kind of voice and speaking style I associate with reading bedtime stories.
I haven’t read the whole thread but I have some feedback on the audio side. I hope it’s helpful in some way:
You’ve got some notable clipping in your audio right at the beginning where you say “welcome to the third…”. I can’t tell if in your setup that is best solved by getting a bit farther away from the microphone or lowering the recording levels. I’d try the last thing first because the distance to the mic affects the sound of your voice and I think that aspect already works quite well. I’d try to record with the levels for the mic set a bit lower and then apply a compressor and maybe normalization in the post effects. Check out the video that xboxahoy did on voicerecording:
“Fairy Tale”? Lulz. I do have a pop filter, and will check out the video. I’ve been working on ep 4, so I’ll use that to check my vol levels. I’m grateful for all the feedback!
What’s the most important skill for game designers? The 4th episode explores the rocket surgery of Communication including Yes … And, Story, and Charisma. Good communication. Better games!
I found my attention waning at a number of moments and if this is something that isn’t just my own personal preference (I have a short attention span), then it may make your broadcast more effective if you speak a bit faster and a bit more naturally. There are some moments: 21:00-21:47, 26:00, 26:30 where you just sound very natural, and I find that in these moments you suddenly re-grab my attention.
Outside of this more ‘style’ comment…
Dude! You made some sick points! Firstly, the “and” thing. I’m actually going to try to look at using this in conversation. I am probably a major, major offender in the use of “but” and I can see how switching to a more positive word here can really change what someone hears (and effectively what you’re saying).
The real winner is the story section. I love it. Breaking down story into those 3 really core, fundamental points is just … useful. You frame it in a way that’s just simple enough to intuitively grasp and immediately apply. The rules correctly apply to games as abstract as Tetris to as narrative heavy as Fallout and almost everything in between.
Good job man.
I would love to hear another episode on communication. Recently, my (largely failed) effort in gamedev has taught me that I communicate poorly. Originally, I wrote some of it off as “I’m bad at ui” but I’ve been learning that how you communicate with your players is far more than just layout and graphic design. It’s really everything, from UX to font choice to mechanics and control, even down to the code itself. All of these things get better if you improve how you communicate your ideas.
I liked how the intro was truncated, and as a result how you broke right into the podcast. It was a nice touch; instead of imitating radio, you were delivering information more efficiently. Props to you.
I liked that you provided an outline with times for sections; it makes giving feedback to you easier, as well as allowing me to find parts of interest more easily (especially Story.)
I disliked how the Dunning-Kreuger section flowed; I felt the part at the end was more concise than the intro section was, and would have been a stronger introduction. It felt like I had to slog through the admittedly good story of your med school experience, to get to the useful, powerful idea: as a designer, we should ask open-ended, non-guiding questions like “Tell Me” that lets our players tell us about what we’ve created. I suggest shortening the story to more efficiently deliver the idea, before delivering the name for the idea coupled to the actual idea.
I disliked the story section, because I felt that your outline gave more potent direction on creating a story, than how the podcast delivered it. The story part all sort of blended together and didn’t feel like it yielded an appreciable conclusion (other than the complaint about “I’m in Blackrock Mountain, and there’s a boss…and…ummm…I’m gonna beat him!” as an example of how not to do a story.) Your discourse on stories came off…actually, how my story in The Hero’s Journey came off, come to think of it. I hope you share any thoughts or conclusions you have on how better to deliver some idea, there’s a chance for two people to improve in one fell swoop!
I liked the Charisma tips, particularly the part about nodding less; it’s something that I think I do that causes anxiety and a ‘rushed’ feeling in other people.
All in all, this podcast was a marked evolution from the first three, and I felt those were pretty strong as they were! If I had to sum my thoughts up for you (taking some cues from the thoughts I gave to you just now:)
Get to the point more quickly; the details are useful, but too many are distractions. This breaks the flow.
Outlines of where things are in this medium is good for both the listener and you.
Topics with interrelated parts could do with being a bit “sharper” in each of their parts; I should be able to easily tell when you’re talking about setting up a challenge or question, the emotional struggle, and a galvanizing conclusion with some twist; if it blends together too easily something’s wrong. This could be caused by not getting to the point fast enough…
Your stories are powerful tools to drive the concepts you’re trying to teach home, but be mindful of how much you give! Too much of a good thing, isn’t.
Gigi my man, this is wonderful. You certainly have that ‘radio voice’, it certainly sounds nice coming from listening to XFM everyday, with ricky gervais’s punch drunk voice. I havent actually finished the first episode yet, but I thought I should make a comment before I listen to them all and then listen to something else and forget to say anything, so I’ll guess I’ll edit this with my thoughts in a bit. But so far, very very good. Will you later have established guests on, from the forums?
@AndrewGrayGames - Thank you kindly for the feedback! I continue to evolve, improve, and most importantly, to push myself to release!
It’s a new skill - interviewing is quite different from speaking. I’m researching that now, with the goal of learning how to conduct interviews, which will likely involve a few practice throw-away interviews. When I’m skilled enough, I’ll begin interviews!
I’m tickled pink by how much I enjoy this, that I’ve put out 4 full episodes already, and by all of the wonderful feedback. You guys rock!
I guess a big factor that will go into that is how you want the interview to come across, whether its informal or formal, whether its a series of questions or just game design chatter, theres a lot to it.
I think two examples of the opposite directions you can go in are these, despite not being game dev related.
The co-optional podcast- This is a great example of the very informal interview where its just riffing on base topics which can easily go off tangent to create new topics.
Desert Island discs- You may not have heard of this one, but its kind of an old BBC interview show. The idea of this one is that its quite a bit more formal, where the person being interviewed is always asked the same set of questions, although then smaller questions can branch off the main ones, they do always return to the standard.
Keep up the good work, Im halfway through the flow podcast now
Do you really want interviews though? Seems like a better format would be more of a discussion, not that interview skills won’t be useful to keep the conversation on track.
I like the way Geeknights works: http://frontrowcrew.com/
It is a very natural back and forth between two people. I’ve listened to a couple of hundred of episodes and don’t get tired of them. The only other podcasts I managed to keep interest in for a long time so far are cox’n’crendor, co-optional and podquisition.
The point of this podcast series isn’t (currently) to “be entertaining” like Cox ‘n’ Crendor, or Co-Optional, or whatever. This isn’t radio, either - the point of Game Design Zen is to efficiently convey useful information on the art and science of game design.
As a result, I think Gigi should focus his everything to reinforcing this theme (much as he would in a game that is built around a theme.) If he has a guest, while there needs to be a natural flow to the interaction between them, it should be to reinforce a theme in part, but always to convey information more efficiently.
I don’t think Gigi should include a guest yet, unless A) that guest knows a subject so well that it’d be crazy not to include them (for instance, Cid Meyer), or B) interaction with that guest can be used as a very powerful teaching moment.
For instance, I would not make a good guest; I am too early on my journey even still to convey good teaching moments; while I would be a good “voice of the noob” due to generally knowing enough to be dangerous, I would only yield “a” teaching moment, maybe two. Someone like Jesse Cox, though would be better - they’re non-developers and see everything from a different perspective, as a result the conversation could go in some very interesting directions (knowing of Jesse, I didn’t italicize “very” nearly enough. The guy is fun incarnate.)
TL;DR - I think there’s bias towards Gigi imitating “something we like”, but I don’t think that’s as helpful as it could be; Gigi is doing something fundamentally different. If Gigi has other people on the podcast, it should be to reinforce what Gigi is up to, not what we would expect of someone else. As he’s said, he’s finding his voice, too.
@AndrewGrayGames - I’m sending you a virtual hug! Loved your reply. And it does inspire me to continue finding my own voice. Jesse Cox would be fun. I wonder what aspects of design he’d want to bring to the discussion.
@Martin_H I downloaded GeeKnights to see how they do it. I’m also exploring RadioLab, Dude Soup, and a host of others to learn what’s possible. So that while I’m finding my voice, I’m not suffering from Dunning Kruger (unskilled and unaware)!
Now that I think about it, the tag line is, “Game Design Zen is the intersection of game design, life, and the pursuit of excellence. It is the #1 resource for developers, artists, and designers including the art, science, and business of better games. Level up to zen.” Now that just busts the doors wide open!
There might be another option in all this. Instead of doing “special guest” episodes, you could potentially do a bunch of interviews separately (and maybe publish them off to the side), then make episodes where you splice in clips into more focused topics. Would require more organization/cataloging to do efficiently, but it could work. Basically it’s what the history channel does, only with less bullshit dramatization.
Aww, but I’d pay money to see Gigiwoo put on a monocle and tophat and do an anachronistic portrayal of Henry VIII while explaining the Prisoner’s Dilemma…
Whatever you do, just don’t over analyze the whole thing and keep doing this fun for yourself. Do a few dozen episodes and finding your style and format through experimentation will probably come on its own.
