Video game Podcasts: where do we go from here?

After listening to the first episode of the Mobcast, I couldn’t help but find myself agreeing with Mark McDonald about the state of video game podcasts. That there needs to be more then just a couple of people sitting around and talking about video games they are playing and the latest news.

From looking through my own queue of podcasts, I’ve noticed that the ones that I tend to enjoy a lot are the ones that either take that group talking about games model and put a little twist on it, or do something completely different.

For an example of the first if you look at something like the Penny Arcade podcast, or the Rebel FM Game Club. In the PA podcast they are discussing the latest news, but not merely to discuss it but rather looking at it through the lens of trying to find something that they can make a comic out of. Where as with the Rebel FM Game Club is a group of people playing through a game together and discussing the game in depth, based on their experiences playing.

Both of these take that sitting around and talking about video games model, and  go that step further and talk most indepth about it.

Now an example of doing something entirely different is Robert Ashley’s A Life Well Wasted, which takes the sort of This American Life, personal narrative model for audio programming, and themes it around video games. Which makes it more about the people (the players,) then it does about the games themselves.

And as was said int he Mobcast, some of these bigger game media organizations need to start going about making podcasts that have more deep, and perhaps more narrow as well, instead of being as broad and shallow as they are now.

Which isn’t to say that the group talking about games model necessarily means that your podcats is bad, but there are already podcasts of that model that are very good. And because of that there really doesn’t need to be any more of that style (at least from these larger game media organizations.)