Impulse Podcast?

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing

Last year, Zoomba and I experimented with a podcast for WinCustomize called the SkinCast.  It got some decent coverage and we had a great listening audience.  Problem was, is that we did it on a weekly basis, at home after a long day at work.  That doesn’t include the post work like editing, getting on iTunes, etc.  We enjoyed it, but it just got to be too much for a limited audience.

Since then, Impulse has taken off and we have often toyed with the idea of doing another podcast based on Impulse.  It of course wouldn’t be all about Impulse, but it would give us a good tech base as we deal with both games and software.  Stardock also has some great partnerships with companies like AMD, Microsoft, etc. and we would have some great opportunities to include them as well.

In our preliminary discussions, we have come up with some ideas.

  • Hardware and software reviews, especially when dealing with gaming.
  • Talking with game developers.
  • Taking questions directly from users.
  • Tech/gaming news discussion and analysis.

These are just some things we have been talking about, and as always, community feedback is important to use, so we wanted to share what we were up to.  We want to hear your opinions on the idea of an Impulse Podcast, and things you would like us to talk about.

Neilo
Reply #1 Tuesday, May 12, 2009 8:13 PM

Having an Impulse Podcast as oppossed to a more software/game specific cast is a great idea. This gives you the freedom to talk about any subject since Impulse is at the core of Stardock and their products.

Some topics of interest, and you touched on them too...

News and Updates on upcoming SD releases that may not get alot of Journal time. More Elemental and Society talk plus SD thoughts on some future games yet to be discussed.

 (So many times Journal threads get derailed by OT comments and trolling, this would be a great palce to get feedback from SD on our questions in Journal threads.)

Impusle and it's expansion. Talks of more titles and what we could expect to see available on Impulse in the future.

(More PC tools like other Security Suits and such. I'd buy Bitdefender or Kaspersky from Impulse right now if you had them...PayPal = Ease of purchase )

 

 

 

ShadowMastiff2468
Reply #2 Tuesday, May 12, 2009 8:18 PM

What I would like you guys to focus on "if this idea lifts off" (which I would love) would be:

1) Criticised reviews of your upcoming releases..sales..games in general. So we can get a review from an experts point of vue (not that we can't find that elsewhere...but commenting on the pros & cons of your own games would enlighten would be buyers of everything that's to be expected in the game).

2) NEWS BULLETIN. Sort of the in the idea of Frogboy's daily report about Demigod. Would be nice if we could have a small section of the podcast which would contain the latest developements or upcoming buzzes for released games.

Things like: "We have a source which confirms that the Demigod 1.01 update will be released on Tuesday XYZ at ...h... EST/PCT" or "Sins of a Solar Empire is trying to initiate an online tournament with a cash bonus of 120 dollars for the victors...etc" you get the point . General highlights of the week.

3) Talking with game devellopers is a meh personnaly. Not that I don't appreciate it to the contrary, but an interview in a podcast would have to be cut short, summarised to it's most basic components. So I would suggest leaving it out but instead adding it as a link "ie. This weeks interview with Frogboy, follow the link".

4) Q/A by customers! HELL YEAH

CaesarsGhost
Reply #3 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 9:01 AM

you could reinitiate the Impulse Weekly things in that form i guess...

Annatar11
Reply #4 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 9:14 AM

Seconding Neilo's post. SD/Impulse specific news would be great. I know you can't comment directly on upcoming titles until the deal is sealed, but you should be able to at least say what you're trying to work on and what your plans are?

Say, take Dragon Age: Origins. We already know it won't have heavy DRM, and it's not a stretch to assume it'll be on Steam/D2D, but I have absolutely no idea if you guys are even considering trying to negotiate to get it on Impulse for its launch

Zoomba
Reply #5 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 12:01 PM

you could reinitiate the Impulse Weekly things in that form i guess...

The Weekly will be back, and is a completely separate effort from the podcast, which will most likely be monthly.

Philly0381
Reply #6 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 12:30 PM

My personal opinion is that you have tried some sort of 'Show' over the last couple of years, though each seemed somewhat sucessful they all had a short life.  So the question is 'Is this really what you want to be doing?'.  With rescourses as short as we are being told something tells me time would be well spent of other things.  Putting in the extra hours that you all do is appreciated but do you really think we want you to experience burn out?  Not me.

The weekly info post about what is going on in the Impulse Driven Community serves the community well and should be continued. 

Going back and reading what ID wrote it is apparent that the decision has all ready been made.  I wish you luck and all the best and I will listen, up to the point that I don't hear anything about the customizing side of the house.  Nothing against gaming or gamers, it just isn't what I'm interested in.

So you have my opinion, crappy I know but it's time for my afternoon nap.

vStyler
Reply #7 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 12:52 PM

gave up on the skinners eh

Zoomba
Reply #8 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 4:36 PM

vStyler
gave up on the skinners eh

The Skincast suffered three problems: 

1) Weekly was too much for us.  It was hard to scrounge up guests and find the time to do it reliably every week
2) There are long stretches of the year where things go very quiet in skinning.  Combine that with the fact that skins are such a visual thing, it is often difficult to get much talking time out of them
3) Community participation was tough.  Like a lot of projects we've tried to kick off, the Skincast really needed community members to step up and work with us on it (guests, questions, content ideas), but folks got shy and we were often at a loss for what to fill time with. 

To Philly and his concerns on the Impulse Podcast...

We're not sold entirely on the idea yet.  We know we at least want to do them on occassion for special topics, but a regular show is not a given yet.

The Impulse Weekly is coming back, that's a different effort entirely.  I'm trying to find a better way to do those to save time.  That's a "9-5" task where these podcasts are almost definitely "after hours" work.

As far as burn-out, that's why this would be a once monthly thing AT THE MOST   

 

vStyler
Reply #9 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 5:24 PM

Well, I understand Mike, was really just trying to add a little levity ... I did however enjoy the skincasts at the time.

 

Philly0381
Reply #10 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 5:40 PM

Appreciate the feedback Zoomba, but then you always do provide it when approriate.

Information provided to the community is always a good thing. 

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