Tenimos Podcast! Este podcast hablamos de Modern Warfare 2 (de nuevo) y sobre Sexualidad en los videojuegos, íconos sexuales, juegos pr0n y otras hierbas. Mejoramos la calidad de Audio (SUENA FILEETEEE!!!) y a pesar de muchos problemas que tuvimos grabando, quedo bonito, FAIL, pero bonito (me entienden? xD). Puedes escucharlo acá.

Esta semana probablemente tengamos nuevo horario, lo informaremos en este mismo medio, además, disculpen si no hemos empezado con los videos originales, he estado tapado de trabajos y estoy en la semanas finales en la universidad, pido paciencia, el trabajo sera de Calidad. Para terminar les recuerdo visitar nuestra nueva Sección “El Delorean Gamer” de la mano de nuestro editor Otacon85 y también visitar nuestro sitio amigo “OrienteMedia” para toda su info del país nipon-pon-pon.

Y así Inauguramos nuestro Canal de Youtube! Con una promo para nuestro podcast! Mañana se viene adelanto del podcast de esta semana, atentis! y Muchas gracias nuevamente a todos por sus visitas y descargas Los consideraremos cunado seamos lideres del mundo :3

Llevamos solo un día al aire y hemos recibido tanto excelente feedback como negativo, en su gran mayoría del podcast. Este Proyecto esta recién empezando y queremos escucharte, esto va dirigido para ti, para tu diversión, Si tienes algo de que quejarte, alguna sugerencia para mejorar o simplemente felicitarnos (y hacernos felices =D) te invitamos a que te contactes con nosotros, estamos ya prácticamente en todos lados! (Incluyendo YoutTube y Tumblr)  Te dejo nuestra vías de contacto después del salto para contactarte con nosotros.

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y obviamente este blog y tus comentarios en Podcaster.cl

Los esperamos! Wiii x3

Como “Dioc” manda, actualizamos blog con el Primer Podcast de Dominación. Con pocas horas al Aire llevamos muy buen feedback, se agradece y si tu no lo has escuchado, no pierdas la oportunidad de ganarte 6 jumbitos solo por esta ocasión especial del primer podcast (junta tus jumbitos, algún día los podrás canjear xD). En esta edición tenemos gente con tuberculosis, pedofilos, necrofilicos y hablamos de Battlefield: Bad Company 2 en Arica, Lo que trae  Nintendo para esta Navidad y Modern Warfare 2.

Sin más tiempo que perder, pueden oír en línea o descargar el podcast por aca en podcaster.cl

Comente, no tenga miedo ^^

Ya puede escuchar el programa on line que la esta rompiendo en Tangamandapio, Antankarana y en el Cariño Botao. Haga click en el link y escuche!!!

http://www.podcaster.cl/2009/10/cazuela-cosmica-6/

Episodio 5,99: “Parrillá de Wéas”

De vuelta en la Tierra nuestros intrépidos protagonistas se enfrentan al debate presidencial chileno y los wéas que lo protagonizan, mientras sufren al embate del wine of the navigator y los choripanes que los ponen redy pal bañors.

Episodio transitorio de Cazuela Cósmica que incluye música de Rush y donde compartimos opiniones sobre el debate presidencial chileno…

Escuche! Haga click aqui!

http://www.podcaster.cl/2009/10/cazuela-cosmica-6/

Y no olvide dejar su comentario y voto!!!

Ya puede escuchar el programa on line que la esta rompiendo en Tangamandapio, Antankarana y en el Cariño Botao. Haga click en el link y escuche!!!

http://www.podcaster.cl/2009/08/cazuela-cosmica-4/

Descompuestos por la embriagante visión de un centenar de estrellas muertas refulgiendo con desquiciante verdor en el negro lienzo del infinito, los ropavejeros cósmicos, a bordo de su cazuela espacial, se ven forzados a detenerse y descansar en una shoperia intergaláctica.

Entre tragos y bocadillos discuten sobre series televisivas, Lie to Me, Dr House, Lost, El Señor de la Querencia, Prison Break, The Sopranos, y amenizan con The Who, Pantera, Tequila y Stolich Krystal.

Episodio 3: “El Lado Oscuro de la TV”

Escuche! Haga click aqui!

http://www.podcaster.cl/2009/08/cazuela-cosmica-4/

Y no olvide dejar sus cinco estrellas!!!

MMO community connection:

Overly Positive

Please take a minute and describe what your blog is about.

If I was writing in the “voice” of Overly Positive, I’d say that people are just SO jaded and cynical these days. Genuine excitement and praise has long since been ridiculed as being as blind as a kid playing pin the tail on the jackass. At Overly Positive, we bring back the idea that being happy isn’t just a good thing, it’s a great and less stressful thing, too. Let the rest of the Internet have their “rants” and their “nerd rage” – at this blog, even the equivalent of nuclear fallout is actually a good thing from a certain perspective (hey look – real estate opportunities!).

In reality, I’m generally an optimist – or, that failing, I don’t really sweat the small stuff. Murphy has ruled with his Law for quite some time, and bad things will happen. Geeky society has moved from being socially outcast to being wry and quick-witted. When it comes to the geek media – things like sci-fi, gaming, comic books, and TV shows – geeks tend to be passionate, and in some cases, as angry and sarcastic as the worst mainstream sports fan or “normal” person. I’m basically filling a niche that basically says, “it’s not a big deal, and in fact there’s something good to be gotten out of anything.”.

Allow me to quote from your about page: “Ever wonder if bloggers sometimes have their cereal pissed in every day to have the hate they do.” I guess that would explain my hatred, but how do you manage to remain so “positive?”

Well, people have accused me of everything from having brain surgery to extract the hate to certain recreational drugs. The real key is just in attitude and seeing “the big picture”. Whether you’re talking about a game you play or the TV shows you watch or the tech things that you build, if you’re a geek you’re doing these things because they’re fun – because they provide you with some kind of entertainment and joy. Simply put, if you’re angry enough that you’re not having fun, or you’re not enjoying yourself, why waste effort and blood vessels being pissed about it? It’s just not practical, and the rather cathartic feeling you get from screaming, yelling, or typing a post on the Internet to someone insulting them and their progeny is simply short term.

I just don’t let a lot bother me. Years of being a moderator on various forums, where insults are as regular as a bathroom break, might have helped this, though.

What was your introduction to MMOs and what was that experience like?

I first technically got into MMOs before they were really “massive”, back when I played MUDs. Gemstone III and various free to play text-based adventures were my introduction to online role-playing games. Then when Ultima Online came out, I jumped on board that, and the rest is history.

You know, back in those days, the unforgiving nature of these kinds of games was simply a fact that you lived with. There was permanent loss of your loot, there was player-killing, and there was having to retrieve your naked corpse from the worst places, where possibly being eaten by a monster inspired by a grue was the least of your worries. These were the kinds of things that were expected when you played MMOs, so there wasn’t a huge culture shock or surprise at engaging in MMOs. Frankly, I experienced more of a shock when I realized that I could actually keep my hard-earned armor or that death was as meaningful as a walk in the park.

Can you recall that first MMO “wow!” moment?

I think when the first MMOs that really started utilizing the ability of a graphics card came out, like Everquest, was when there were “wow” moments – small ones, like seeing a zone load the first time, or watching a ton of players killing mobs in a zone. But nothing beats your very first raid, where you come upon a boss monster so huge and epic it seems to dwarf your party. These are always “wow” moments for two reasons – one, because the encounter is likely to not be one that you’ve experienced before and two, because you almost certainly die in a matter of moments.

If possible, list all the MMOs you’ve played extensively. Please start from the beginning and work your way up to the present.

Well now you’re just asking for it. In order of appearance:

• Gemstone III
• Ultima Online
• Everquest
• Earth and Beyond
• EVE
• Final Fantasy XI
• Dark Age of Camelot
• City of Heroes/Villains
• World of Warcraft
• Warhammer Online

At your peak, how much time per week would you say you spent playing? How about now?

When I was a senior officer and co-raid leader for the guild Templar Knights on Archimonde/Mug’thol in WoW, that was probably the peak time of my play. There, I was spending at least 35 hours a week raiding, planning, dealing with logistics or drama, or farming.

These days, with a lot of different (and more important) things in my life, including being married, having a job, paying my mortgage, and generally being suckered into internet community projects, it’s more like 8-10 hours a week. Yep – I’ve become a casual player, and perhaps that might actually help me not be so mad at certain things.

Do you tend to supplement your MMO gaming with other PC, console, or tabletop games?

Sure – mostly with console games, though. I was a console gamer long before I was a PC or MMO player, with the Atari 2600 to the 360/PS3/Wii generation progression under my belt. I favor RPGs because they tend to last longer for me at my current playtime per week.

When did you first start blogging? Would you mind taking us up to present with all of your projects?

Overly Positive has really only been around a little over a year, but I’ve been actually writing and putting my thoughts to the internet for maybe 7 years now. Like most people, I started out with more personal blogging on Live Journal, then moved to other, brief projects in writing that honestly aren’t worth mentioning until the advent of Overly Positive, where I felt I really found a voice that, despite being an exaggerated parody of myself, was one I was comfortable with.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been tasked to write for other projects. For a few years I ran a 14,000 page site called AnimeInfo.org, which provided reviews, articles, and guides to the anime and manga industry. I also got into the wonderful and crazy world of convention planning, where I managed to provide significant roles (some of which involved me having to sound coherent on paper) through running departments and even chairing the events as a whole. Currently, I’ve put my community management experience to work as a contractor for Curse.com, where I serve as Assistant Site Manager for Warhammer Online fansite Warhammer Alliance. Among other things, I occasionally write OP-ED pieces about WAR under the name PhoenixRed for that site.

If you hadn’t noticed already, these kinds of things explain why I only play 8-10 hours a week now.

Do you see blogging as just a hobby or perhaps something more?

I enjoy writing positive articles and introducing a little bit of sun (even when it’s a bit purposefully overbearing and bombastic) into my corner of the Internet. I’ve honestly always enjoyed writing and blogging in general – this probably comes as no surprise considering my undergraduate degree is in English.

To be honest, if it became something more – and certain doors have been opened to that effect already – then I’d be quite happy. I see writing/blogging as more of a side project with side income, rather than a full-on job, per se, but finding a niche and a place that would be happy to have someone like me would definitely be exciting. Places like The Escapist and Destructoid feature passionate, prolific, and entertaining writers all the time, and someday, I wouldn’t mind joining their ranks.

Do you have a schedule or some sort of routine you try and follow when blogging?

The only hard and fast rule is at least one post a day. This is mostly to exercise my writing muscle, keep my pen sharp, and keep my content on Overly Positive fresh, of course. Typically on a day when I post, I’ll scour Google Reader for the blogs and sites that I keep up with. If I see something that strikes my fancy and could use a bit of sunny optimism, I write about it. The most times I post in a day usually doesn’t exceed three – once in the morning, once at lunch, and once in the evening. In the midst of that, I also take the time out to visit the various blogs I follow and leave comments for them. You’d be surprised at how having someone care enough to leave a comment can energize them to write more – and how they can reciprocate in kind by reading and leaving one for yours.

Would you say there is some grind involved in blogging? If so, what is it and how do you tend to cope with it?

There’s only a grind when you feel constricted, or have writer’s block about blogging. There’ve been times during Overly Positive when I just couldn’t inspire myself to write about something positive for the day. Sometimes it’s a mental thing, other times it’s other priorities, but blogging can become a real chore when that happens.

To be honest, if you are struggling with blogging, it’s usually best to take a break – clear your head, try to find that creative muse, and come back to it when you feel you can do it without really thinking about it. There are times I look at posts I make and don’t realize that I’ve posted 3 times in a day. When you can crank out articles, it’s a good sign for your future writing inspiration.

By contrast, what do you find pleasurable about blogging?

Blogging is a permanent marker of your thoughts and ideas, committed to virtual ink and placed on the Internet for all to see. I think that a lot of times, we verbalize or think about something really profound, or really exciting, or really funny, and the really crappy thing is, it’s gone within hours, or sometimes minutes. When you blog, you’re creating an archive of your ideas and things that strike you, for reference or for simply getting it off of your chest. The experience is cathartic for a lot of people, which is why rant blogs are so popular and well-read – they’re an explosion of thought and ideas that many people can identify with when reading.

While massive readership is not needed to feel good about blogging, the fact that you have an audience of sorts is nice, because it validates that people find what you write meaningful. I have extremely limited readership for Overly Positive right now – but even for the 25 or so readers that hit up my feed, I find pleasure in making their day a bit more interesting with my quirky and thoughtful posting style.

Would you care to share a particularly memorable moment from your blogging past?

Whenever someone actually attempts to insult me on Overly Positive, I always respond with a kind of unnerving, perhaps even annoying kindness that fits with the voice of my writing. There was an article I wrote about what happened in Final Fantasy XI with a certain boss that one guild attempted for 18 hours. No, that’s not a typo – they were really raiding for 18 hours, to the point that some of them were physically getting ill from the effort. Now, I wrote on this particular issue in my own way, which is to say that I heaped unnatural praise for neglecting basic health needs and being generally insane. Well, apparently my bright attitude didn’t go over well with the FFXI community, who proceeded to roast me over the coals for being so sarcastically taunting. Thing is, every hate-filled comment I got was responded to with a blinding ray of sunshine and a huge virtual grin, and in some cases, it was disarming. I even got a comment from an FFXI GM. It was great.

Ever since then, I’ve had an Overly Positive Thoughts feature on Thursdays, where I provide the same kind of all-caps “THIS IS AWESOME” optimism to some of the worst pieces of news on the Net. Most people get the joke. Most.

Have you had any experience with podcasting? If so, what has that been like?

Over at Warhammer Alliance, we have a regular biweekly podcast. We’ve just passed 16 episodes and don’t seem to be in any danger of stopping anytime soon. I love podcasting, to be honest, and so do my co-hosts, who’ve also never done podcasting prior to this endeavor. Podcasting has been a challenge to overcome technical issues, features that didn’t work out, and commentary that has been a backlash to certain topics, but it has also been fulfilling and fun. Podcasting is sort of like blogging on steroids – the most interesting podcasts are a stream of shared consciousness from individuals with unique and interesting personalities. Even with a talented editor or producer, when you’re podcasting you’re kind of “blogging” without a safety net, because writing at least gives you the opportunity to better edit your own content. By contrast, your brain may cause your mouth to say something that might get you in trouble later (I didn’t mean to imply Halflings were only good for stew, honest).

Are you pleased with how your blog has been received in the blogosphere?

There’s a Japanese saying that says “There’s always someone better”. Seems pessimistic, sure, but the real message is that you should never be satisfied with the status quo. I like my humble little readership, but I’d love to reach out to more people, collaborate with them, and promote their projects too, which is why I’m more than happy to do this interview for this particular blog. Honestly, I’m not quite 100% with how I’ve been writing, but the constant comments and well wishes really are an encouragement to keep tuning under the hood.

If you had a chance to do it all over again, would you do anything different?

Probably not. Maybe I would have picked a wittier name, but boy, searching for the right domains has gotten so troublesome these days.

Can you picture a future where you will hang up your keyboard and no longer blog?

Sure – when I’m in my grave and dead. My own geeky tendencies, combined with my current online project responsibilities and my chosen profession in Information Technology, mean that I’m always going to be near a keyboard, which means I might as well do something worthwhile with it. No one can really predict the future, but for now, me and my optimism aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

odcinek 239 ::: Zapraszamy do posłuchania

MMO community connection:

mikeschramm.com | WoW.com | WoW Insider Show

When did you first start blogging? Would you mind taking us up to present with all of your blogging projects?

That’s a long list. I first started writing online with a review site that I put together with a few of my friends, where we’d review anything and everything, from games to movies to food. After a while, my friends stopped doing it, but I was still interested in it, so I switched over to my own site, mikeschramm.com. But I used clips from there to get a job at a newspaper here in Chicago, and then used that reputation to work at a PR firm, and then expanded that into my current freelance status. Right now, I blog and write for whoever will take me, but the majority of my work comes from a few blogs with AOL, including WoW.com, Joystiq, and TUAW. And I still blog for myself about just random things at mikeschramm.com, as well as working on a podcast over there called The Modern World, about technology, modern society, and whatever else I find interesting.

It appears you’re no stranger to podcasting either. Would you care to discuss all the the projects you’ve been involved in here as well?

Right. Well The Modern World is a pretty new invention, just something to keep me busy with all of the interesting stuff I hear about from elsewhere on the Internet. A friend of mine named Luke Lindberg and I used to do a podcast called Happy Time, which more or less just ended up being something for our friends to listen to — we did 25 episodes of it, and then found we didn’t really have the time in common to do it regularly any more. More recently I’ve been involved in podcasting on most of the blogs I’ve worked for, so I developed and co-host the WoW.com podcast (called The WoW Insider Show), and I will often show up and sometimes host on the TUAW podcast (called the TUAW Talkcast, as they run the podcast through talkshoe.com). Other than that, I enjoy showing up as a guest on other shows, and have recently worked with a radio station here in Chicago to provide them with some videogame-related interviews.

And so, where do you find the time to do all of this and I assume live a life along with it?

Good question. I don’t know where I find the time — for better or worse, I’m the kind of person that isn’t ever satisfied with just sitting there. If I find myself with regular free time, I usually plan something else or try to take on another project that I’ve been meaning to do. In the long run, it’s probably a bad idea — I often find myself committed to what’s probably more than I can handle, and there are many days when I work late nights and have to get up the next morning to do something else. But on the other hand, I’m most happy when I’m busy. And I do really try to balance things out, scheduling in some actual game playing (rather than just writing or podcasting about games), or getting out of the house to exercise or go out with friends.

What was your introduction to MMOs and what was that experience like?

My first MMO was actually Dark Age of Camelot. It was a strange experience — I was instantly hooked, both overwhelmed with how big the game world was (and how many different things you could do with one character), and astounded by the fact that just walking around in the game could lead you to see and interact with other people playing right alongside you. It was a little awkward, both because the game had major issues (this was back when, after each fight, you had to sit and wait for your health and mana to regen, remember), and because the people I played with were almost just as confused about what they were doing as I was. But I got the idea of it, the idea of interacting in a game world with all these other people, and I was sold on that right away.

Can you recall that first MMO “wow!” moment?

The first real “wow!” moment was probably in one of Dark Age’s battlegrounds (at least I think that’s what they were called, I can’t remember all that terminology any more). There was a center keep that you had to claim, and I was in there with a random group of people and suddenly just took charge of the group — I started assigning people to targets and telling people when to push forward and when to stick together and heal up. And people actually listened to me, and within a matter of minutes, we had actually conquered the battleground, all because we’d worked together as a team and stuck to a strategy. That was pretty amazing to me — after the battle was done, I had to stand up and go out into my apartment’s kitchen just to tell my roommate what happened. He didn’t exactly understand (“There’s this castle, see? And we worked together to take it over!”), but it was pretty thrilling for me, having worked together and accomplished something as a team.

Of course, nowadays, almost every game has some form of online co-op, and you can play with people all over the world, doing almost anything you want. But before DAoC, it had basically been Counterstrike and Quake for me — team deathmatch was the most complicated that team gameplay had gotten. Joining up with a bunch of people and using all of these spells and skills to conquer a castle was a big deal.

At your peak, how much time per week would you say you spent playing? How about now?

I get distracted pretty easily, so I tend to visit MMOs in cycles. If I’m not really into them for whatever reason, I probably only play about four or five hours a week, usually just a few daily quests, an auction house check, or an instance run grabbed on the weekend. But every couple of months, I hit on something that really interests me (either a new content patch, or a big milestone for one of my characters), and then I really get back into it and play obsessively. At that point, I’m maybe playing about twenty hours a week, maybe a few hours a night and then lots of hours on the weekends. But it’s very cyclical — even when I’m really into it, and grinding out the levels or getting all of the pieces together for something that I really want to craft, there’s no guarantee that a week or two later, I won’t have found something else to play and obsess about, and at that point the MMO goes on the back burner in terms of playtime.

Have you ever experienced burnout in WoW? If so, how have you dealt with that?

I don’t know that I’ve experienced “burnout” — I’ve never played so much that I don’t want to play any more. Usually, it’s a factor of time (work picks up and I don’t have any time to play) or getting distracted into something else (a new console game or a new project that I’m really into). I think WoW in particular (and the MMO genre in general) is so big, though, that it’s really tough to get burned out on it. Even if you’re burned out on raiding, then PvP can be a nice change from that, and if you’re burned out playing one class, there are many more to try out and level up, and if you’re burned out on fighting, then cooking or fishing or any of the professions might interest you. And by the time you’ve done all of that and conquered everything in the game, then odds are that a new patch has come out and added in more content, or changed a bunch of the things you thought you knew. It’s tough to burn out on a game that’s so complex — behind every corner, there’s another mechanic to get invested in and max out.

Do you tend to supplement your MMO gaming with other PC, console, or tabletop games?

Yes, all of the above. I’m always interested in new games — I have an Xbox and a Wii, and I’m usually playing one or two of the latest games on each. Lately, it’s mostly MMOs on the PC for me, though I’ve really enjoyed Demigod lately, and Civ always has a place on my harddrive. And yes, I like tabletop gaming as well — my D&D group has fallen off lately, but I have a few boardgaming friends who are always aiming to try out new things they’ve found on Boardgamegeek, or just play a good old Settlers game.

Do you see blogging as just a hobby or perhaps something more?

At this point, blogging is really my job, though I’ve always maintained that I’m a writer rather than a blogger. I’m not into the whole blogger/journalist comparison at all — I believe that each site, each outlet has its own voice and audience, and that when you sit down to write words for a specific audience, you’re talking to them, not succumbing to some role that’s been traditionally laid out for you. People argue whether bloggers are formal or informal, or whether there’s some objectivity they don’t have to follow that journalists do. But I don’t think that’s a valid or worthwhile comparison — when you’re talking to an audience, they expect certain things of you (formality, objectivity, the ability to be clear and concise, and so on), and it’s your job to meet those expectations.

Not to mention that “blogging” comes from the original term “weblog,” which was actually just a list of links to interesting sites on the Internet, with little or no commentary at all. So yes, I’d say blogging is more than a hobby, but really it’s all just writing. Other than the medium, I don’t think there’s any major difference between what writers are doing right now or at any other time in human history — you consider your audience, and you try to say things that are interesting and applicable and true and important to them. If you can pull that off, you’re doing it right.

Do you have a schedule or some sort of routine you try and follow when blogging and podcasting?

I get up, I find things to write about, I eat breakfast, and then I write about most of them. I take a break for lunch (and go work out if I have the time), and then I come back for more writing. On good, easy days, I am done by dinner, and can find some other useful way to enjoy my evening (usually doing my own personal writing and/or extra podcasting), and on busy days, I spend even more time writing after dinner. That’s really general — it seems more varied and interesting than that as I’m doing it.

Would you say there is some grind involved in all of this? If so, what is it and how do you tend to cope with it?

Well there’s really a grind to everything we do: I always say that even the guy whose job it is to test rollercoasters gets up in the morning and says, “Aww man, I can’t believe I have to ride the Batman ride again.” No matter how enjoyable your job is, it’s still work. But my job is really enjoyable, and that makes all of the little job things that everyone deals with that much easier to handle.

Plus, if things just aren’t working for the day, that’s when it’s time to go for a walk or get some exercise. Getting away and coming back to things later usually helps.

By contrast, what do you find pleasurable about blogging and podcasting?

Well obviously that I get to tell people what I think. There’s never any guarantee they’ll listen or care, but as you can probably tell from how long this interview has become already, I get a lot of pleasure out of just speaking my mind. That, and more often than not, people send along good feedback. Not necessarily positive feedback, but even the well-constructed criticism is kind of fun to get — it means people are at least consuming and digesting what you’re putting out there.

Would you care to share a particularly memorable moment from your blogging or podcasting past?

We’ve had quite a few meetups with the various sites now, and every one of them has been a real pleasure. I probably freak out readers who come, because I’m almost more interested than they are in what they have to say — I always actively ask them how they use the sites, what they think of what we’re doing, and if there are things we could do better. I’m always amazed, too, by the different types of people who read our work. And the quality of who they are — you might not be able to tell from our comments section all of the time, but in my experience, our readers are the cream of the crop in terms of how extraordinarily nice and intelligent they are. They come from all different jobs and backgrounds, but everyone I’ve met, to a person, always seems to know very well what they’re doing and who they are.

Are you pleased with how your work has been received in the blogosphere?

This will be a “yes, but” answer: Yes. But then again, we’re not really writing for the blogosphere, we’re writing for the people who are reading the blogosphere. Some might say that’s the same crowd, but I don’t think it necessarily is. A well-known blogger who’s very vocal about one part of our sites will not necessarily agree with the majority of our audience, and in fact that’s usually what makes them a well-known blogger, in that they have their own long-held opinions and are good at putting them into words. In general, especially with WoW.com and the WoW community, I’m very pleased with how we’ve worked with those bloggers and how we, as one of the largest sites out there, have been able to go above and beyond even what Blizzard has done in terms of connecting — in that community, we’re almost taking the place of an official blog in terms of spotlighting content and reporting on what’s happening around the blogosphere. So yes, I am pleased with how the blogosphere has received my work, but then again, I wrote it for the audience, not necessarily for them. And obviously, they’re a part of it, but they’re definitely not the whole thing or even the majority.

If you had a chance to do it all over again, would you do anything different?

I can’t think of anything I’d do differently. That’s not to say that I haven’t made mistakes, I’ve made plenty, but all of the mistakes I’ve made have been pretty helpful. Making a big mistake is like having a big alarm go off in your head, and it alerts you to something you really shouldn’t have done. Sure, if I’d done things differently, I might be able to silence that alarm, but then who knows if whatever it was warning me about would have gone unchecked?

Actually, thinking about it, I never did go to my high school prom. I probably should have done that — I think it would have been embarrassing (the same reason I didn’t bother to go in the first place), but I probably should have done it anyway.

What advice would you give someone who wanted to try their hand at blogging and/or podcasting?

Don’t worry about getting an audience — the first thing I learned when I got on the radio was that no matter how much I bugged them and emailed them and reminded them, my friends and family really didn’t tune in to listen to me. Some of them did, but I learned right away that you can’t count on an audience, no matter how close they are to you. You just have to do good work, and do it for a long time, and then an audience will eventually come. Worrying about your hits or about whether an audience is watching or not will only drive you nuts. It takes a long time on even the best projects to build up a significant audience, so you just have to trust in the work you’re doing, keep it consistent and strong, and eventually all of the other things will take care of themselves.

Can you picture a future where you will hang up your keyboard and microphone and no longer blog or podcast?

One of my goals is to start writing books, so if by some weird stroke of the infinite, I’m blessed enough to become a published author and get a publishing deal where I no longer have to work on daily content, then I might back off of the daily posting and go back to three or four days a week. But no, I’m a writer, and writers write, and that’s what I expect to do for a long time. I love to podcast, too, so I’m as likely to quit that (even if I ever quit getting paid for it) as I am eating.

You wake up to a world where you are the head of a company developing an MMO. You have unlimited funds and resources available to you. Please describe the kind of game you would make.

Oh man. This I have to think about.

*After about a day of thinking.* Try this on for size: the biggest draw, to my mind, of an MMO is just the sheer amount of things to do in it. So I’d try to put together an MMO like Spore (but, you know, good, of course), in that each stage of the game has its own fully-formed game system. When you start out, you’re just a soldier — you can tour the countryside fighting monsters or other enemies, and claiming ground for your “nation.” Or you can be a farmer, taking ownership of some of that claimed ground, and producing crops and resources from it, in a sort of a Harvest Moon-style system. Once you’ve made enough money farming, you can become a merchant, buying and trading and traveling, moving virtual goods around the kingdom (very EVE Online, lots of spreadsheets, etc.). And merchants can use that money to sponsor bureaucrats, who get a big picture view in a kind of Civ-style game of what lands soldiers have recently conquered, what kinds of farms and mines and buildings should go where in the kingdom, and where more forces are needed to fight other player kingdoms. Bureaucrats build farms on land recently claimed by soldiers, which farmers can then move into and cultivate, making money for merchants who can then sponsor more powers for bureaucrats and keep the nation growing.

Of course, some automation will be needed (you can, for example, install an NPC farmer in an unused farm), but there will always be a cost associated with that, because the ideal will always be to have a player (or a player character) running and managing a resource. And of course, everything has to be interesting and polished — maybe the whole world can be wrapped in a kind of a magical fantasy/industrial age setting (I believe there are some online games that do this kind of thing already, but we’d be talking full graphical treatment here, not a browser-based stats game). It’d be extremely tough to balance and keep every part of the game interesting, but you said unlimited funds and resources.

Anyway, you asked. I probably won’t ever get to play that game (until Sid Meier releases an MMO), but maybe I can dream.

MMO community connection:

Killed in a smiling accident

Please take a minute and describe what your blog is about.

At the risk of going a bit Bernard Shaw, to quote myself: “… at KiaSA we cover the whole gamut of human experience. MMORPGs, MMOFPSs, other MMOGs, online (but not massively multiplayer) games, offline games, generally offline games with an online component, generally online games but with an offline mode, you name it, every facet of life on the planet. Books (game novelisations, or books about gaming), television programmes (that ideally feature games), films (so long as someone plays a game at some point), music (in games), comedy (why did the chicken cross the road? Because it was a tier 3 player in a tier 1 zone and wanted to get to the other side, *badum tish*), I could go on. Though don’t ask me to.”

Basically whatever we fancy posting about, which usually seems to involve games somewhere along the line.

What was your introduction to MMOs and what was that experience like?

It was City of Heroes fairly soon after launch in 2004; I’d been vaguely aware of MMOGs before that, but hadn’t had a broadband connection. I’m not really sure why it was City of Heroes, it hadn’t even been properly released in the UK. I remember it was mentioned in a Slashdot comment, I Googled around a bit, found that you could purchase an account online and download the client, and that was it.

It was quite a disorienting experience; the introductory tutorial covered movement, combat and the like, which was simple enough, but on being turned out into the brave new world of the game proper it was apparent there was plenty it hadn’t included, like multiple chat channels and the difference between Local/Broadcast/Tells, strange concepts such as “aggro” and “tanking”, and a new vocabulary (I’d never seen “grats” before, and conversations didn’t make much sense until I figured out it was a contraction of “congratulations” rather than some variant of “gratitude”).

Can you recall that first MMO “wow!” moment?

Probably coming out of that tutorial and pitching up in Atlas Park, the starter zone, when it twigged that all these other characters running around were controlled by actual humans.

Do you tend to supplement your MMO gaming with other PC, console, or tabletop games?

Yup, definitely. I periodically burn out on game genres, MMOGs being no exception. I’m on something of an MMO break at the moment, keeping busy with Empire: Total War, Grand Theft Auto IV and various incarnations of Guitar Hero.

When did you first start blogging? Would you mind taking us up to present with all of your projects?

I suppose technically I started blogging on LiveJournal around 2002; I kept in touch with someone on there who went to “friends only” mode after some slightly creepy cyberstalking, and sorted out a sign-up to keep up with their posts. Seeing as I had the account I figured I might as well write a diary/journal/blog but ran out of steam pretty quickly, it never really occurred to me to post about games.

It was late 2006 that I started MMOG blogging, I was searching for information on jewel crafting in the then-in-beta Burning Crusade and Google threw up a post on Tobold’s blog; like I said, it had never occurred to me that you could blog all about games, so that was a bit of a road-to-Damascus moment. I followed Tobold and some other MMO bloggers for a while, made the odd comment here and there, and one day I was on paragraph seven of a particularly lengthy reply to another comment when I figured there was enough in there for a blog post of its own, so I signed up at Blogspot and started “MMOG Musings”, where I mused, about MMOGs.

That lasted until 2008 when I was going through one of my MMOG burnout phases and realised that “MMOG Musings” was a bit of a restrictive title; I was thinking of retitling the blog, or setting up a non-gaming blog in parallel, and talking things over with Melmoth who’d also been on a bit of a break from his Inferno blog. He suggested a joint, non-subject-specific blog, a bit of brainstorming came up with “Killed in a Smiling Accident” as a title from a Fry & Laurie sketch and we’ve never looked back since, which has made reversing into traffic somewhat hazardous.

Do you see blogging as just a hobby or perhaps something more?

Realistically, just a hobby. In odd moments of daydream I like to imagine the BBC on the phone wanting to turn the KiaSACast into a Radio 4 comedy series while a Hollywood mogul proffers a massive briefcase stuffed with cash for the film rights, but I’m usually to busy to talk to them what with playing drums at the next Led Zeppelin live show (thanks to those vital skills learned in Guitar Hero World Tour) and entertaining Angelina Jolie and Olivia Wilde who’d just turned up with 30 litres of custard, a feather duster and… *ahem*, sorry, got slightly distracted there.

Do you have a schedule or some sort of routine you try and follow when blogging?

Not really, just to blog when inspiration strikes, and real life allows.

Would you say there is some grind involved in blogging? If so, what is it and how do you tend to cope with it?

If you’re blogging as a hobby and it feels like a grind then I believe the expression in the vernacular to be “ur doing it wrong”. There’s no sense in chuntering out posts just for the sake of it; being a multi-author blog is particularly helpful for when inspiration seems to naff off on holiday to Bognor Regis as the other guy usually steps in (unless our collective inspiration hired a mini-bus for the holiday).

By contrast, what do you find pleasurable about blogging?

A lot of it is just writing, I enjoyed writing from back at school, but you don’t need to do so much of when working in software (user instructions don’t count), so blogging fills a gap there. Course, if it was just the writing there’d be no need to publish any of it on the web, so I guess there’s an element of wanting validation or approval, I reckon most (all?) bloggers get a nice warm feeling when someone leaves a nice comment or links to your posts (so long as the link isn’t “Look what this moron vomited onto a blog!”)

Would you care to share a particularly memorable moment from your blogging past?

There isn’t really anything that sticks out from the blogging itself, there’s quite a few posts I’m fairly pleased with, but not a single, defining moment. Broadening it slightly to “stuff tangentially connected with blogging”, probably meeting up with Van Hemlock and Jon from the Van Hemlock Podcast, and realising they actually lived close enough to make regular pub visits practical.

Did you find it difficult to go from blogging into podcasting?

Not in the slightest, easiest thing in the world, I just fired up Skype and burbled away for a while. This might have something to do with Melmoth putting in all the hard work of reading the guides, setting up the recording software, recording the burblings, spending much time editing them into something listenable, setting up a libsyn account to distribute it, designing the logo and getting it onto iTunes.

Are you pleased with how your blog has been received in the blogosphere?

Absolutely, the lovely people who take the time to link or drop by and comment, both bloggers and non-bloggers, generally seem to enjoy it, though of course we DELETE DISSENTING OPINION AND BAN THEIR IP ADDRESS which helps. (Course not, just kidding; we actually block-ban the whole IP range. Whole countries sometime. Nobody from Albania is allowed to comment any more after someone pointed out a split infinitive in an early post.)

If you had a chance to do it all over again, would you do anything different?

I really can’t think of anything I’d change, which I suspect is either a sign of stupendous genius in making exactly the right decisions at every step, or rather more likely that the whole business is pretty inconsequential and it wouldn’t really matter.

What advice would you give someone who wanted to try their hand at blogging?

Go for it! What’s the worst that can happen? (Bearing in mind any laws relating to defamation or libel, natch.) It’s all of five minutes to set up a site in Blogger or WordPress or similar; if it works out, great, if not, never mind.

Can you picture a future where you will hang up your keyboard and microphone and no longer blog or podcast?

Certainly; there’s the future where I’m scavenging for food in the wasteland while avoiding hunter-killer robots, for example, I don’t think I’d have much time for blogging in that one.

You wake up to a world where you are the head of a company developing an MMO. You have unlimited funds and resources available to you. Please describe the kind of game you would make.

Hrm. Solutions aren’t really my forte, I’m more of a problems guy (“don’t give me solutions, give me problems!”), so I’ll steal Melmoth’s idea of a Battletech MMO: the cockpit controls from the old Mechwarrior games with big chunks of EVE (the skill system, wide range of ship/vehicles with different roles and being able to tinker with their configuration, a “safe” area that’s generally PvE-centric, PvP-centric “contested” areas with territory that can be claimed by player organisations), and the customisation of APB for your pilot and vehicle. With unlimited funds, though, I might get slightly distracted as the first round of developer hiring would bring in Angelina Jolie, Olivia Wilde, 30 litres of custard and a feather duster…

odcinek D25 ::: Zapraszamy do posłuchania

Rode Mikrofone - klick -

Es gibt den 7 Millionen Dollar Mann, die 8 Millionen Dollar Frau und im August:  Das 1 Dollar Mic.

Wer RODE kennt, weiß dass die MICs es locker mit den 2 Millionären aufnehmen können und daher entschlossen sich die Australier im August eine ganz besondere Aktion durchzuführen:

Kaufe ein Rode Mikrophon zwischen dem 01. und 31. August und bekomme für einen (1) australischen Dollar ein M1, M2 oder M3 Rode Mikrofon zugeschickt. Die Bonuskarten und die zu kaufenden Mics gibt es nur im ausgewählten Fachhandel. Also auch bei uns.

Alle ausführlichen Informationen und die Anmeldeseite gibt es hier: https://www.rodemic.com/onedollarmic.php

Bonusfähige Mikrofone: NT1-A, NT1000, NT2-A, NT2000, NTK, K2, Classic II, NT3, NT4, NT5 (einzeln oder Stereopaar), NT55 (einzeln oder Stereopaar), NT6, S1, Broadcaster, Procaster, Podcaster, NTG-1, NTG-2 & NTG-3

(Das Angebot ist nur gültig, solange der Vorrat reicht. Ausgenommen sind Video Mic, Stereo Video Mic, sowie RØDE M1, M2 oder M3)

odcinek D24 ::: Zapraszamy do posłuchania

odcinek D23 ::: Zapraszamy do posłuchania

odcinek AE4 ::: Zapraszamy do posłuchania

odcinek D22 ::: Zapraszamy do posłuchania

odcinek D21 ::: Zapraszamy do posłuchania