Talk Radio — MMO style

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Sitting here listening to call in shows on NPR (“On Point”) and thinking about podcasting. For all that it’s a 21st century, Internet-age technology, podcasting is amazingly non-interactive. You and some friends gather in some virtual meeting place, talk about some stuff, and then send it out into the world… but it’s a panel discussion — or just a lone person sending their thoughts into the void — but there isn’t the wide range of discussion. Especially when people know each other well, they may already be anticipating the sorts of things their friends will say — and so the give and take is edited before it’s even spoken.
Now, getting interested and articulate people to call in would be a struggle, and you’d need a producer to screen the people ahead of time and to let them have their time to make their comment or ask a question and then put them back into listen-only… yeah it would be a lot tougher. But wouldn’t you listen to a podcast about, oh I dunno, Age of Conan that included players, beta testers, Conan the Comic fans and such coming up and asking about the game or the lore?
It could work. Getting the word out and everyone online at the same time and screening the callers would take work. But discussion would go into entirely new directions just because of the wide variety of the callers.
Are there any podcasts that work this way already — with random people calling in for comments or questions? If so, I’d like to have a listen and see how well they work out.

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailSorry, Age of Conan. Hello Kitty Online is going to kick your butt. Default ThumbnailWhat can beta leaks tell us about upcoming games? Default ThumbnailWhat’s the big deal about open betas, anyway? Default ThumbnailSitting this one out.

16 thoughts on “Talk Radio — MMO style”

  1. I think The Instance features call-ins for their show. Also Destructoid’s Podcastle has a different european community member filling the 4th slot each week.

  3. While I cannot give you any specific examples… I have seen a few of these shows on ustream. You may want to poke around there and see what you find. http://www.ustream.tv – It’s a video site, but might help you in your quest.

  4. I also think that the Gamespot podcast is live each Wednesday and I thought they took calls and its video cast to boot.

  5. I should clarify the show is 100% wow related. Also the calls aren’t live per se, you call into a voice mail and they answer your questions.

  6. I’ll check that out, too. Looking for something more MMO oriented, but “The Instance” might be just the thing. I am just not feeling that posting comments to an announcement that a podcast is available is a very good way of initiating a discussion. What if someone is saying something that is entirely wrong, or proves they have no idea what they are talking about? I feel that way when people talk about EQ or EQ2, and I know some people feel that way when *I* talk about AoC or WAR. Let’s get the discussion going right when the podcast is being recorded, I say.

  7. Tipa, this is a great idea! I listen to alot of talk radio (mostly political stuff) in the car, but the thought of a MMO show would be really awesome. Talk radio is better than podcasts because its live and they usually talk about events that are happening that moment.

  8. Ah, wrote the above comment before your reply. Live call-in is definitely what I’m looking for. It doesn’t (and probably shouldn’t) have to be live on the Internet; just that give and take between host, guest(s) and callers on talk radio is a paradigm I’d like to see on an MMO podcast. Obviously, there’s not the wide listener base (yet…) necessary to get it on a real radio station, and this is something you wouldn’t want to tie to a specific radio market anyway.
    What I am thinking of is, let’s say, I have my own podcast (which I don’t, but just saying). And I say the discussion for this week is WoW, and how it’s going to kick AoC and WAR’s butt when the expansion comes out. As I start listing off my reasons for this, angry AoC and WAR fanbois toss on their headsets and call up my producer on Skype. She makes sure the caller has an actual useful comment and that their connection isn’t noisy, then I “take the call” and she sends me a message re: what the caller wants to say and places the caller in the room so they can make their comment, call me an idiot, etc. Or agree with me. And then we can go on from there. In the end, we distill the show to the best comments and discussion and make that into a podcast.
    Just thinking that would be 100% more useful to a listener than the current “here are the people I like, we’re going to have a heck of a lot of fun chatting with each other about anything we feel like, and you get to listen to us! Even though what we say is totally wrong because we’re missing an important point that changes anything! And also, WOW RULEZ! FOR THE HORDE!”
    I just wanna see it happen, or listen in if it already is happening!

  9. Live call-ins in a podcast are impossible. However, you can do a live streaming radio show and record it. Persto, podcast with call-ins. Warcraft Radio does this regularly with IRC and email. And yes, most of the time they do have a screener who’s dedicated to monitoring incoming comments and picking the best. Keeping your train of thought on track during a live show is hard enough already. That makes call-ins somewhat troublesome for small podcasts/radio shows.

  10. Cool! I’ll check out Warcraft Radio for sure. Thanks!
    As far live call-ins for a podcast being impossible, well, obviously once the podcast is published, it’s a little late to get your call taken. But while recording, I dunno. I think it could be done. Streaming it and then publishing the stream as a podcast would be pretty tough, but sounds like Warcraft Radio is doing it. Now we need one for general topics of MMO interest, not just a single game; get industry guests with interesting things to talk about; decent show subjects so people know ahead of time that there will be something interesting there…
    The Internet is about being interactive. Podcasts are just one-way. We can do better.

  11. Note: I can’t check these out while at work, but Uberguilds Radio and BlogTalkRadio may have something along these lines. I dunno how much talk about Uberguilds I really want to listen to (yes, yes, I know, they’re like Fires of Heaven web site, a place for people to rant as if they are special because they play a video game), but BlogTalkRadio claims to have hundreds of live Internet call-in shows, and since Google returned them in a search on “MMO Talk Radio”, maybe this is already happening? Anyone know anything about these shows?

  12. I’ve heard something in that direction from the EQ2 guild Gothic. They broadcast an in-game radio that has an ICQ number where people can make comments. From time to time they read these comments in the show. It’s not direct speech, but more interactive than a simple podcast.
    http://www.radio-mmorpg.de/ (it’s in german)

  13. I really wanted to comment on this post Tipa because I am a huge fan of radio phone in shows( except for those stupid shock jocks) and I think a gamers phone in podcast would be a terrific. Sadly you are probably right about the infrastructure and screening required. Not to mention that I am in a different timezone and wouldn’t be able to contribute anyway!

  14. Difficult but not impossible. The Harry Potter Prognostications blog/podcast did it – once. They used a paid service and there were audio problems. Not a lot of callers either. I think that Leaky Cauldron does them from time to time as well.

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