We Need To Talk About the Future of the Podcast

Foreign. Welcome back to the Backlog Breakdown. Today we do not have an episode for you, nor do we have a bite sized. Rather, we have an announcement and we're both here to announce something special today. Well, yeah, it's something that. I don't know, I'm pretty excited about it.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's. I can hear in your voice that you're pretty excited about it too. No. So in lieu of the upcoming holiday, today we're declaring our independence. That's right. Our independence from some of the opening forms that we usually follow at the beginning of the podcast. But at the same time that we're declaring independence, we're also strengthening our bonds with our network of Friends with the Play. Well, network. So thank you, America, for paving the way for us. We're just taking a cue from those founding fathers.

You're just.

You're just loving this. You're like, yeah, yeah, not. Not even gonna say anything anyways. No, no, no. Okay. What does all this mean? What is the actual announcement that. That we have? It means that starting with our next episode, we're essentially gonna be splitting what we've been doing with the Backlog Breakdown podcast in. And. And we're splitting it and creating two shows out of it. Okay. So we'll be inviting friends from our network to join us and we'll be calling that used to do as the first half of the podcast for those opening forums. We will be inviting in friends from the Playwell Network and we'll be talking, discussing those opening forums, sharing experiences together. And like, you know, the. It's been segment that we've done that we continue to do all of that, all of those kinds of conversations, even just talking about, you know, the things that we've been into lately, some of the media we've been consuming, even the video games we've been playing, all that is going to be a new show that's going to be called the Pone Call. Or actually, I probably should have straightened this out first. Is it a phone call or is it phone calls plural or singular?

I just imagine that it, like, I think that every time we've talked about it, it's been singular. Like it is the phone call.

There you go.

Yeah, and. And yeah, it's. And sometimes it will just be you and me, and sometimes it will be friends of the Playwell Network as well or, you know, whatever. Like. Yeah, so it's just basically the first half of the show is being spun off into its own thing. This is just. And we were going to have Mark to sort of jump on here and explain some of this. But I dropped the ball because

there you go. See, Mark is a fellow member of the Playwell Network. In fact, if you don't know, if you're only just now, you know, picking up on some of the things that we've been, we've been throwing out there. When we say pone were saying that there's an acronym for pwn, the Playwell Network. So anytime you hear something like a PWN call, we're calling it a PONE call because it's a fun pun, but also because it's a call with members of the Playwell Network. As you said, sometimes it's just gonna be the two of us, sometimes it'll be three people. Hey, four people. You know, whoever is able to join, obviously friends and fellow patrons and stuff like that. But that's going to be the, the more collab, I would say more collaborative part that's going to be a little bit, A little bit more dressed down, a little bit more reflective on some of the things that we've been engaging with. And then what we've been doing for our main episode content is going to continue as the backlog breakdown. Each of these shows now, the phone call and the backlog breakdown are going to be released on alternating weeks, so they will be released biweekly. So one week you'll get a phone call, the next week you'll be getting the backlog breakdown proper, where we dig into a topic, a game, and of course, we will continue to have guests as they. As they appear. But we are your. Your co hosts. I didn't even introduce us this. This time. Well, hey, it's an announcement. You know, here, here we are your, your hosts, your friendly.

You're Josh. I'm Nate.

That's right.

If this is somebody's first time, this is a really awkward first episode.

No, but, yeah. So that's in a nutshell, that's kind of the big announcement is we're splitting the podcast. We're making two shows. It's still coming out every week. Now it's just going to be in a little bit different form. So why did we decide that we want to make this change? Well, frankly, it's your fault. No, not really, but partially. So we've been listening to feedback about the podcast. Okay. Sometimes the overall episode length, you know, when it gets into like three, three and a half hours, four hours, whatever, that can be an issue for some people, and other people just prefer to skip past that first half. The opening forms that we typically do because they really just want to listen to the main topic, something along those lines. Now you can do that because they're going to be separate. At least they're going to be delivered with a separate name, separate title, you know.

Yeah.

At the same time.

Yeah, it's the same amount of content, but accessibility and digestibility are going.

It's.

It's going to be a little more approachable. So. Yeah. And if you like kind of the old format, then you can just sort of sit for two weeks and you listen to it all in one, one shot. And in some ways too, this, this does actually open us up for like more content as well because one of the other things we're going to be doing is that bite size style content is going to be releasing on Fridays.

Yep. Yes. Our schedule is, is. We'll get to that in just a second. Which is, I mean, for me it's one of the more exciting parts of the announcement. So I mean, maybe that's just because the whole splitting thing, we've been talking about it behind the scenes for. But what this leads to is that we'll have content coming out from our network multiple times a week. But then also, like you just mentioned, it allows us to release different types of content throughout the week as well as it's being produced. So just to double back though, on the phone call, we. And the reason we've always had these opening forms is, is that we do think that it is important or at least we still, we still think it's valuable, I'll put it that way. We think it's valuable to have some of these conversations that contextualize the way that we play video games, the way that we interact with media in general, and where our heads have been at lately too. That's still a good thing, especially for, you know, us as friends, but also kind of the larger, again, play well network community.

And I think as a general rule, like the defense I've always made for the opening forums is, yes, it's become more formal, but those were conversations that we were having anyways a lot of the time. And it was a way to put friendship on display. Sort of an inspiration for that really was Doctrine and Devotion with Jimmy Fowler and Joe Thorne. They would get a lot of feedback about their banter and Joe and Jimmy actually mounted a bit of a defense and said like, this is how we are in real life. This is like our friendship on display. And I really like that. I thought that was really good. I think that a lot of times with this content, we can become a little too reductionist. I think that we can just sort of try to boil it down to information or arguments or bullet points. And I think it's, it's important to actually include a human element there as well, where it's like, this is not just two guys, you know, and that's, that does tie into, again, sort of, maybe it's not explicitly dealing with the themes or, you know, the underlying ideologies behind games, but it's actually, again, it's, it's kind of putting friendship on display. And I think that's an important element.

So, yeah, yeah, we still believe in it, even though again, we've been listening, we've been getting feedback. We understand, hey, it might not be everyone's cup of tea, but we continue to think that it's valuable. And so we want to continue to have it just in a slightly different format and that being the phone call. So one, you get more manageable lengths of each episode that's released, whether it's a phone call or whether it's that. That's now the what will be continuing as the Backlog Breakdown Podcast, our main content that we produce here. It also allows us to invite on friends without requiring them to sit down with us for like five hours at a time. So there's a little bit less of a. Of a commitment if anyone wants to jump in. So that's, that's nice. Not only that, it does help us to highlight this network of podcasts that we have together, the Playwell Network. And what mentioned earlier, we're going to be syncing up our release schedule so that there's something new for you multiple times a week. So in order to do that, the last announcement, outside of splitting these, these episodes last announcement is that we're going to be moving our release dates from Wednesdays, when we typically release all of our content, to Mondays. So every Monday you'll be getting something on the Backlog Breakdown feed. Whether you're listening to us on a podcast right now or whether you're watching us on YouTube, Mondays will be the new days that you get your your fix of Backlog Breakdown. Either that's going to be the Punk all episode or that's going to be the podcast, the Backlog Breakdown episode. On Wednesdays, you're getting a new episode of our fellow Playwell Network show Quick Play. So he produces content on a weekly basis as well. And so Wednesdays are when you get that. So every week you'll be getting something new from the Playwell Network on Monday Excuse me, on Monday. Did I just say Monday? On Monday and Wednesday.

It has been a long week. Yeah, yeah.

You know, but definitely looking forward to the future and moving forward. Any bite sized content that we have or supplementary episodes like we mentioned, those are gonna be released on Friday in addition to the weekly Monday drop here on this feed where you'll get our stuff.

Yeah, well, and I was just gonna say, and I don't know if you were gonna talk about this or not, but we also have plans on going back and some of our older content, bringing that forward and putting that on YouTube. So that, that's going to be more of a not super consistent thing. But that's also, you know, we, we, we got into YouTube fairly late in the life cycle of the podcast and we have a lot of content which, you know, it's. Some of, it's okay. Some of it, I stand by other parts. I'm like, boy, we have learned a

lot over the course of 215 episodes.

Yeah, so there is that. So that's also something that is, you know, sort of. I know that for some of our listeners they've pretty much said that like YouTube is their primary using experience, you know, and we're not going to abandon, like I said, you know, it's for the podcast podcatcher crowd. It's the only thing that's going to change is that Mondays the Breakdown and the phone call are going to air and for now it's all going to be, you know, that stuff's going to stay here, you know, in the right on, on the Breakdown feed or the Breakdowns YouTube channel. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so with that just scheduling, like I said, you know, two drops on the this feed and then quick play on Wednesdays. We do have other podcasts that are part of the PlayWell network that just don't have as regular drops. So they're not included. But go check them out as well. You know, they're always a good time. Absolutely. Like you mentioned, we do have other ideas and things that we want to bring to the table. Yeah, repackaging old content, you know, clips, things like that. There are other ideas and other things that we both want to do. We're just limited by the time that we can dedicate to this every week. So we're still determining how to balance out these lofty goals that we have because we'd love to be, you know, dropping new, dropping episodes and different types of things, you know, multiple times a week. But we're also both dads, you know, we, we also have other things going on in life. So we're trying to balance that out with our realistic responsibilities that we have every week. So those are all the announcements that we have for today. In the future, there might be more coming, because we do. We want to. We've got these ideas, but also we recognize our. I was going to say earthly limitations, but there's another word for that. But we are. But dust. We only have so much time in the day. Yeah.

And I think part of it is just we are sort of very much still in a phase of figuring out what the rhythm looks like and what. And just we're kind of, you know, as we're trying to take this a little more seriously. That also does mean a little bit more prep on our part, you know, per episode and things like that. So there's just. There's a little bit of a learning curve, you know, that we're getting into here. And so, yeah, that's. But, yeah. And, yeah, I'm not. I am excited about this. I'm just. It is. It is late, and it's prime days, people. Some of y' all need to go to stores. That's all I'm saying. Oh, man.

Yeah.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I. I like the overtime, boy.

There's a lot of it.

There's a lot. Just. But, yeah, so. And. And like I said, we're. We're just.

We're.

We're trying to sort of, like, gauge what we can do, what we can handle and, you know, see how sustainable some of these things are.

Yeah.

And. Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome. So with our new schedule, with our new, you know, ideas, things going forward with the podcast, I hope that what you take away from this announcement as well is that we're listening to you. If you have feedback for us, we want to know. This was primarily. You know, some of these changes were primarily made from feedback we've gotten from other listeners from even people within our network, from people close to us, from. From good friends as well. So we hear you. You know what? We love you. Dang it. So show us your support. Hey. Okay. I love you. Dang it. I'll put it that way. But you can show us your support by telling other people about the podcast, about what we're doing here, continue interacting with us on the different platforms, whether that's in video here on YouTube, comment, do all that. All that fun stuff. And then, of course, there's the Patreon, if you want to jump into that as well, and help kind of steer this thing. As we're continuing forward. But I do just want to say thank you for your support. You know, sometimes announcements and updates can. Can get kind of anxiety inducing and, like, oh, are they calling it quits? And that's not the case here, where I can speak for myself, that we're looking forward to what's in store and what the future holds. Like I said, we'd love to be doing all kinds of new stuff as well. And not only that, we believe that the mission that we have for this podcast is important. We believe that the church ought to be thinking deeply about how we interact with the culture and how we interact with video games and stories and these things that we enjoy so much in, you know, creating a theology of leisure and recreation and things like that. So we're enjoying what we're doing, and we appreciate the support and full steam ahead, man. That's where I'm at.

Yeah, no, it's. It's exciting. Yeah, it's. It's exciting, but, yeah, also, I'm tired, so.

All right, well, with all those announcements out of the way, guys, you've tuned in now. Now get out of here. Keep beating down your backlogs, and we will continue to break down the benefits.