One of our ideas for Pixels and Puppets is we’re taking a more contemplative approach, rather than just trying to be a nerd news firehose. None of us are journalists, we’re just ordinary folks, so we shouldn’t pretend we’re “covering” a story in the same way.
As a result we’re focusing on stories or topics that matter to us, not necessarily the latest breaking news. This fits both who we are as people and the fortnightly cadence of the show (see what I did there?)
However that does mean that sometimes we will be talking about recent news and since there’s a gap between episodes, I have to get back into the habit of actually paying attention to stories I know I want to cover on the show. On episode 2 we’re going to talk about the wild ride around Dungeons & Dragons and the OGL drama that Hasbro has stirred up, and Paizo’s plan to gather a coalition of indie publishers together to break away from the OGL with a new open license. If you don’t know what any of that means, don’t worry, we’ll break it down in the show. Big Evil Corporation does Big Evil Corporation Stuff and the community rebels, basically.
One thing I’m a stickler for is if we *do* cover a subject I want us to have at least some experience and knowledge first. A lot of podcasts fail to draw a distinction between opinion and experience. There’s a common style of podcast that boils down to this formula: The host(s) don’t know about a subject but speculate about it, then form opinions based on nothing more than that speculation. Instead of having someone knowledgeable on to provide input, they just roll through it like opinions are valid, despite having no experience. Sometimes this isn’t particularly malicious, just clumsy and lazy, but sometimes it’s a full on disinformation engine.
Despite not being journalists and having a small audience, I don’t ever want to be that. As with the puppet building, The Oracle, the live streams, I want us to aim for the highest quality we can achieve, both in production values and content. So that means prep.
Off to read some articles. And have coffee.