Author: Colin

The process of making the second podcast was a lot easier than the first time through. It took a little bit of time to adjust our writing style to fit the podcast rather than write an essay the first time through which meant that the whole process took longer than. Something that we did during both podcasts that led to our success was starting early. We once again started working on the podcast a week before it was due which was very helpful. We were able to get all of our ideas together and written down in a basic script before meeting with professor Morgen about our ideas.

We used a similar structure in our Minecraft podcast as we did in the previous podcast. We started off with a little bit of description about the game and how popular it is. Then I described why the game has accrued so many awards and why it is such a unique and cool game from a personal perspective as an avid Minecraft player. After that we played the game and related it to a chapter in Ian Bogost’s novel, How to Do Things With Video Games.

Even though the structures were similar, I felt that the process of making the second podcast was very different than the first one. One key difference was that Ben had actually played Minecraft before. This made the process easier because it felt more natural to have a conversation about something that we both knew about instead of a more one-sided argument. This also made the whole process more fun for both of us.

Now that we are approaching the conclusion of this course, I can say confidently that making these podcasts was my favorite assignment of the year. It was a really interesting way to explore a new form a writing in a new medium. I learned a lot about how to make a podcast and how to use audacity which is a useful thing to know how to do. Not only was it good for me to be exposed to this different type of writing but it was also really fun. It was great to be able to pick topics that we were passionate about and I think it lead to higher quality podcasts. Overall, I thought these two assignments were the most interesting of the whole semester and I definitely recommend assigning them again in future classes.

At the start of Fiasco, I really didn’t know what to expect. I went into the whole experience fairly blind to the world of tabletop role-playing games. I had played plenty of role playing video games before such as Skyrim or Fallout, but nothing like Fiasco before. What I found makes fiasco different and one of the most fun things about Fiasco was the fact that we, the players, were the ones who got to control the story. One of the things that video games do is provide a story for you to enjoy and you can just go along for the ride. Tabletop role-playing games however let you decide what you do with your story and how each character develops and lets you use your own creativity which make them superior to video games in that regard.

We chose to play Main Street as our first Fiasco game. During the game we took turns for who got to drive the story. I think I may have been a little more forceful than others to drive the plot forwards because I got excited about the possibilities of the story and had grand ideas for how to tie certain scenarios that we created together. However, I think that everyone had equal opportunity to participate and there were great contributions from everyone in the group. I think that we may have made an error while playing the game and given everyone too many needs and places to be. However, this error made the storytelling even more interesting. We had to be more creative about how we were going to make each individual storyline come together into one ending. We had more to work with in terms of needs for characters which forced us to be more creative on how to tie the two sometimes very different needs together. I think that these errors made the game more interesting because there was so much more guideline material to work with. If we were to play again making the same mistakes that we did the first time, it would benefit us to have more acts because there was a lot more information to be discussed. One of the things that was difficult about Fiasco was creating dynamic characters. Because we were only given a couple of needs about the characters it was easy to just make those needs define the character and not worry about the rest of the character. However, that left us all with flat characters that lacked true motivations.

Another thing about playing fiasco that was really fun was the laughter. The entire time we were playing the game we were laughing and having fun which is the most important part of playing a game in my opinion. The game made the whole experience of creating this fiasco story enjoyable which I think makes Fiasco a really successful game. Not necessarily successful in the financial sense, but successful in its goal to make everyone storytellers and express their creativity and have fun with it.

I think that Fiasco definitely fulfils the learning outcome for collaboration. Fiasco requires you to collaborate with others in order to play and create an interesting story. It requires you to listen to other people’s ideas and accept them even if they may be different then your own. This is an important part of collaboration because accepting different ways of thinking will always be helpful for obtaining a broader understanding of any topic. Collaboration can help in many ways to accomplish a task that is too great for one person and it is important to learn how to collaborate effectively. I think that this collaborative experience was important for me to have because, unlike many group projects that I have had in the past, this kind of collaboration worked really well. The way I could use this experience in the future is to give collaboration another chance and be more open to listening to others ideas more because they may end up having better ideas than I do.

Come check out my interpretation of Wolf in White Van as a story of the recovery of Sean from depression using Trace Italian as a medium for recovery. In it I discuss Trace Italian as a healing device for Sean because of how it connects him to other people and gives him motivation to live. Click Here to view the essay. Enjoy!

Looking back on the process of creating our podcast, I thought it went very well. Ben and I were very good at communicating with each other about what our expectations were from each other and we were both very available to meet to work on the project throughout the week which made the whole process a lot less stressful. One thing that we did that I think was the most helpful was starting early. We began working on our podcast the Sunday before it was due which gave us plenty of time to put together a well-polished finished product. As for the quality of the podcast, I think we did a good job of analyzing Assassin’s Creed in an interesting and engaging way that kept the listener interested and focused. I think the podcast flowed well and we had a clear idea in mind for what the overall message of the podcast would be. Having a clear argument before starting recording was essential. We did a lot of planning and talking off the record in order to put together our final product. This made the process of recording a lot easier because we had already talked about what we were going to say beforehand.

One difficulty we had during the project was the editing at the end of the project. Both Ben and I had never used audacity before and some of the audio editing was very time consuming. Another difficulty we had was Ben’s inexperience to the game. In a way it made the podcast more interesting because it was a genuine teaching experience about the wonders of Assassin’s Creed. However, it did make it slightly more difficult to discuss because only one of us knew very much about the game. This problem was really my fault for insisting that we play a game that he hadn’t played before. For our next podcast we will try to play a game that both of us know well.

The final draft is finally finished! Click on the link below to read about why the Sport Magazine Article on the North Wall of Manuel’s Tavern is such an integral part of the entire establishment.

Sport Magazine Article

My Manuel’s Tavern work is finally up! Read it to learn about the history of Sport Magazine and Budweiser!My article goes into depth about how the Anheuser and Busch Brewing Association, the creators of Budweiser, created one of the first beers that sold nationwide. Their innovation was essential to one of the most popular industries in America and they have been successful enough to become the “official beer of the NFL” (by paying lots of money).

Unpacking Manuel’s