Podcast #1 Reflection

For our first podcast, Ross and I decided to go with Madden Ultimate Team 17 as our game of choice and tried relating the themes in Ian Bogost’s chapter on Habituation to those in Madden. We believed that this game was more than a typical sports game void of any meaning and that is exactly what we aimed to disprove.

Before we even began planning the structure of our podcast, we thought it was prudent to read the chapter thoroughly on our own so that we were comfortable with what we were working with. I created a Google document and shared my notes on the chapter with Ross. By cross-examining our notes and seeing which points we both highlighted or did not highlight, Ross and I were able to separate the main ideas from the specific points each of us thought were significant. This initial step was probably the most crucial one in terms of gaining confidence about the material at hand and moving forward to integrate them.

I volunteered to take charge of this podcast and Ross agreed to switch roles with me for the next one. I suggested that we go straight into recording just by looking off our notes in order to try and create a less scripted sounding atmosphere, something we originally wanted to execute. This quickly became a problem. Although this plan seemed great in theory, we realized it was in fact harder than we thought and we deemed this method unrealistic. So, we agreed on writing a script together to follow as a guideline and to keep the podcast going in the right direction.

Unfortunately, our script once again sounded very scripted and Ross and I had to figure out a solution to overcome this obstacle. What we ended up doing was revising the script in a more colloquial manner, something we would not have done for a formal essay. We hoped that writing like we speak would solve this issue but as a result, our podcast still sounded scripted to a certain point. In light of these events, I came to a conclusion that writing is a process. This learning outcome could not have related any better to our project because we tried a number of different ways to structure this podcast with each effort improving the overall quality of our work.

I think our willingness to attempt multiple modes of structuring this podcast really speaks to the learning outcome of collaboration. Ross and I worked tirelessly to ensure both our ideas were included and collaborated when it came to make decisions that would have altered this podcast entirely.

This was a great first experience in creating something I have never done before. I hope that our second attempt at making a podcast will be much smoother compared to this rocky journey.