Podcast reflection-Candy Crush

When first being introduced to the idea of creating a podcast about a game, Candy Crush was the first game that popped into my mind. Since 2012, I have been playing candy crush. From the release of the first game to now, I have had the original candy crush saga, the soda saga or jelly saga downloaded on my phone. Being able to analyze and research about the game that I honestly hold dear to my heart was very interesting.

I worked with Samsara in creating a podcast that exposes the relation of Candy Crush with habituation and branding, terms found in How To Do Things With Video Games by Ian Bogost. The process in creating the podcast was interesting and memorable. Samsara and I both individually did our own research and formed our own thoughts before coming together to record. Both of us came up with different ideas and interesting arguments to put forth. We each did editing, though I had a hard time figuring out garage band. I hope to get better at editing for the next podcast.

As to in response to listening other episodes before creating our Candy Crush podcast, I believe it did influence our podcast. Though some of our information and talking sounded scripted, we made attempts to go off script and just say things that came to mind when talking about a certain topic. It was really helpful to listen to a set of podcasts before creating our own. Listening to the other groups helped us figure out our own structure for our podcast.

The main goal in creating this episode was to argue the habitation and branding could be found in Candy Crush and how something can actually be learned playing the game. Actual life skills such as good decision making, the value of each decision made or simply just trusting your gut. Though these skills may seem simple, the result from learning from these lessons can actually be applied to real life and make a difference. Also the connections made between literature and Candy Crush highlights the fact that a simple game like Candy Crush could be considered “literature” or a “work of art”.

There were two learning outcomes that I took away from working on this podcast episode, collaboration and critical thinking and reading resulting in writing. Samsara and I were relatively busy, so sometimes getting together was a bit difficult. However, despite conflicting schedules, we often found time to have short meetings to discuss and plan for our podcast before actually recording. I believe our collaboration went well. We really worked as a team. When I struggled with editing some parts due to a lack of knowledge in editing, Samsara was really a team player on being able to help edit. As for critical thinking and reading resulting in writing, the part on branding about Candy Crush was a bit more difficult to analyze than habitation since there was a lot more information to be found about habitation than branding. It forced us to think and formulate our own arguments and eventually write and record about it.

As a learner, I feel like I am progressing. This was the first time I have created a podcast as opposed to writing an essay, and I believe the results was very rewarding. There are still quite a few things I know I need to work on such as editing skills and going off script to talk about the game itself more freely. I would suggest my peers for future episodes to not create a script and just record what comes to mind. It flows better that way and often unscripted thoughts are more valuable than scripted ones. I am proud of the episode Samsara and I created. I really enjoyed being able to talk about my personal experience which helped amplify the argument of habituation found in Candy Crush.

Creating this podcast was a really good experience, and I look forward to creating another for others to listen to!