User:Craeyon/Steamcast Podcast

Steamcast Podcast is a podcast series about Valve and Steam related news. It was conceived in June 2009 and hosted by Sam Kindler (Flamov), Saurabh Tomar (spitfire1945), Bradley Hinds (mimaz98) and ended on May 08, 2012 with Episode 99. Steamcast Podcast was a fan-made podcast that hosted discussions about Valve and Steam, but also a wide range of gaming related subjects such as video game digital distribution, the art and design of video games and other topical video game related subjects.

Steamcast Podcast tried to bring the community closer to the gaming industry with interviews with big names like Gabe Newell, Jonathan Coulton, and other notable personalities.

History and Origins
Steamcast Podcast was the brain child of Sam and it was conceived during the controversial announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 during E3 of 2009. Sam used the Steam Powered Forums (SPUF) as a means to recruit some individuals that might be interested in discussing gaming issues and other controversies. He had known Brad through a notable dispute on the steam forums much of which took over private messaging but it was enough to make Sam confident that Brad was definitely going to be one of the other two hosts. Saurabh became a part of the team shortly after discussing the technicalities of the podcast along with hosting the podcast. The first episode was recorded and released the next day. A notable inspiration to this podcast was provided by Podcast17, ControlPoint, and Kritzkast.

The initial interest of the podcast was to involve specific interesting threads from the Steam Powered Forums and invite the creators of these forum threads to come on and discuss their thoughts on their thread. This soon became a challenge.

Recording Techniques and Technicalities
The three hosts were from three corners of the world. Sam was from both Hong Kong and England, Brad from Australia and Saurabh from Canada which made recording the podcast a bit of a challenge. The initial setup for recording the podcast was using Skype and recording the conversation using Pamela Professional software. Later a local technique was developed where each host would record locally using Wavosaur software and then later combined, edited and merged. These episodes were labelled as HQ or High Quality because of their notable increase in recording quality compared to Pamela for Skype. Unfortunately this method had several technical issues so only 7 out of the possible 99 episodes were recorded using this method.

All the hosts of the Podcasts used the exact same mic. The Audio Technica AT-2020 USB microphone to maintain audio consistency.

Show Format
The format of the shows notable changed over the years as the direction of the podcast was adjusted over the course of three years. The show was done is an amateur podcast fashion.

From Episode 1 to Episode 13
The first 13 episodes did not have a very consistent format but it was a combination of community shout outs and related news. This was basically due to the lack of planning and trying to let the show evolve itself onto a consistency.

From Episode 14 to Episode 15
The two episodes contained the introduction to the modern Steamcast Podcast format with the addition segment called "Last Minute Surprises".

Episode 15 on-wards
The show adopted a simple and consistent format that enclosed all the desirable content. The episodes followed a 3 part structure.

The Mailbag This section was used to involve the community and address some viable questions that were addressed to the community by the community.

News

Threads of Discussion

Sam also introduced the "What have you been playing?" section for the hosts starting Episode #41.

Interviews and Specials
Steamcast Podcast has interviewed some notably famous personalities in the gaming industry. While these episodes were not officially given a number with the notable exception of Episode 9 they were listed as Steamcast Snack episodes.

The Notable Future
During the 3 hour Podcast special on May 07, 2012 it was announced the there will be an Episode #100 which would be a radio drama based on a story that had been written by one of the listeners for the Podcast. The episode is set to be released in Summer 2012.