ModCast/Polycast Special: "Have a Merry Little Humbug"

[GarretSidzaka]

[IMG=right]http://polycast.apolyton.net/images/polycast_logo.jpg[/IMG][img=right]http://polycast.apolyton.net/images/modcast_logo.jpg[/img]'Tis the season for Civving! The second annual PolyCast (PC) Christmas Special, "Have A Merry Little Humbug", is now available for listening. Regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, Makahlua, Imran Siddiqui and Annalee "Cartimandua" Barney are joined by four show co-hosts from sibling show ModCast. They are Tony "GarretSidzaka" Kiehl, Kenneth "Impaler[WrG]" Ferland and John "bt_oz" Archer with Tim "ruff_hi" Pratt.

An official podcast of Apolyton Civilization Site and a nominee in the "Best Produced" and "Gaming" categories of the 2008 Podcast Awards, PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production in an ongoing effort to give the Civilization community an interactive voice on game strategy; its third season is to begin on January 18th, 2009 with the release of its sixtieth episode. Focusing on Civ modding, ModCast's second season is to begin on January 25th, 2009 with the release of its milestone twenty-fifth episode. To date, ACS is the only known community on the Web to produce its own Civ podcasts.

The summary of topics is as follows:

- 04m41s | Village
The Christmas City Cityset for Civilization III.
- 06m02s | Generosity
A Christmas Play-by-Email Game of CivIII where scoring is based on gifting to others.
- 09m03s | Getting
A short joke about the difference between giving and getting at Christmas.
- 09m30s | Poem
The poem "You Come to Play" by 'CivFan91'... in song form.
- 11m32s | Name
Revealing a certain something of one who has been a regular-host from the show's beginning.
- 12m45s | Story
"A Humbug Carol" written by John "bt_oz" Archer and produced by Daniel "DanQ" Quick, based on "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.
- 20m45s | Civmas
With inspiration and some content from a related thread, presenting "The Twelve Days of Civmas" based on "The Twelve Days of Christmas" carol.

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
Imran's pretends to be confused about what this special is about, followed soon by being genuinely confused by a certain acronymn; some co-hosts adapting a 1970's television show's theme song for their own purposes, what is more than enough, and an extended blooper reel.

Enjoy.

 

[Ball Lightning]

Thanks Garret!

 

[GarretSidzaka]

Yes! Merry Lifeday-Kwanza!

 

[DanQ]

Did you enjoy this special, BL?

 

[backblast]

Polycast always has a mix of fluff (banter between the hosts) and hard content (news/strategy/gameplay discussion), but this special had too much fluff in my opinion. I haven't listened to modcast as regularly as polycast, but my limited exposure to modcast suggested it had a less fluff (though obviously hard content has a different meaning in the modcast context) but the modcast crew was unable to temper the fluff impulse of a holiday recording session.

Aside for modcast team: I get the impression not everyone on the team actually plays/experiments with the the mods/extra wonders/etc that are featured. If the modcast team doesn't find something interesting enough to play/use in their own games, why are they featuring it?

I am just one listener, so take my comments with a grain of salt. I look forward to listening the new season.

 

[DanQ]

Good to hear from, backblast -- have you been listening to PolyCast long (e.g. before ModCast launched one year ago this month)?

The reason there wasn't as much 'hard content' in this production as one would anticipate is primarily because of its primary theme: Christmas and Civ. Unfortunately I found very little content that fell under both categories, hence more banter and 'soft content' (e.g. "The Twelve Days of Civmas") made it in than usual. At the same time, this special ended up being ~15 minutes less than I had anticipated it would be -- which would have roughly equaled the length of a regular episode of ModCast or PolyCast this past year -- because of that lack of 'hard content' availability.

I am just one listener, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

This was not an approach that we had taken to a PC production before, and one that we will only consider to appear on rare occasion such as this. On a semi-related aside, this was also a case where only once before had we more than this number of co-hosts participating at once. I am certain this also contributed to the greater volume of banter. (For those who haven't listened or who otherwise don't know, the reason for this number was to bring as much of the regular PolyCast and ModCast panels together as possible -- 4 apiece -- for the first time).

Of the two 'hard content' topics in this special, which was your favourite?

I look forward to listening the new season.

It is listeners such as yourself who listen regularly and provide us constructive feedback that help keep us going.