Maybe the answer is simply to mix it up. Do a few shows on specific games, with intermittent special episodes on platforms or whole genres or series. The only problem I see is again that the broader the topic gets, the more superficial your commentary is going to get. Imagine trying to cover the best games for the Commodore 64, for instance. What are you going to do, flash them on the screen for a few seconds with a title that disappears before you can read it? I've seen lots of those types of videos, and other than the pleasure of identifying the games there is not much there.
My goal with all of my videos has been to try to inspire people to want to know more about the game or platform and then seek it out themselves. I'm not really the guy to give you the lowdown on how the code or the chips worked. I'm more of the, "Look, here's this cool thing, here's why it is cool, go check it out." A lot of people seem to respond well to that, though of course there are some really nasty critics. I think the "read wikipedia instead" comment is the modern equivalent of the quip "tell me something I don't know!" I guess that is an audience problem. The type of people who watch Matt Chat tend to be knowledgeable about the games and hardware, so I'm not really communicating anything new or esoteric. I guess it would be more interesting to them if I were an engineer or a coder who could talk on a high technical level about this stuff. I just don't have those skills, though, sadly. My goal was more to celebrate these things, trying to get people to either have that nostlagic spark ("OOoh!! Lode Runner!") or perhaps get them thinking about the context of a game and where it came from, or maybe just what was neat about it. Seems like that just doesn't cut it for some folks. They want a level of hardcore knowledge that I just can't provide. I think a lot of is just different personalities and life interests. I know I would much, much rather go hear Richard Garriott talk about Ultima than go hear Chuck Peddle talk about the 6502. When we were interviewing people for Woot! I was much more interested in hearing their personal stories, what inspired them, how others reacted to their work, their favorite gaming experiences, etc. When they started talking in code or technical stuff I had a hard time staying focused. For instance, it was a lot more fun hearing John Romero talk about deathmatches at his job than when he started talking about building a special interface to hook up an Apple II to the Commdore 128 so he could bypass the latter's keyboard.
I'm not saying I don't respect that area of expertise, but that's just not what interests me. I know very little about it and most of it would be completely over my head. I guess technical interests aside, I'm more into humanities than science. :)
Maybe the answer is simply to mix it up. Do a few shows on specific games, with intermittent special episodes on platforms or whole genres or series. The only problem I see is again that the broader the topic gets, the more superficial your commentary is going to get. Imagine trying to cover the best games for the Commodore 64, for instance. What are you going to do, flash them on the screen for a few seconds with a title that disappears before you can read it? I've seen lots of those types of videos, and other than the pleasure of identifying the games there is not much there.
My goal with all of my videos has been to try to inspire people to want to know more about the game or platform and then seek it out themselves. I'm not really the guy to give you the lowdown on how the code or the chips worked. I'm more of the, "Look, here's this cool thing, here's why it is cool, go check it out." A lot of people seem to respond well to that, though of course there are some really nasty critics. I think the "read wikipedia instead" comment is the modern equivalent of the quip "tell me something I don't know!" I guess that is an audience problem. The type of people who watch Matt Chat tend to be knowledgeable about the games and hardware, so I'm not really communicating anything new or esoteric. I guess it would be more interesting to them if I were an engineer or a coder who could talk on a high technical level about this stuff. I just don't have those skills, though, sadly. My goal was more to celebrate these things, trying to get people to either have that nostlagic spark ("OOoh!! Lode Runner!") or perhaps get them thinking about the context of a game and where it came from, or maybe just what was neat about it. Seems like that just doesn't cut it for some folks. They want a level of hardcore knowledge that I just can't provide. I think a lot of is just different personalities and life interests. I know I would much, much rather go hear Richard Garriott talk about Ultima than go hear Chuck Peddle talk about the 6502. When we were interviewing people for Woot! I was much more interested in hearing their personal stories, what inspired them, how others reacted to their work, their favorite gaming experiences, etc. When they started talking in code or technical stuff I had a hard time staying focused. For instance, it was a lot more fun hearing John Romero talk about deathmatches at his job than when he started talking about building a special interface to hook up an Apple II to the Commdore 128 so he could bypass the latter's keyboard.
I'm not saying I don't respect that area of expertise, but that's just not what interests me. I know very little about it and most of it would be completely over my head. I guess technical interests aside, I'm more into humanities than science. :)
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com