It's been a long, hard day at work. I walk into my room, head thumping, wanting nothing more than to collapse into the sweet release of sleep. I can feel my body aching, my brain fuzzing over as I take off my shoes and change into something slightly more comfortable. I lay down for just a minute, letting out a sigh loud enough to shake the house to its very foundations.
But my work is not yet done. I stand back up, and walk to my computer. I turn it on, inwardly groaning at what awaits me. I take a last fleeting look at the Youtube videos I’d like to watch and the tantalising new episode of The Expanse, before quelling the impulse to sit back and relax. I have a duty, after all. Finally, I summon the courage to do what needs to be done. I double click the icon on my desktop, and buckle in for the next few hours of ‘fun’.
Whoever thought playing video-games could be such a chore?
Living In Interesting Times
Starting the Retro Spectives Podcast was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It has helped with my mental health, let me connect with people from all over the world, and has grown my appreciation of video games tenfold. I’ve been exposed to classics that I would never have otherwise tried, and dabbled in genres I barely knew existed. It gave me a platform to write, something I love doing, but rarely had the motivation to pursue for the sake of it.
For all its upsides, though, this year has had its fair share of downswings. Whenever you need to invest serious time and effort into something on a schedule it will eventually feel like work. The novelty starts to lose its shine, and you need to force yourself to engage with your supposedly fun hobby. You can’t stop burnout eventually rearing its ugly head - but you can manage it.
A year ago, I had dreams of glory. Our second year was going to be the one where we went in swinging, booked 30 guests, and blew everyone’s minds with our hot takes. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite work out as planned. I work in supermarket retail, and when the Coronavirus panic started to boil over in March I bore the brunt of it. My free time evaporated, my hours bloating out. Every day was one filled with tension, customers and staff alike delicately poised to snap at the mildest inconvenience. For the first time in years I started tuning into the 6pm news, letting it fuel my anxiety for the next day, only to repeat the cycle once again.
It seems petty to complain about all this when Corona has devastated families and entire countries far beyond my reckoning, but it certainly impacted my ambitions. When we first started, one of the only things I knew about podcasting was the importance of regularly releasing episodes. I was so committed to this idea that for episode 11, when my co-host James was sick, that I released a solo episode on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, even editing it myself. As expected, it set a new bar for mediocrity - but at least we didn't miss an episode release.
This year, however, we actually delayed an episode. The format of our show is simple - we each play a classic game from start to finish in the space of a fortnight, then have an in depth discussion and review it. My younger self would have laughed at how generous this time frame is, but responsibilities have this magic trick of making it disappear, with no prestige to bring it back. For Episode 32: Archimedean Dynasty, I was nowhere near finishing the game when it came to record. We could have gone ahead without me getting a good grip on the game, and made the regular release schedule, but in the end decided that would go against the spirit of what our show was about - informed arguing about video games.
It was the right choice for us. There is an overwhelming amount of information out there now on how to run a podcast, the dos and don'ts, the paths to success and the potholes to avoid. It can feel like a straightjacket, pushing your creativity and processes into the same mass produced shape as everything else. Much of it is good advice, but not all of it, and distinguishing between the two is not easy. You have to view them as guidelines and heuristics, not sacred laws to be obeyed without question. If we’d released that episode without me playing the game, we would have denied our listeners (and ourselves) the experience of talking about an underappreciated gem in an informed way. It was a great game that led to great conversations, and that was well worth the price of a single week's delay.
The Worst Game I Have Ever Played
Most of the time the problem doesn’t lie in my personal circumstances though - its the game itself. James and I alternate in picking titles for our show, which for the most part works really well. We both come from different gaming backgrounds, and have very different tastes, so we get a healthy spectrum of genres and ideas. The downside is that occasionally one of us will pick a game that the other loathes to the very core of their being, and the ‘discussion’ ends up resembling incoherent ranting rather than anything substantive.
This is what happened to me for Episode 38: Lunar Silver Star Story. It's an innocuous enough looking title. Generic anime artstyle. Evil villain wanting to take over the world. Four dragons to find and defeat. Team of friends going on a journey across the world. Nothing groundbreaking, but harmless, right? It doesn’t seem like the kind of game that you’d care too strongly about, one way or the other.
Wrong. Dead wrong. It is the worst game I have ever played.
Generally, if you’re not enjoying a game, you have the option to stop playing it. And previously, when I’ve been faced with this style of game I have gladly done so. This time, however, I had no choice. Every night I sat down and played an hour or two of Lunar, my eyes gradually glazing over and drool spilled down my chin, so unengaged I was with the scenes playing in front of my eyes.
What ultimately got me through was the promise of the podcast itself. It wasn’t just that it would give me the cathartic release of complaining, and proclaiming my hatred. It was everything surrounding the podcast leading up to it. I got to post on our discord server about the awful time I was having, and engage in the post-episode arguments over whether I was crazy or not.
Playing video-games shouldn’t feel like work, but in this case, it was. And I think that once I was comfortable with that, completing Lunar became possible for me to do. Others will spend hours researching for their podcasts, or writing scripts, or practicing their interview techniques. Me? I just have to play video games. Most of the time I get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but this year I had to manage the painful lows of playing a classic JRPG. When James chooses one again, against my many protests, I think I’ll be better prepared for it.
Sympathy For The Devil
Social Media is the devil I have never quite got the grip of. A large part of it is an unwillingness to put the work in to maximise it. As far as I can tell, the best way to grow your twitter account is to post regularly, and follow literally everyone who has the slightest relevance to your subject matter. This is something that I still have not done, because I find the process so artificial and painful to do. It's ridiculous that I haven’t pushed harder to get those follower numbers up, but you only have so much energy to do things that you hate.
Why do we, as podcasters, continue to make ourselves participate in these parts of the hobby that we don’t enjoy? Why do I feel bad about not going harder on marketing and promotion?
Growth.
There’s a constant itch to get more and more listeners, one that never goes away. If you look hard enough there are enough statistics to drown in, and I did, never even thinking to look for a lifebuoy. Those numbers become your lord and master, your mood fluctuating as that delicate line fluctuates up and down on the graph. And the sad and awful truth is that you will never, ever be satisfied, no matter how high the numbers go.
I can’t help but compare myself to other podcasts in my genre. We’re utterly insignificant compared to the whales. And there are thousands of podcasts just like my own, trying to elbow their way to notoriety. All the effort that you pour into social media might take you up a notch, but it's going to take forever to get even close to the giants of the industry.
The irony is that we’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth in our show this year. In our first twelve months, we had 3500 total downloads. By the end of year 2, as I’m writing this, we have 13,500, and that number continues to grow. We’ve close to tripled our download rate, and yet I’m still voracious in my hunger for more. It is not a hunger that is likely to be sated any time soon.
At some stage, you have to make the decision to stop letting the numbers rule you. I will continue to participate in gaming communities wherever they lie. I will keep trying to line up guests, and guesting opportunities. I will, reluctantly, follow some more people on twitter. But I will no longer tie my happiness to what the graph tells me. If I don’t post on twitter for a week, I won’t tear my hair out. Aggressively marketing yourself is the best way to see returns on growth - but seeking validation through that growth is only going to spiral yourself into unhappiness.
Avoiding The Burnout
At the end of our first year I was filled with a sense of euphoric glee. Things were going well, and could only get better. After 2020, bearing a few ugly scars, I feel cautiously optimistic. Retro Spectives is doing great - we’ve grown in listeners, our discord community is more active than ever, and the suggestions for games to play seems never ending. I’ve faced some personal rough patches along the way, but we always managed to keep everything chugging along. While I haven’t been happy the entire time, it's always been worth it to see things through to the end. At times those tires were barely gripping the asphalt, but we managed to avoid the burnout.
Thank you to everyone who has ever listened to an episode, read an article, or even commented on a thread on reddit. The discussions and engagement we get is exactly what makes podcasting worthwhile.
