Hi everybody! Today we’re announcing some changes to the podcast. We’ve had a long-overdue chat about how we approach C&C and made some decisions that are intended to help us address the scheduling problems we’ve encountered over the last few months. That’s not all, however – we’ve been doing this show for the better part of a decade (!) and our lives are very different now to when we started. These changes are intended to align the pod with our interests and perspectives now that we are all ashen shadows of our former selves, while also formalising a bunch of the ways that the podcast itself has matured.
‘Matured’ is definitely the wrong word, but I didn’t want to write ‘change’ twice in one sentence, so here we are.
Change can be scary, so I also want to emphasise that these changes (shit) are being made to make sure that the podcast remains fun and viable for us and for you. Honestly, we’ve needed to do this for a while.
Here, then, are yer patch notes.
Episodes of the Crate & Crowbar will be fortnightly starting with Episode 383, which is out today.
- This will give us the breathing room we need to navigate busy schedules and give us all a chance to heat our takes for longer.
The Crate & Crowbar will no longer be just a PC gaming podcast – it’ll be about games of all kinds.
- Let’s be real – this has been true for ages. We’re just going to stop apologising when we want to talk about console games/mobile games/card games/tabletop games/etc. Given our collective professional backgrounds and interests, the PC is likely to remain a major presence regardless.
We’re going to focus more on what we’ve been playing and less on news.
- This doesn’t mean we won’t cover industry developments or announcements if we want to, but we’ll no longer default to having a news section at the start of the pod.
Questions from Questions is going on holiday while we figure out a new approach to listener participation.
- We’ve had a lot of good feedback and suggestions about how to make Qs from Qs more rewarding for folk who write in and a more fruitful experience for us as hosts, but we’ve not settled on an approach just yet. For the time being, we’re going to see how the podcast feels without a questions section.
What’s this – a plot twist! You’re still getting weekly pods! Starting next week, we’ll be publishing a new Lock-In on every ‘off’ week.
- For the unfamiliar, Lock-Ins are one-off episodes that focus on a particular subject, traditionally a game we want to dive deeper on, usually with fewer qualms about spoilers than the main pod.
- Lock-Ins can be on any subject, however. Games, films and TV, interesting smells, bad ideas for quizzes, true crimes that Marsh has done – you name it.
- This will give us a chance to explore things that interest us and potentially bring new voices into the pod. Last week’s Green Knight tangent was a bit of a trial run.
- Lock-Ins aren’t quite as risky as main episodes when it comes to scheduling because we can line them up (and sometimes get them recorded) well in advance, so we see this as a way to provide you with something to listen to every week without encountering the same issues we’ve faced lately.
Patreon supporters will only be charged for main C&C episodes, not Lock-Ins.
- We appreciate that not every Lock-In will be of interest to every listener. For that reason, they’ll be free for everybody.
- This will reduce our overall funding, but this is already the consequence of needing to skip weeks due to scheduling issues. We’ll keep an eye on it, and if we need to reassess how we fund the podcast, we will – but we’ll be fine for the time being.
Right! That’s it! That’s our news! Thanks for listening, and for reading, and for all of the feedback and and support kind words while we’ve been figuring this out. We hope you are happy with this new direction, but either way, let us know. Episode 383 will be along shortly.