Announcing Masters of Unlocking, a new video game news and commentary podcast! [VIDEO]

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Myself and VGCollectaholic have been hard at work on a brand new video game news and commentary podcast called Masters of Unlocking. I know what you are thinking. The answer is “Yes, the world does need another video game podcast.” The more places we have to discuss video games, the more valid the medium becomes.

Transcript(ish)

Hey Future Caleb, do you still co-host the Masters of Unlocking video game news and commentary podcast with VGcollectaholic? Admittedly, I’m sure the answer is no, considering that in the year 2078, where you are now, the podcast would then be over 60 years old, and you would be almost 100 years old. Now, I do believe that with time comes progress–generally speaking–and that age shouldn’t limit a person’s ability to experience life. But when that life experience involves staying mentally sharp, verbally dexterous, and able-bodied enough to sit upright in front of a microphone, you’re asking a lot. I can barely do those things now, and even now I do those things only because science hasn’t found a way to convincingly move my lips for me. Maybe I’m relying too much on scientists. I don’t ever hear the terms “booming industry” and “marionette” in the same sentence, so I know Marionette puppeteers have got to be hurting for work. One of them is bound to be just savvy enough a business person to thread my willing lips with some string and amble through a passable performance of a bi-weekly podcast.

Please head over to mastersofunlocking.com right now to subscribe to the podcast. Or search in any of your iTuneries or Google Playgrounds. And please, tell us what you think via Twitter @MoUPodcast

But I hear you, Future Caleb, yelling through stiff lips controlled off an off-site Jim Henson clone, “which podcast are you even talking about?” That’s fair. I’ve done a lot of podcasts over the years. Perhaps now is a good time to review my bona fides by way of a quick history.

Back in 2011 I mapped my journey to becoming a successful author via a podcast called The World’s First Author Podcast. This was short-lived, 11 episodes, and wasn’t meant to be much more than an audio diary of sorts. Did I ever become that successful author? Financially, no. In every other way, absolutely.

Around this same time, I helped start The Velvet Podcast, a roundtable made up of revolving guests, most of whom came to know each other as members of a beautiful writing forum called The Velvet. This site sprang up out of a shared love of the authors Stephen Graham Jones, Will Christopher Baer, and Craig Clevenger. The Velvet was my first warming and welcoming online home and is sadly long defunct. The Velvet Podcast lasted for 18 glorious episodes.

Then I played around with a couple ideas that are essentially short-lived prototypes on a theme. Meet My Father, The Internet was to be the audio component to a series of essays about growing up without a father. I know that sounds lame, but with titles like “It Takes a Man to Get a Vasectomy,” “A Man Minus a Necktie: A Brief History of Ties and a Longer History of Why I Hate Them,” “Tiny People in Your Semen: the Discovery of Sperm,” and “In Lieu of Emo I Listened to the Metroid Theme,” lame isn’t the right descriptor. Sad and weird, sure. But not lame. That last essay, by the way, has not only a text version and an audio version, but I also expanded it into a video version as well. Link in the description (and links to all of these things I’m mentioned in the description).

The other short-lived prototype is called Webster Creasemuffin Jr. III’s Family Vidja Tradin Post. I’m not even going to try to describe that one.

Then, harkening back to diary nature of The World’s First Author Podcast, I decided to document my journey to learn video game development via The Deaf Duck Podcast. Not much to say there. If I ever dive back into game dev, I’ll probably start the Deaf Duck up again.

My most recent podcast, prior to Masters of Unlocking, is called Important Question? Podcast. Of all the podcasts I had done, Important Question is by far the most professional. It sure helped that my co-host, Gordon Highland, is a musician and all-around audio wizard. He made that podcast sing. I’m incredibly proud of our 57 episode run.

But what about Masters of Unlocking, Future Caleb? Are you as proud of it or are your nods of enthusiasm simply the result of an overzealous and unrefined puppeteer apprentice? I hope the former, of course. For you current viewers, I encourage you to give a listen to Masters of Unlocking and subscribe. We release episodes bi-weekly, so we shouldn’t be too much of a burden to your podcast queue.

And be sure to check out cartridgeclub.org for a lot more gaming podcasts, videos, and general video gaming camaraderie.

Mentioned

• Subscribe to Masters of Unlocking!
• The World’s First Author Podcast
• The Velvet Podcast
• Meet My Father, The Internet
  • Read “It Takes a Man to Get a Vasectomy”
  • Read “Tiny People in Your Semen: The Discovery of Sperm”
  • Read “A Man Minus a Necktie: A Brief History of Ties and a Longer History of Why I Hate Them”
  • Read “In Lieu of Emo I Listened to the Metroid Theme”
  • Watch “Run, Jump, Shoot: Growing Up Metroid”
• Webster Creasemuffin Jr. III’s Family Vidja Tradin Post
• The Deaf Duck Podcast
• Important Question? Podcast
• The Cartridge Club

Music Credits

• Video Dungeon Crawl Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/