I listen to a lot of call-in radio, and although I honestly can't picture it going too well on the Bombcast (best case scenario is probably the callers being good fodder for Jeff) it'd be interesting to see them give it a shot.
I think having direct feedback is interesting and I always liked things like Dave's Pit on the BLLSL. Maybe a better focused call in portion than something random, wild, and open?
As a moderator though, no. Never. Please, god, no.
I think it's all about the potential of the user call-in. They have on the rare occasion resulted in a pretty funny moment, and I figure the reason the crew keeps coming back to the idea is exactly this reason. It all comes down to whether or not they're willing to deal with all the bad calls that you get as well and I'm guessing that they aren't, because this is something that they've talked about for a long time, not something that they've gone ahead and implemented.
As a fair number of people have mentioned in the thread so far, there are a lot of repeated questions, poor attempts at jokes, and trying to force a topic that the crew doesn't want to talk about. Despite this, I would be for call-ins in some part of the site, but I don't see it doing well on the podcast. Perhaps voicemails could work, like others have suggested.
I don't know about call ins, but I like voicemails; I listen to another podcast and the listener voicemails are honestly my favourite part. I guess it depends on the audience though and judging by some of the questions people ask at PAX it could easily be terrible. At least with voicemails you can screen out all the bad ones.
I do want to see them try something new on the podcast though so there's not reason not to give it a go.
At this point I think they're a bad idea and I'm not sure what value they provide that you wouldn't just get from an email. At the very least if you have them you need to screen the calls and that takes the dedicated time and effort of at least one brave person to manage. It's also wise to have someone with a finger on the scrub button just in case. Even if the guys aren't bound to the same rules as an FCC regulated station you still don't want some idiot troll calling in and trying to sneak on some pretty vile stuff.
A lot of times callers either go off on a rant or just kind of ramble before they get around to asking a question and I personally just don't find either particularly interesting or entertaining.
Total second hand embarrassment every time they do something like this. I can't even watch the Q&A parts of their live panels because of how cringe-inducing they are.
Yeah, I can never stomach those either. They're the worst.
Here's a general tip for anyone who might call in at some point in the future if they ever bring that back: You probably aren't as funny or clever as you think you are, so please, just stop.
I hope not. If you want a perfect example of why listener call in's are a terrible idea, just go back and listen to Retronauts Live. Right before 1up folded, Retronauts tried to shift formats to a listener call-in show. The call system never worked out properly, the audio quality of the recording worsened because nobody had a proper mic (this is extra important for a show, like the bombcast that has best-in-class production values), and there wasn't a single caller who was comfortable enough on the mic to be talking so they just complimented the crew then mumbled garbage until teh Retronauts crew had to forcibly disconnect the caller.
God, no. Live it's just a shitshow, and TBH, screening calls seems like WAY too much work to produce a few great moments among a metric shit-ton of misses. It's never laughably bad, either, so much as it is second-hand embarrassment bad. And, really, most questions from a phone call that would be considered good/elicit some good discussion can be just as effective as emails. And the Creeper Cam-esque segements? We'll maybe get 1/100 calls like that, and it's just.... eeeeeehhhhhhhh I don't wanna sit through the other 99 horrible calls.
I have friends that run a video game talk show. No no no no it's a mistake. It's so hard to get genuine people who have an interesting question or discussion point that is also in the knowledge base of the people they are asking the question to. If you want to talk to the duders, go to PAX, Jeff does a Mixlr almost daily from his car. There are opportunities, if you make the effort.
If the Bomb Crew are desperate to interact with their users, a more effective way to do that would be with the chat, since only a small subsection of users A) get through and B) want to call in in the first place.
I'm not sure why they keep going back to the idea. 99% of the time the calls are awkward and the questions tend to be terrible. I'm surprised they are entertaining the idea having had experience with it in the past. If they want to take live questions I feel like it would be far better to have someone in the chat who can quickly sort out the good from the bad and put the question to the crew as Rorie does during UPF.
They're mainly bad, unlike radio, because they don't have someone filtering the calls. The last time they took calls it immediately devolved into trolling.
I don't actually mind it overall, though. Some classic Giant Bomb moments have come from user's calling in.
God, no. Live it's just a shitshow, and TBH, screening calls seems like WAY too much work to produce a few great moments among a metric shit-ton of misses. It's never laughably bad, either, so much as it is second-hand embarrassment bad. And, really, most questions from a phone call that would be considered good/elicit some good discussion can be just as effective as emails. And the Creeper Cam-esque segements? We'll maybe get 1/100 calls like that, and it's just.... eeeeeehhhhhhhh I don't wanna sit through the other 99 horrible calls.
Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. I'd rather they put the time they would use getting live calls set up into literally anything else on this site.
I'd watch a live feed of Dan flossing his teeth on loop for half an hour over listening to random people call in.
Jeff tearing down the gamer gate guy on his mixlr that one time was pretty great.
Sure was!
Anyway, I don't think taking calls is inherently a bad idea, but I don't think it works well for the podcast format.
I agree with this, I forget if it was TNT or Happy Hour, or what, but there was a show they did years back where they took calls every now and then, and it worked as far as I was concerned as the tone of the show was pretty mellow, in my experience, most calls are mediocre at best, a precious few are good, a lot are terrible, but in a laid back series like TNT where it was just a bunch of talkin' whatever while gaming on a couch it wasn't the worst to get a whatever call and there you go.
But the podcast is high energy and well formatted and gogogo with the funny stuff or stories or news etc, that taking a mediocre call in the middle of it would be like slamming on the breaks, and can build an unfortunate amount of resentment with fans if they keep calling in and crashing. I listen to a radio show, whenever the main guy stops the fun to take a call I want to reach into my computer and slap them. Nobody ever appreciated a lull.
No, I dislike them. We untrained masses sound like idiots when calling into a show, be it radio, panel Q&A, podcast. They take up way too much time, hardly ever have an interesting question after stating their life story, how to contact them on Twitter, FB, reddit, Instagram, and then saying how much they like GBs work, then asking for shootouts before finally getting to a question that is dumb or has been answered a million times before.
I think that it could be pretty cool, and I am totally down for them to try it. If it does not work then they can stop, but I say at least give it a shot first before blowing it off. Voicemails would be a pretty cool thing as well.
Side Note: I do feel bad for the people in line at the QA at the Paxes, because I know that I would be pretty nervous asking them questions.
Edit: Also I like that they are thinking about new things to do with the Bombcast, as it has had the same format forever. I still really enjoy it, but it is nice to see them at least thinking about new things to do with it.
No thank you. They're terrible. Slow, unpracticed, and 9 times out of 10, they're dumb question. There's a reason the email questions works so well. They're screened and looked at beforehand.
i always thought people exaggerated the awkwardness of the q&a sections. they can be hit or miss but just as much there seems to be a genuine question, or the one guy who sincerely expressed what the site meant to him and it came off pretty honest and heart warming, or that crazy fucker with the crash bandicoot jacket. i'm not ready to write it off yet, but if the experiment invariably fails then so be it.
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