The Look Back: September 2021

10/15/21 • 9 min

Arrggh! A Video Game Podcast from The Waffling Taylors

Intro

This is a new type of shorter episode that we'll be putting out each month, called "THE LOOK BACK!". In these, we'll be looking back at the previous month's episodes and giving you a rundown of them. That way, if you somehow missed one, you can get the low down on what you missed. Pretty handy eh?

We'd still recommend that you check out the podcast proper. And if you haven't already, then look for us on your podcatcher of choice and subscribe. It's 100% free to do so, you know.

Before we , we’re a week late with the look back this month. The reason for that is super simple: I edit everything, and a fair few podcasters have reached out to have me edit their shows; including one who will be producing a physical product - which is exciting.

Anyway, tell the people what we released last month Jay

Episode 125 - Chief Andrew is Lost in Cult

This past month - September 2021 - we put out two brand new episodes. The first episode was an interview with friend of the show

We didn't release a teaser for this episode, because it would have been exceptionally difficult to distil all of the humour and deep game narrative analysis (sometimes happening at the same time) into a 2 minutes clip. Squidge actually tried to to this, and it ended up being a copy of the episode - in all its 95 minute glory.

And possible new Waffler, if his plans ever come to fruition
- Squidge

Andrew Dickinson. We called this episode Chief Andrew Is Lost in Cult, as it was all about Andrew’s many, many, many many projects. These range from being the Editor in Chief of the Lost in Cult publication Lock-On, to being one of the hosts of Lost in Cult’s official podcast (Cult Cast), and writing volume two of his Dreamcast Years book and hosting the podcast of the same name.

We discussed the games we’d been playing recently, MiniDisc players (because both Andrew and I are fans of the format), the SteamDeck, and we gave him a chance to revisit the Thunder Plains and swap some of the games he’d be taking with him - this is due to the recent controversy with Activision, Ubisoft, and others.

We also came up with a long list of podcast ideas - all of which are in the show notes, so do give them a look. The last time I checked, there were around 13 new ideas in the episode.

Episode 126 - Locked On with Jason Maddison

Next up was an interview with another friend of the show Jason Maddison. Jason is the Technical Director at Lost in Cult

TWO LOST IN CULT EPISODES IN ONE MONTH. YOU ARE SPOILING US, SQUIDGE
- RUSSELL

Indeed Russell.

Anyway, the episode with Jason was called: Locked On with Jason Maddison. It was the first episode to include a wonderful intro performed by our friend Morgan .

You’ll remember him from episode 123 Ten Minutes of TV Time with Morgan Ritson- Jay

Keen listeners to the show will know that we’ve already spoken to Jason about Lock-On. Back in March, we had a chat with him and Jon Doyle in a bonus episode we called Bonus: lock-on Volume 1 - A Discussion on Passion.

But in this episode we discussed how Jason got involved with the Lost in Cult crew, his piece “I Have Lived” and how close to home it felt for both Jay and myself, and the phenomenon of some people not wanting to read their physical copies of Lock-On for fear of somehow destroying them.

But before we could get on to that, Jason and I had this exchange:

SQUIDGE: What am I doing here? I could have still been in bed
JASON: I’m knackered. I wanna get back in bed, like Squidge here

Once we’d figured out that philosophical problem, we asked Jason to give us the low down on the “I Have Lived” piece.

Coming up This Month

We thought we’d give a little teaser on what’s coming up this next month (October, 2021); remember to subscribe if you haven’t already.

First off, we’ll be finishing out trifecta of our interviews with Lock On folks with an interview with the big boss himself: Jon Doyle. In this episode, we’ll be talking about how Lost in Cult came to be, covering a little on his passion for design, and we’ll be ta...

Intro

We'd still recommend that you check out the podcast proper. And if you haven't already, then look for us on your podcatcher of choice and subscribe. It's 100% free to do so, you know.

Anyway, tell the people what we released last month Jay

Episode 125 - Chief Andrew is Lost in Cult

This past month - September 2021 - we put out two brand new episodes. The first episode was an interview with friend of the show

And possible new Waffler, if his plans ever come to fruition
- Squidge

We also came up with a long list of podcast ideas - all of which are in the show notes, so do give them a look. The last time I checked, there were around 13 new ideas in the episode.

Episode 126 - Locked On with Jason Maddison

Next up was an interview with another friend of the show Jason Maddison. Jason is the Technical Director at Lost in Cult

TWO LOST IN CULT EPISODES IN ONE MONTH. YOU ARE SPOILING US, SQUIDGE
- RUSSELL

Indeed Russell.

Anyway, the episode with Jason was called: Locked On with Jason Maddison. It was the first episode to include a wonderful intro performed by our friend Morgan .

You’ll remember him from episode 123 Ten Minutes of TV Time with Morgan Ritson- Jay

But before we could get on to that, Jason and I had this exchange:

SQUIDGE: What am I doing here? I could have still been in bed
JASON: I’m knackered. I wanna get back in bed, like Squidge here

Once we’d figured out that philosophical problem, we asked Jason to give us the low down on the “I Have Lived” piece.

Coming up This Month

We thought we’d give a little teaser on what’s coming up this next month (October, 2021); remember to subscribe if you haven’t already.

Previous Episode

Locked On with Jason Maddison

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page. Don't forget to check the chapters tab in your podcatcher. This is a thing we're doing now, so keep an eye open for those.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Show Notes

Squidge had a philosophical question for us all, as the episode opened:

What am I doing here? I could have still been in bed
- Squidge

Something for the great philosophical minds to ponder on, for sure. It's also a point that Jason - our illustrious guest for the episode - brings up:

I'm knackered. I wanna get back in bed, like Squidge here
- Jason Maddison

Why was everyone - except for Jay - tired? Because it we recorded this episode on a Monday morning. Perhaps we should have recorded this episode in bed. Who can say?

Our guest this week is Jason Maddison, one of the people behind Lost in Cult, and an all-round nice guy. We've actually chatted with Jason earlier this year, in a bonus episode that we put out called "lock-on Volume 1 - A Discussion on Passion"

Back then (March 20th, 2021), the kickstarter for volume 001 was just coming to a close and we'd asked both Jason and Jon Doyle to talk with us about the passion that they have for preserving physical media, [lock-on], and what they had in mind for it.

At the time of recording this episode, the kickstarter for volume 002 was wrapping up, so we wanted to get Jason back on the show to talk about it, his piece from volume 001 (called "I have lived"), and what volume 002 might have in store.

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If you're brand new to the show - why not subscribe? It's completely free to do so - then you might be interested in our previous episode: Chief Andrew is Lost in Cult. This was an interview and catch-up with our friend Andrew Dickinson, who also happens to be the Editor-in-Chief for Lost in Cult.

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We wanted to let Jason describe what [lock-on] is, in his own words:

[lock-on] is a curious beast...I'm the sort that likes to collect gaming art books, even if it's fan art or unofficial art... So what we have here is a kind of hybrid of an art book but also, what I felt like was an academic journal. And being someone who works at a university with academics, and working on university journals, I felt like we're on to something here.
- Jason Maddison

And after a lengthy discussion on the genesis of the project, Jason asked for our viewpoints on the project.

I've got to say that I still haven't finished reading through it, because... normally when I have a paperback, I've got it cracked open and laying flat. But I'm looking at the quality of the paper and the print and stuff like that, and I'm thinking that if I break this - it would take a lot to do it - but if I break this somehow, I can't get another one. So the hardback copy has stayed in the bubble wrap that it was delivered in.
- JayThis is something that should be opened and experienced... and a lot of effort has gone into creating this.
- Jason Maddison

But what about the future of the publication? Well, the kickstarter campaign for volume 002 was still on going at the time of recording - it has since closed, rather successfully - and it was on track to do much better than anyone had imagined:

[for volume 001] it took us about a month to get to 17k [pounds in funding]. Within about six days, [the kickstarter campaign for volume 002 is] already at about £30,000.00... and Andrew told me that [volume 002 was] fully funded within 18 hours, and as a gaming magazine on kickstarter we had the biggest opening three days [of any product] on kickstarter.
- Jason Maddison

Wow! Just wow!

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Leadership, the final frontier.
These are the voya...

Next Episode

Oh no, Cannibal Jelly! with John Doyle

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Show Notes

This was the final part in our trifecta of Lost in Cult related episodes from late 2021 - to see all of the episodes relating to both Lost in Cult and [Lock-On], click here - and we wanted to end with a bang. So who better for that than the big boss himself: Jon Doyle. Jon is the designer and owner of Lost in Cult, and the man who brought us [Lock-On].

As Jay pointed out:

This will be episode 127. Which, technically, is all of the values you can store in a byte of data
- Jay

Which is actually wrong, as you can hold 256 values in a byte of data. You'd have thought that Jay would know this stuff. But none of that matters, because we have Jon Doyle on the show. As we've said before, this wasn't Jon's first appearance on the show. But he and Jason Maddison where on a bonus episode from March, 2021 called "lock-on Volume 1 - A Discussion on Passion - at the time of writing, that bonus episode doesn't have a show notes page, but we're working on it

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If you're brand new to the show - why not subscribe? It's completely free to do so - then you might be interested in our previous episodes about [Lock-On] which you can find here. This contains the interviews with Andrew Dickinson, Jason Maddison, and our bonus interview with Jon and Jason from March, 2021

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But what _IS_ Lost in Cult:

Lost in Cult is a[n] independent publisher that I set up with the hopes to bring people physical content that is based around preserving video games, films, and, kind of, their legacies.
- Jon

And what is [Lock-On]?

And then [Lock-On] is our first published product. It is a video game journal, which is based around the art of video games, the stories that they tell us, the communities involved. It's all about capturing and preserving that aspect of video gaming in a physical form.
- Jon

At the date of recording - September 21st, 2021 - both Squidge and Jay had had their copies of Volume 001 for around two months and neither of them had finished reading them, cover to cover yet.

This is something that I want to savour, and I want to read each piece, and look at each piece of art that comes with it and let that sit with me for a while - almost like I'm digesting it, you know?
- Jay

And that is entirely by design, as Jon had decided that each piece in the publication had it's own design and colour pallet.

The idea of quarterly - which is we're switching now to a quarterly model - is so that you have time to, kind of, digest the content. We didn't want to throw content at people continuously, we wanted it to sit a little bit.
- Jon

We recorded this episode just three weeks after the kickstarter campaign for volume 002 had ended but Jon wasn't resting on his laurels, as he was already planning articles for Volume 004 - after we'd gone off the air, Jon showed us a preview of the cover art for Volume 003. No, we're not going to tell you what's on there. He swore us to secrecy; with real swear words, too.

And that's not to say that the Kickstarter JUST ok, either:

[the Kickstarter campaign for Volume 002] did really well. It was one of the biggest independent magazine Kickstarter's in history actually. So not a bad growth, that one. It, kinda, did the numbers that I wanted for Volume 005 on Volume 002.
- Jon

Which lead to a discussion on how difficult it can be for projects to gain traction on social media sites without actually paying large amounts of money to the social media sites - they actually pick up on when something goes viral, and artificially block or slow it down, then ask for money to release it again.

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on t...