The man with the golden voice - Kickstarter video experience

On today's episode, Chris and Angie discuss their experience with a Kickstarter prototype and what it was like filming a short segment for the publisher.

Transcript

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:06] Welcome to the Chasing Meeples podcast. If you want a light, hearted take on board games with a sprinkling of hilarity, you're in the right place.

[0:13] Music.

[0:20] On today's episode, Chris and Angie discuss their experience with a Kickstarter prototype and what it was like filming a short segment for the publisher.
Wait, you really want me to say this?
Oh brother, get comfortable, put on your headphones, take a deep breath in the sweet, sweet sound of Chris's voice. The banter starts now.
Hello everybody. This is the Chasing Meeples podcast and I am your host Chris.
And as always, I am with my wonderful co-host.
Hello, hello. It's Angie. Hey, how you doing today, Angie? I'm doing pretty good.
I'm doing pretty good. My voice is a little bit on the fritz.
So if I sound better than usual, then you know it's.
Ha ha ha. What's going on with your voice? I don't know, probably a little bit of a cold I think I caught from the young man. Oh no. I think I caught a little bit of a cold from him.
That's not good.
Well, you know, I knew he's sick, but I'm not gonna give up the cuddles just because.
Oh, absolutely. Why would you give up the cuddles? No, I knew it, I knew it.
It may come, it may come.
Yeah, well. That's okay, I can deal with it.
It may make me sound better considering.

[1:39] You're the one with the voice on this show that sounds wonderful.
Hey, you're saying it like I paid this guy money under the table to say that.
No, no, no, not at all.
But what Chris is saying is that we received a compliment, somebody that I work with, listened to our show and he had to tell me, hey, you have to tell your husband, he sounds so good, he sounds great, he's got that voice.
I said, yeah, I know, I know, everybody tells him, it's like our Chris in the morning voice.
And he's like, and your banter's really good. Oh yeah, you sound good too.
I got the, and you, you know, you know, when you hear it. Oh, and you sound good too.
Okay, Jim.
And I might have to forget about buying a couple thousand dollars worth of jewelry from you for a year.
Oh, well let's hope Jim doesn't listen to this episode. I'm pretty sure he did.
For the golden voice.
Golden Chris in the morning on W. Meeplechaser radio.

[2:49] Well you had that voice. I've been spinning hits all day long.
You had that voice perfected when you were a young man making mix tapes in your basement.
Well of course, mix tapes, all that fun stuff. All right, anyway.
Okay. So let's stay on task here. Let's stay focused, Angie.
Can you do that for me?
Oh, okay. Can you stay focused? I'm trying, I'm trying. All right, focus, focus, focus.
So I feel like we have not gotten a lot of gaming in, which just kind of sucks.
And we really have nobody to blame but ourselves and me sleeping all the time, because I'm tired.
But so I guess we only have one person to blame and that's me.
It's you. Yeah, just figured that out.
Yeah, and we're missing a con today, So it kind of makes me a little sad.
Oh no, we are, aren't we?
We are. Why didn't we go there instead of doing this? Because we have a sick little boy. Oh yeah, I forgot.
Such a horrible parent. I wasn't going to remind you.
I was all prepared on this past week and I realized that he was sick and we weren't going to, we weren't going to go.
Yeah, well.
We didn't buy tickets ahead of time. So we're not out money, just the experience.
Yes.

[4:07] Yeah, once a year there is a actual con in the city that we live in.
Tiny little con. We wanted to check it out this year, but we're not going to make it.
So, oh well, always next year. Here I am saying that we didn't really play many games, but I do feel like we did get some gaming in.
We've played beer and bread several times. Yeah. I really enjoy that game.
I wasn't sure how I was, how I felt about that game. That game really didn't appeal to me, but I know that was on your list of...
Was it Anticipated Games?
Yes. I think it was, yeah.
And if you want to hear both of the both of our anticipated lists, you can listen to the episode.
Entitled Anticipated Games of 2022.
But I feel it's it's it's not too heavy and it's not too light.
It's like it's like perfect.
It's a nice medium weight game.
It gives you, it's that sense of that Uwe Rosenberg Euro game farming game in a two person, not really lighter weight, but it's a two person game where it's not so much to set up.
If you have the Caverna and like, I have a whole extra, not an insert for Caverna, but I have a whole extra bin full of the meeples and sheeples and the cards and all that.

[5:37] The tiles. So there tends to be a lot, a lot of work, a lot of setup, a lot of components with those games.
And this is a little bit more compact.
I think it's easier to get to the table.
Yeah, it seems it's a, it seems like a pretty quick setup too.
It doesn't have the tile lane that the other ones have.
So it's kind of down to the basic farming and, and I think we'll talk about that a little bit more in the future.
Yeah, for sure.

[6:10] So I was watching this morning when you and Gabe were still asleep, I was watching the Murph brothers play their Murph marathon, I think they called it.
They were playing all three of the West Kingdom saga games and they were doing the Tom saga with it as well.
And it was gonna be a six hour stream, so I wanna get some time and watch that.
But watching them play Architects of the West Kingdom made me really wanna play that game.
Did they start with it? Yeah, they're starting with Architects.
And then they're going to Viscounts, Paladins. Then they're going to Paladins, then they're going to Viscounts.
And we have TomSaga as well, but we have not opened the box.
We do have TomSaga? Yeah, we do. when I got it during the Kickstarter for Viscounts.
Okay. But yeah, we got that and it adds a cooperative element to the game, you can now play the games cooperative or you can play it competitively and throughout.
Do you play the games again? Yeah, you can play the games, they're doing it all at once.
Yeah, but I mean for TomSaga, how does that work?
Okay, so TomSaga gives you basically, If you play it cooperative, it gives you goals to play the game cooperatively.

[7:33] How do you know, like there's modules in there for each one of the games to so you make them a co-op games a little differently.
Correct. Then there's also a way to play the games, like a competitive thing where they give you, um, we'll call it objectives and game objectives.
Okay. and you get points and almost like some perks that happen if you go to, from like architects to paladins.
What I think is cool listening to the Murph brothers talk about the expansions for those games.
I mean, we have one of the expansions, but I don't think we've ever opened it.
That's par for course. Yeah, I'm getting to the point where we don't even need expansions, We never use them anyway.

[8:26] What are you doing? I'm figuring out what for max points. Oh, you gotta have that figured out already. I don't.
Ladies and gentlemen, Meeplechasers, listen to Dead Air.
You're talking. I'm trying to keep it moving.
Oh, this is you keeping it moving? Trying to keep it moving.
Well, I told you there was a quiz and you're like, no, no. There was no banter.
I mean, there was no segue. There was no clear segue.
You were trying to segue. You're avoiding this quiz. That's what it is.
You're avoiding this quiz. No, I'm not. I'm watching you just not pay attention to me talk, during a podcast that involves two people that need to talk to each other.
All right, let's, I guess, it's quiz time.
Quiz time!

[9:14] Music.

[9:26] All right, today's quiz. Now there are the quiz is essentially we're taking a word from our name and leading it, back to the board games.
These next two quizzes are a little bit looser in that segue.
Because it's getting difficult to find movies that start with the word chasing.
So no.

[9:53] OK. Yeah, there's only so many teen. Yeah, I I'll do it. But this does this one does.
But this does. But maybe a little bit looser than originally.
All right, I'm ready. I'm ready for Max points.
Please announce to the listeners what Max points for this quiz is.
I believe it is two max points or nine plus two bonus.
Ooh. So possibility of 11. That would be max points. I was trying to add them up, but I got scolded.
I got scolded. So let's start off here with number one. What animated series featured four teenagers and one dog that were chased by ghosts?
Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo. You got one. Yay.
And can you name them, the teenagers and the dog? Yeah, Fred, Shaggy, Wilma, Daphne, Scooby.
All right, see there was- Scrappy. Well, I don't have Scrappy in there.
I said four teenagers and a dog.

[11:05] Question number three. Wasn't there a Scooby-don't? No, there was Scrappy, And then there was, no, it wasn't Scooby Don't, Scooby Dum.
Scooby Dum. Scooby Dum. Yes, that's him. Okay, okay. He's a cousin.
And then Scrappy had puppy power. Yes. Yeah, anyway.
Number three, when did Scooby Doo launch on TV? What year?
1966. Oh, you're close.
Missed that one. 1969. So you're sitting at six. Six points for you. All right.
Number, wait, I don't know how to add.
How many scooby-doo games are there with the word chase in them?
There are 58 games total.
Out of 58 games, how many have the word chase in it? In the title. In the title.
Okay.

[12:20] Of course I got this from BGG. Of course.
And I'm not even gonna spend 10 minutes trying to do it. I'm gonna pull out a random number and that is two.
Oh, you're close, three.
There are three games and they're rated, they're not ranked. Do we have names?
I do, I do.
They are the amazing chase game, monster chase and cyber chase.
Do we know what years they came out?
No, but I do have what they are rated. Okay. Perfect.
They're rated somewhere from three or 2.96 and a six, which one's rated higher.

[13:07] Titles again, please. Amazing chase game, monster chase or cyber chase. Monster chase.
Ooh, got that one wrong. Saber chase.
Amazing chase game. Oh, okay. That's probably the oldest of the bunch too. The bonus question.
So you're sitting on six here.
Six, one, two, three, four, five, six.
Bonus questions. What actor played Shaggy in the live action movie, Scooby-Doo?
That's horrible. We actually met that guy. Um, he does a lot of D and D stuff now has his own company.

[13:54] Beetle and grim. Hmm.
He was in hackers.
Matthew Leonard. Oh, Matthew Lillard. Lillard. I, that's what I said.
I will give you half a point for that. Oh, come on. And my second- I knew he was in hackers.
My second question to that was how is he related to gaming?
And you answered that.
So you get one and a half bonus points added to your six, that's seven and a half out of nine or seven and a half technically out of 11.
And a half out of tech out of out of possible 11 max points so that was one One, two, three, four, five, six.
All right.

[14:51] Perfect. You know what? I'll take it.
Earlier, what was it? It was, it's February now. So that would have been in January.
January, um, on Instagram, we had a game company called Dinky Games reach out to us on Instagram and Angie, uh, struck up a conversation with them and they wanted to know if we were interested in recording a, what was it?
They said like one to three minute video, uh, talking about a game that they were going to be launching on Kickstarter.
And they wanted to know if we were re we would be interested in it.
So we of course jumped on it, right?
Cool, cool experience. If anything, if anything, it's just a cool experience, right?

[15:42] Yeah. So we got the game and it was a prototype game. And so not all of the components were complete.
You know, some of the artwork was missing. But overall, it was pretty close.
It was pretty close. I think it's, you know, like it was like 80% done. Yeah, yeah.
And well, the name of the game is The Season Love and Drama in the Regency era.
And it is one of those games that if you are a fan of Pride and Prejudice, the Jane Austen novels or the movies, or Bridgerton, which I have no idea what it is, but I believe it takes place in that era and it's more of a tongue in cheek, maybe version of that.
This is the type of game that you would probably enjoy.
Definitely not a theme that I would ever find myself liking.

[16:52] But the game...
I liked.
I really like that game.
So.
Well, tell me a little bit more about the experience. I know when we got the game before it even came in, I was so excited.
I had it in my mind. I'm formulating what we're going to do with it.
How are we going to do a game play?
How is this all going to work out? And I had all this stuff in my mind.
I had notes that I just thrown away the other day of how I want to proceed with this.
And one thing that I came up with early on was going to this board game cafe in Dina.
Yeah. And originally how I had this whole thing picture, Chris, I had this whole thing pictured much different.
So it didn't work out that way just because the game itself wasn't complete.
There was no game box.
Okay. So there was no game box.
So then I had to kind of B roll it in my mind a little bit. And we ended up going to that game cafe.
It's more cafe with added board game type of thing.
But it is cool that they have a room. You can reserve a room for gaming.

[18:05] It looks more like a table that you would play maybe like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign on.
Yeah, because it's got that board in back. Yeah, it's got a board, it's got all that stuff.
But this whole time, I thought it was its own separate room. So did I.
And we got there. And yes, there was a door and a wall around it.
However, the wall doesn't go all the way up to the ceiling.
So all of the sounds of the cafe were not kept out of the room.
And it was busy. It was busy.
Which is great for small business. Yeah. So the name of the- The time we were there.
Yeah, the name of the cafe is the Sweet Lair LLC, and they are located in Neenah, Wisconsin.
So if you happen to be in Neenah, Wisconsin, check them out, Downtown Neenah.
Beautiful place, it is. But, so yeah, so we get there, right? Place super busy.
And.

[19:00] We set up all of our equipment and we had our mics on and I'm thinking, all right, no matter how loud it is in there, we're going to be able to get something that'll work.
Well, the footage looked beautiful. The audio, not so much. You try.
I'm pulling out every audio engineering trick I can find, every sound filter.
And after a while, it was just deteriorating the quality of our sound where we started it sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So we basically, we spent a whole day there from 10 in the morning until about four in the afternoon.
You know, the plus side was is it was an experience again. And we got to play that game and hopefully.

[19:53] People were watching us play it and seeing how much fun we had, right?
And we did get some video of us playing the game and stuff like that, and of us enjoying the game.
So if you do see it on Kickstarter, you're going to see that we did have, we were having genuine fun.
It wasn't that we were doing a, a play through just for TV or just for video.
You could tell that we were playing the game and enjoying it and having fun, with the game we were playing. Right.
Yeah. Cause that's us. What you see in that video is how we play.
Yeah, because we tend to have a good time.
Tend. Unless there's a take that element in a game and I use it on Angie, then she gets all mad.
Yeah, you know, it's more it's more of maybe if there's a broken element in a game that thematically.
Now, not leave not Steve. No, Steve, leave Steve. Leave Steve alone. I mean, leave.
Holy cow. I have no idea who Steve is now. Now leave Stan Kordanski alone.
Angie, come on. Come on.

[21:13] I don't know. I don't know if paleo Americans really let people squat in their backyard.

[21:20] They have spears and things like that. Yeah. Okay. Anyhow.
Anyhow. Anyhow. Well you did that, you got mad at me. Okay, well we're talking about Kickstarter experience and this whole thing.
Yeah, now we're going, this should have been the banter section. Now that even happened last night in Wingspan Asia when we were playing that.
I played that one card.
No, was it Wingspan?
That's what we played last night. Yeah, but there was a card that I played and you were like, I purposely didn't.
I purposely didn't do that. Oh. It wasn't Wingspan. No, no, no. That's Nicodemus.
That was a Nicodemus. That was Nicodemus. Yeah.
And I did. You had like one more point to go to endgame. There's like two cards in there that are like, take that cards.
Or just can be, you know, like steal something from your neighbor.
And I purposely, purposely do not play him that way.
Yeah, but you were like. You're like, not only would you play it, you're like giggling going, eee.
And you have a look in your face like, I'm gonna do something to you.
Yeah, well you had literally, you were.
Like you go slowly, like in slow motion. Cause I was ready to dodge a fist or something.
I was ready to dodge a fist.

[22:48] No, I was smart. Your nails come flying off or something. What's this?
Next thing you know, ping, ping, ping, nails start flying at me.

[22:59] But no, like you were one point away from winning. And I figured if I could play that card and then lay down another card and then if I only had one more turn, Angie, I would have had that game.
I would have triggered end game.
Oh, and that's why I did it. I wanted to swoop in and win.
I wanted, it was one of those, like we talked about in a previous episode, one of those like cool gamer moments that I always try to do and never work for me, never work for me.
Now that game too on itself is in that, that group of games we play with vacation that I thought we'd save. Yeah.
Well, we can say names and talk more about it later.
All right. I'm sorry. We just like totally devolved that conversation from the season into something else.
Really sorry. That is completely my fault.
So let's get back to the season. We recorded the footage in the board game cafe.
The video, in my opinion, looked pretty good. So we do the podcast thing, obviously.
Right. And we're dipping our toes into video now.
I'm really digging it.
I think I know you're not big in the video, but I would like to get a little bit more content out there.
I will show you how to use a filter in your phone first.
You will have to teach me how to do that.
So.

[24:23] So we record this now that was we'll call that you know towards the end of our time with the game is when we did that because by that time we knew how to play the game.
We had two weeks with the game to do this so we had it a week of playing the game and then the second week I because it just worked out where my weekend off was then that's when we took that weekend off and we went to Nina to do that footage.
At the game store or at the game or game cafe. And then we had a couple of days left with the game to do the editing and anything else we needed to do. And as it turns out, we needed those days.
Yeah, we did.
Of course, here's me being the perfectionist, right? You know, my workflow should always be edit something for content.

[25:21] And go back and look at it again and then edit it for the final product.
Right?
Well, I suck at that. I'm like starting off at final product right away, trying to figure out how to make stuff look good from the start.
So I'm trying to, so I learned how to pan and zoom and take all this footage and make overlays and animations and.
Yeah, you were pretty soon. That was pretty impressive. You're watching these videos.
I'm thinking, let's just get a video of showing people dancing.
I'm photoshopping, like taking background images out, trying. I'm like tempted.
Okay. Now let's do a parallax effect parallax effect on this and that.
Okay. Well, there was no parallax effect because I, at that point I was just like, okay, I got to submit this video. Right. Yeah. But...
That was cool. So I now I have more confidence in my video editing skills.
I feel like I'm just becoming more well rounded when it comes to that.
But anyhow, so like I said, by the time we recorded that, we had the game down.
We figured we would just record that footage.
It'd be a quick bam bam. Put it together and we'd be done.
So we get home, we started working on that.

[26:40] And Angie does this really cool, you know, like close up video of the components upstairs in our recording studio, plopping down cards so I can do a voiceover over the components and explain some of the game mechanics and how they work like the round.
And at that point, we're just like, okay, we can send the game back.

[27:02] So we send the game back and that's when I realized that the audio was not the greatest, and that I couldn't fix it.
And here I was just thinking, God, how do we fix this? Gave the game back.
We promised them that we would have this video to them.
Oh boy, plan B, right? So then we record us in our studio and everything that we basically said in the game store.
The whole audio that we were doing at the boardroom cafe. We just re-recorded that in our podcast studio.
And then we just, you know, whatever, we took some gameplay footage, put some music in, It ended up turning out really good.

[28:05] Would I do it again?
Yes. If we had somebody reach out to us, I would do it again, but it would probably do it differently next time.
I think I would. I was hanging my eggs in one basket. Yeah.
I was just in my mind. I thought, I thought I knew the layout or not of that, of the cafe.
I thought, oh my God, this room is perfect.
We have is going to be free of sound, but we had never been in there before. So we really didn't know how it carried. Like I said, the first time we were in there, it was dead. Of course, it had just opened. After that, it hadn't been open very long, I think, after the first time we were in there. And so it was much busier than I'm expecting that on a Sunday. So I think, I think we would have to rethink that type of thing. Well, not only that, I would spend a day just doing hours of footage of components and boards and angles and just tons.
I would get so much footage of the game.

[29:19] That if we did have to send it on to somebody or send it back, we would have it.
We would have enough to work with, right?
And... I think we did, we got what we thought we needed, like at the minimum, we thought, okay, we got it out.
It's always better to have more.
Yes, yes.
So that's what I would do differently.
But overall, I mean, it was awesome. And now, you know, like...
We were, you know, full disclosure, we were paid to do this video, but that's it.
And since, since then, since the Kickstarter has gone live, we are, we're promoting it on our social media.
I mean, we're talking about it here.
There is no compensation for that. And the reason why we're doing that is because we believe in this game.
It's a unique game.
It's not, it's nothing.
I haven't played a game like this before. No, I think it's very unique.
It's an underused theme.
Um, and you'll hear us talk a little bit more about that. And if you don't hear me say it later on, I'm going to say it a game that you are still thinking about after you're done with your playthrough of it.
It's a good game. Yeah.

[30:40] It's a good game. So yeah. Yeah. So we... It deserves to get printed. It does.
It deserves to have that, you know, it deserves to get funded.
So I'm really hoping they do. Yeah.
So best of luck to them. Did I cover everything for this experience? I think you did.
I think you did.

[31:00] So yeah. You did a good job. So if there's anybody out there, I'm just kidding, if there's anybody out there with the Kickstarter that wants us to do this, you can contact us at chasing meeples at yahoo.com.
No just kidding.
Sort of. Oh hello there.
Are you a fan of Bridgerton and Pride and Prejudice? Well, let me introduce you to the season.

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Who knows, you might even find your perfect match among your fellow players.
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[32:47] Music.

[33:02] Well, that about wraps up this episode, Angie. In our next episode, I think what are we going to do?
We're going to do a little bit of, we're going to do a full review.
Yep. Okay. We said we were going to do that before.
We kind of put it on the back burner because of the season, but we're going to do that full review of Windspan Asia.
That's right. And we're going to talk about our vacation. Yeah.
The unplanned, but awesome vacation that we took.
It was a work-cation. It was a working. It was just a mini-thing for a couple days.
Is that a thing? Mini-vacation slash working thing for a business trip for Angie.
Basically Angie worked and gave me a game I played.

[33:46] But anyway, until next time, keep chasing those meebles. You hate it when I say that.
I hate it when you say that. Oh, why though? Cause it's corny.
Yeah, but you gotta have like a catchphrase. Alright, anyway. Thanks for listening everybody.
Thanks for listening, everybody. Goodbye.
Thank you for your support.