Reply To: XLBS – What format in the future

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I much prefer the studio “polish” from the pre-covid videos. Just simple stuff like consistent lighting and audio levels. It looks like a “premium product” – I always felt the current format was going to be a “stop-gap” (that then went on longer than anyone could have expected).

I appreciate the appeal for the participants in working from home (I’ve been doing this for about twenty years and dread the idea of having to go into an office) but it’s undeniable that the production quality is far lower than it was in the studio days.

The studio provides space – a larger, physical space where people can move about, rather than filling the frame with a head and shoulders. For a show all about wargaming (where games are often played out on 6ft x 4ft or even 8ft x 6ft tables) we don’t actually see much in the terms of physical space. This shrinking of physical space also feels like subjects are more limited – no more show-and-tells, multi-camera-angle shots of games being played etc. it now feels more like a video-podcast than the “internet TV show about games” I joined for  (also, it feels like the team is shrinking – no Justin, no John, entire weeks go by with no Warren or Lloyd.)

I didn’t really buy into the “sales pitch” Gerry gave at the end of the last video, of all the things that remote-working would provide – after all, the Zoom-style videos have been running for about 18 months now and none of those ideas (twin camera setups, work desk videos showing painting tutorials, community painting challenges etc.)  have been put into place yet – if they are good content ideas, how does the Zoom-style format facilitate this in a way that a studio-format can’t? Some of the ideas discussed were interesting – I just didn’t see how they are only possible through a Zoom-style format?

Ultimately, I joined Beasts of War for the quality content. I stayed because of the community. I miss the “studio content” but it’s not a show stopper yet. Ultimately, however – watching last weeks XLBS back – it feels like the decision has already been made to work from home rather than return to the studio, so the format is less important than the content.

I’d love to see some of these new ideas put into place because tbh, the weekender isn’t the highlight of my (gaming) week, as it once was.

Bringing Free onboard and venturing more into board games (while watching her journey into tabletop miniatures) has been a nice move (I always thought Cass was underused in previous videos, looking at non-wargaming stuff) – but there’s a world of difference between talking about a game in a Zoom call and showing photos onscreen and a “professionally produced and edited TV show” demonstrating a game being played, as we used to see in pre-covid times.

TL/DR; I prefer the studio based videos. I don’t see how Zoom facilitates the new ideas being discussed – even though I’d like to see them, I’m not sure I understand why they couldn’t be done in a studio environment.