DropShock Radio

A Little History, 31-40

I have played video games my entire life. Starting with the Atari 2600 (the original one, with the faux wood paneling), which was my dad's. Video games have always been around, but I never felt like I was invested in any kind of gaming culture, even when I was playing Unreal Tournament 2004 on my PC and going to LAN parties. It's like saying that you're a part of a "reading culture" because you swap books with friends. It's not a culture, it's just something you do. But that changed with DropShock, and as a precursor to that, the fateful Christmas my ex-GF bought me an Xbox.

I owned a PS2, and only then just because it was a decent DVD player, and my GF liked Crash Bandicoot. For me, gaming - real gaming - happened on a PC. But even then, it was far down the list of activities that I preferred. Derek was awesome at Halo, and he had Xbox Live before me (although you had to use a software tunnel to play Halo CE over the internet). So I got an Xbox and played the shit out of Halo CE shortly before the launch of Halo 2, and we had lots of LAN parties, which I greatly miss doing. So it wasn't until all of that happened that I began to accept that I was, or already had become, a "gamer."

Even still, on the Xbox, I only wanted to play Halo games. Once the Xbox 360 came out, and more and better games were released, we started to move our focus away from a strict Halo-centric podcast and more into that gaming "culture." But I guess like anything, my interest in playing games all the time was waning. It also didn't help that we were now getting internet stalkers. People would search the internet for pics of us, with our girlfriends, whatever - and start posting them back onto the forums, or on other forums. Legitimately creepy shit. It all started to feel like our hearts weren't in it anymore, and that recording a show was becoming an obligation, rather than some time for us to get together and have some fun.

To further add to the bleakness of gaming-for-a-reason, rather than for fun, was the Prick List. It was funny to document and call out particular trolls in the game, but that shit is still highly aggravating to deal with, even to this day. We would begin seeking them out (one show, we even stopped mid-way through to play a couple rounds just to get some names), and exposure to that much douchebaggery is exhausting.

We just lost focus and it wasn't fun anymore. By the time we were up to episode 40, we were ready to pack it in. We left the show open to listeners who wanted to keep the spirit of the show going, dubbing them "Community Episodes." But outside of a handful of consistent regulars, no one really showed interest. Instead, I received a lot more emails asking if we could just bring the show back to its origins: me and Derek, fucking off about Halo. We never did, and while there had been attempts by others to revive the brand, I've always felt that Dropshock was best left to how we remember it. Some things can never be repeated. So I leave you with the final ten episodes.

Episode 31

Episode 32

Episode 33

Episode 34

Episode 35

Episode 36

Episode 37

Episode 38

Episode 39

Episode 40

A Little History, 21-30

I can't say that we had any kind of expectation for the show. We really didn't. So when site traffic was up and listeners were well over a couple thousand (back then, that was a lot), it was a little hard to believe. Oddly enough, the site got way more traffic than the show had listeners (according to different tracking metrics we were using), so I don't think we'll ever really know how many people actually heard us. It doesn't really matter, either. Especially not now.

For me, the best memory I have of the site was the brief rivalry with Podtacular. They were another Halo podcast that had come out a little bit before we did, and they're still around. They would have members of their site bomb our site, and we would retaliate, all of this culminating in a series of Halo 2 tournaments. Personally, I didn't like their show, and I'll admit that part of it (but only partly) was that they were getting acknowledgement from Microsoft in the form of Larry "MajorNelson" Hyrb, who had appeared on the show. We knew that we would never get any kind of nod because of our content, but in the spirit of competition, it was annoying. The other reason I didn't like the show, and mainly, is because I just thought it was unfunny. That's really a matter of taste, I know. Also, I think Major Nelson's show sucks too. I'm not a fan of marketing that masquerades as entertainment. I haven't listened to his show in years, and I don't know if he still does it.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I can't bring myself to listen to any gaming podcasts. I mean, I've heard some, and subscribed to a couple, like 1UpYours, back when Garnett Lee was still with them. I don't know, I guess I'm still looking for something that appeals to me in the way that we tried to make DropShock - irreverent, original and genuinely funny. In my opinion, we were.

Episode 21

Episode 22

Episode 23

Episode 24

Episode 25

Episode 26

Episode 27

Episode 28

Episode 29

Episode 30

A Little History, 11-20

I'm not sure of the exact order of events, but I know that we started the show first. Some time immediately after that, we had an encounter with a game review site that shaped our idea of what we were going to do with DropShock.

Our friend and, later, contributor to DropShock, Sam, started posting reviews for a website called GamesAreFun dot com, which isn't even around anymore. In fact, I had even helped Sam out early on by designing their logo. Derek and I would visit the site, and decided that the guy who ran the site was a dick. He really was. We argued with them a lot, but I wouldn't say we were trolling, because we weren't antagonistic, we just had strong opinions. Subsequently we were banned, un-banned and then banned again because, like I said, the guy who ran the site was a dick. But this got us to thinking, in addition to our own show, why not our own forums, where we could set the rules and give people the platform to express themselves freely without being harangued for dumb shit like "bad language."

And that's what we did. I suspect that the forums are responsible for much of our growth in popularity at that time. We had a special section just for flame wars, where we allowed no-holds-barred arguments and bitch sessions, called the Rumble Pit. Moreover, our intention both within the forums and on the show was the kind of over-the-top vulgarity and humor that friends might share when not in mixed company. We didn't feel that we needed to censor ourselves for the sake of some attempt at propriety. That didn't sound like fun to us. We hate censorship, and after being censored at GamesAreFun, we absolutely wanted to make a point that we weren't going to do it, not to ourselves and not to our listeners.

The freedom we offered on the forums, I think, resonated with lots of people. Also, I had received notice from fans of the show that a number of other sites, many of them new, had directly lifted our Rules of Conduct, which was a kind of ToS that we had specifically written to express our intent and expectations with the forums and anyone who joined them. It really felt like we were on to something.

Episode 11

Episode 12

Episode 13

Episode 14

Episode 15

Episode 16

Episode 17

Episode 18

Episode 19

Episode 20

A Little History, 1-10

For any neophytes who've stumbled across this by some tragic mistake, we thought it might be useful to provide some link to our past.

Since we had no idea what we were doing, the audio quality is piss poor, not just because we hadn't yet learned the software, but because were were using a single USB mic. Not even a good one - that came later.

At the time, there were very few options for hosting files online that were free, unlike today. I eventually did discover Archive.org, where all of the DropShock shows still reside. I'll compile the shows here, in increments of ten. You can also follow the above link and peruse the catalog yourself, although it's not very well organized.

I have to admit it's a lot of fun to revisit this project after so many years. For those who don't know, the show got started while Derek and I were driving around, and I had started listening to the 2Old2Play podcast (2old2type), which was pretty amusing. I told Derek about it, and he thought that there was no reason we shouldn't do something like that. So we did.

While the site did eventually get it's own URL, along with the forums, the show started out right here at Blogger.com, so it's entirely appropriate (and surprisingly available) to start right back here, at the very beginning.

What's missing from this first run of shows is the "0 Episode" where we announced that were going to do, something. Surprisingly, that minute-long (or so) spot got a lot of attention, and we were off and running. I present to you here, the first ten episodes of DropShock Radio.

Episode 01