![[S2 Widescreen Art.jpg]] It’s time to put away the Blades of Chaos because Season 2 is done! I am so proud of this season and the show on the whole. We successfully executed our vision of two seasons in one year. We were on time and had a great time creating the show. As I said in the [[S1 - Paper Mario Behind the Scenes|Season 1: Paper Mario wrap-up]], this show has been my creative highlight of the year. With a second season under our belt and a total of six months of data, I wanted to pull back the curtain on the production and reception once again. I think this type of analysis and behind-the-scenes enriches the show’s own narrative and, personally, helps me learn how to make the show even better next time. We slightly shook up the format this season. Instead of a true “first release to most recent” bouncing back and forth formula, we placed the most recent game (*God of War*, PS4) at the end of the season. This was Logan’s idea and I am immensely glad he convinced me to do so. At first, I was against the notion, insistent on adhering to the show’s purest structure. After thinking about it and listening to Logan’s reasoning, I agreed to make the change. I could not be more happy that we did so. The show would have been worse off if I had vehemently stuck to my guns. It let us have a rich evolution of discussing the Greek games without being bogged down by a fresh play-through of the reimagined entry. It also gave listeners a little bait to stick around to the end of the season for what we imagine is the most desired game in the season. Plus, it leads perfectly into *God of War: Ragnarök*, which we plan on making an episode about once it releases sometime this year. I recently was reminded of the saying “kill your darlings.” Chapter Select’s pure bouncing back and forth is my proverbial darling. It makes the show unique and leads to new conversations. Being convinced to tweak it slightly led to a better season. This doesn’t mean that the structure is being thrown out — far from it — but it does give me breathing room I didn’t think we had before. # Numbers and Performance - Overall Season 2 Totals – 7,805 downloads - Top episode – [[S2E4 - God of War - Ghost of Sparta]] with 1,944 downloads - Top Month – December 2021 with 4,605 downloads The show started well enough with a growing base, transitioning from *Paper Mario* to *God of War*. November had a sizable bump to 1,206 downloads. I pegged this to mostly SEO blessing us with “God of War 2” pulling up our show for those Ragnarök searches. What neither of us expected was a surge nearly four times larger in December to a whopping 4,605 downloads. Even when signing up for the advanced stats from Libsyn, I couldn’t quite figure it out. The [[libsyn-advanced-stats.png|top download agent was Safari]] at the time I checked with over 3,000 downloads. The next closest was Chrome at 113. I find it hard to believe that so many Safari users are downloading the show. I’m certainly not opening the show that many times on my devices. Podcast numbers are tricky to be precise. I wish I could figure out a way to truly get actionable data. Arguably the two largest providers of podcasts are Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Both provide numbers, but not terribly well. Apple Podcasts Connect doesn’t seem to update data too often, with some episodes not having any data. Apple [[apple-podcast-numbers-cs_s2.png|reports]] the shows all time numbers at 426 plays with 13 listeners, as of this post. Spotify reports 216 “starts,” 88 “streams,” 82 “listeners,” and 7 followers. I can assume the difference between “listener” and “follower” is a subscriber. That makes sense. I wonder what the threshold is for turning a “start” into a “stream” or a “listener.” How long into an episode is that cut off? Why are downloads not accounted for on Spotify? It seems packed with the wrong kind of terminology. I would prefer “downloads,” “streams,” and “subscribers.” If retention is going to be tracked, I’d prefer concrete numbers over popular terms. Spotify does share a “wrapped” summary for podcasters like they do for music. That seems trendy and I like it. One other avenue of performance to look at is YouTube. I’ll touch on the video production process below, but bringing the show to YouTube seemed like another popular and accessible avenue for listeners. Currently, all the episodes for this season total 283 views. By far the most popular episode is [[S2E7 - God of War (2018)]] with 168 of those views. That’s no surprise considering it is the most popular entry and the PC release is this Friday. # Guests Our guest plans for this season didn’t go quite like I hoped. We were only able to get one person to join along with us this time, which somewhat surprised me. I totally thought people would be more willing to play these short action platformers over 30~ hour RPGs. [[S2E3 - God of War II|Grant Huff joining us]] for *God of War II* was a treat, especially for one of the best games in the series. For these first two seasons, we recruited guests with a cold call-to-action tweet so we could preserve the surprise of the season’s focus for launch. We’ll continue to do that for now, but I also plan to politely reach out to friends I feel could be interested in certain seasons/games. This may help us expand the range of voices you’ll hear alongside Logan and myself. # Audio The show’s primary medium is still an audio podcast. Delivering a high-quality sounding podcast with chapters, art, and show notes is the driving force behind production. I make all decisions for delivering the show through this lens (or rather through this filter? Speaker? Insert your sound analogy of choice here). I tried something new by pre-recording show credits. I like the idea of it as padding between the show and any easter eggs. It also can let us put Twitter handles and sites in credits to not clutter the natural end of the show. I’m still feeling this idea out and will experiment more in season 3. I invested in some new audio software to help clean up rougher audio. I bought [iZotope RX 8 Essentials](https://www.izotope.com/en/shop/rx-8-elements.html) on sale to help remove clicks, hums, and pops. I am certainly unqualified to use this software, but it has definitely helped make some audio better. I’ve even used it to [[Restoring Millennial Gaming Speak|clean up six year old episodes of Millennial Gaming Speak to use as clips]]. # Video Production The biggest addition to the show’s production this season was [video versions](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxCxW3Sbhy5a0TkR04gfqX9T7Ju7oTN-Z) of the episodes. As I said above, the focus is audio, which is why you don’t see our faces in the video versions. This allows me to make the cuts and edits I want without it looking weird with so many jump cuts. This also allows for parity between chapters and show notes Since I have to play the games for the podcast, I figure I could easily record the gameplay and splice together video versions to make the show accessible on YouTube. This process has been a great opportunity to flex some creativity. [[s2-notebook-scan.jpg|I take notes]] while editing the audio to know what clips or scenes to layer over when I make the video version. It has been so much fun. In [[S2E4 - God of War - Ghost of Sparta]], Logan offhandedly mentioned how the plot was “*Mortal Kombat* levels of ridiculousness.” Listening to the show, that carries its own weight in humor. But while researching for an episode, I stumbled across the announcement that Kratos was added to Mortal Kombat (2011). Remembering this in the editing process, I [included that trailer over Logan’s joke](https://youtube.com/watch?v=x4quhTCw-2s&t=1107) to amp it up, to great effect I think. This editing process lead to plenty of easter eggs that, at the very least, made me chuckle. Another angle of the video version was the visual quality. I made the decision early on to not stretch or scale footage beyond its original resolution. This resulted in three different resolutions used; 720p60, 1080p60, and 4K60. While this definitely impacted file size, I enjoyed working in the native resolutions. I’m a stickler for quality and trying to have the best in whatever medium I’m working in. I didn’t want to stretch footage without a proper way to upscale footage to 4K across the board. Maybe in the future it should all be the same resolution and framerate for consistency, but I like the range as an accurate representation of the gameplay when we did these episodes. Originally, I wanted the *God of War* (2018) to be presented in HDR alongside the 4K60. I edited the entire episode in that 10-bit color space. Unfortunately, pushing the M1 processor to export nearly 2 hours of 4K60 HDR proved to take too long: After nearly two hours, the export was only at 2%. I couldn’t wait (theoretically) three days just to export the footage, especially when YouTube takes over four days to process 4K60 HDR footage in [my testing](https://youtu.be/aaiO2D9fYZc). # Art Once a season’s focus is locked in, I spend the early weeks planning the look for the art. I want unified styles that tie together the franchise and the individual game being discussed. *Paper Mario* was easy with the crumpled paper background and textures. For *God of War*, my mind immediately went to the Greek gods and statues. There are plenty surviving pieces of art from ancient Greece. I thought having a statue of the game’s main god would be a neat way to showcase the games while unifying the season visually. I liked the idea, but high quality and royalty free images of these statues proved to be not as accessible as I expected. So I pivoted to real images of objects or places that tie into the games’ themes. I knew [[S2E1 - God of War|Episode 1 – God of War]] had to be burning coals or ash. The curse placed on Kratos defines his character, design, and motivations. For [[S2E2 - God of War - Ascension|Episode 2 – God of War: Ascension]], I wanted to find something to convey the multiplayer aspect. Thankfully, I found this wonderful picture of toy Spartans charging into battle. It was a dream come true. [[S2E3 - God of War II|Episode 3 – God of War II]] uses a statue of a winged man holding an hourglass. It totally captures Icarus and the time travel introduced with the Sisters of Fate. The picture I chose for the [[S2E4 - God of War - Ghost of Sparta|Ghost of Sparta episode]] is not actually from Unsplashed. It’s a screensaver on the Apple TV. Being underwater captures both Atlantis and the pressure Kratos was under to save his brother. The other PSP game, on the other hand, is an open field bathed in golden light (or as my wife calls it, “golden hour”). It reminded me of Elysium, which was essentially all I remembered from [[S2E5 - God of War - Chains of Olympus|Chains of Olympus]] before we played it for the show. I don’t think [[S2E6 - God of War III|Episode 6 – God of War III]] could have had better art. The [[S2E7 - God of War (2018)|finale’s art]] was the episode that I designed the most. I found the picture of a boat in [Hardangerfjord, Norway](https://goo.gl/maps/AnCNA7wHKh95up5z6). The body of water looks surrounded by mountains reminded me of the Lake of Nine. The boat is shaped similarly to what Kratos and Atreus use. Knowing the picture was taken in Norway made me feel a level of “authentic-ness.” I added the reflection of the logo in the ripples on the water to give it just a smidge more *omph* than the others. # The Future Season 2 has an interesting cloud looming over it in the form of *God of War: Ragnarök*, set to release this year. Our plan from the beginning was to make an episode when that game is released and to add it to this season. In fact, that was an element that led to us shaking up the recording formula a bit and placing *God of War* (2018) at the end. As for Season 3, the series was decided quite a bit ago. Just like between Seasons 1 & 2, we’ll have a few months off here to work, play other games, and then jump into full production for the next season. This one will be a shorter season, like I’ve [[S1 - Paper Mario Behind the Scenes|previously]] discussed. > We realized that we ought to work on longer games and/or series throughout the year, banking episodes and keeping that season for the back half of the year. As for the front half of a year, that can be a season focusing on a shorter series, whether in game quantity or actual game length. You will definitely see that approach taken for seasons 3 and 4. > > — [[S1 - Paper Mario Behind the Scenes]] Season 4 has a few ideas, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. I’ll announce Season 3 shortly before it makes its own debut. *God of War* has been a blast of a season to tackle. I haven’t played some of these games in a decade, while others I’ve replayed a few times. Revisiting the entire series with the current context of the franchise and PlayStation has opened my eyes to the lasting legacy that has had to evolve to survive. Plus, getting the Platinum trophy is every game back-to-back was oh so satisfying. Now, I only need to play *God of War 1* & *2* on Vita for all the Platinum trophies… Each season we’ve done so far continues to prove to myself this is the right type of show to be making right now. I’m proud of the improvements we’ve been able to make in just one season and am looking forward to what we release here in 2022!