*Please note while mostly true, it has been altered with for reading goodness…. basically dont take this as gospel or anything close*

P.S. Look for the real book on shelves July 13th at bookstores everywhere (See i am lying already)

Dialog between myself and a then unknown Aaron (to people other than
myself) started in early July 2005. Aaron really wanted to do
something (bored at work I guess, because that’s where all the
emailing took place) a blog, a podcast anything and I guess he felt
like he was missing out on something. He had been reading about the
free “review” copies other people were getting but felt he needed some
help (that’s where I came in). I sort of felt that neither of us had
the writing ability to make a successful blog on its own, plus it was
so much work so I liked the podcast idea.

Originally we were going to do a general tech show much like Engadget
podcast or The Gadget Show on The Podcast Network. So while Aaron was
looking for a free web based service to host us, I sat down and did
what I did best. I thought up a string of acynomn’s that we could use
as our name. We suddenly became very excited by the idea of a pompous
show I named ‘T.E.C.H’ (Total Electronic Chat Hour, phew at the time I
almost wet myself over that acynomn). Our only problem, we didn’t want
to lock ourselves into an hour so we decided on ‘T.E.C’. Now by this
point still no thought had been given to how we would do the show
because what you have to realise is we are both cocky if we can think
it! We can do it! Everything was going to change when Aaron couldn’t
find appropriate hosting, until he stumbled across The Podcast
Network.

Aaron in a brazen act contacted Cameron Riley who was/is in charge of
adding more shows, and asked if we could host The Gaming Show position
that had advertised on their site. This ‘Big Wig’ wanted a demo to see
what we could do. Thus Aaron and I hit the net trying to find a way to
record a Skype phone call. We ended up recording the mic separately on
each end, with me editing it together afterwards (this continued for
many shows, and many programs were tried, we now just record in the
same location for quality reasons). Aaron had misread the name of the
show and for the very first show we called it “The Gamers Show”,
however undeterred by our obvious lack of experience or skill Cameron
gave the go ahead. We had to record again, I think there were 3
versions before the very first gaming show. Culminating in the very
first show going up on August 18th.

Outtakes became quite a common occurrence (all saved for the DVD,
including ‘The Gamers Show’) infact some shows it took us and hour to
start because we would be laughing to hard during the intro. This
arose out of the fact that I got us to count ‘3 2 1′ then Aaron would
start so that I would have a common place to match the audio up at.
Also there was swearing, that you can hear me in one of the first few
episodes apologies for Aaron’s dirty mouth however from then on fuck
became to the show what it was to us already a ‘Verb’. The first 3 or
4 times we were recording the show it would take 6 -8 hours of messing
around to record edit and upload a 30 - 50 minute show.

Unknown facts about the show are quite numerous (and saved for the DVD
commentary track and talkback show interviews). A few though
originally we planned the show twice a week a news show which was
designed to be shorter and just a news based and a second longer 40 -
60 minute news and discussion and misc show. This fell to pieces by
show 12. I did a show solo, episode 5 as Aaron was busy with school
and work assignments and didn’t have the time to spare (it was our
most groundbreaking show to date, IMHO). We have a segment where we
read out and answer reader questions however every time we have done
this we have read 3 questions with only 1 of them ever being from
actual people, the names and questions of the other people made up by
Aaron and I seconds before the show starts. On a post about rockstar’s
bully being delayed (it was linked to by joystiq) we have a post from
a person who claims to be “Jack Thompson” we haven’t heard form them
since, however our most controversial post to date is about Tony
Hawk’s American Wasteland Soundtrack listing which to this day still
receives regular comments every week (around 30 I think atm) about how
to find the song “Song of Perl” or something like that. Late last year
we founded a buinsess to funnel all expenses through called Tilde
Media (yeah you know that key on your keyboard) for tax purposes. To
this date we have only been payed for 1 of the 3 months we were
sponsored by motorola however this is soon to be rectifyed. I don’t
prepare for the show what I have learned during the week is what I
use, Aaron likes to have webpages loaded on screen and refer to them
during the show, we plan the show in 5 minetues before we record it.
We have it down tight now; we can do 50-minute show from start to
finish in 60 minutes (then we go get something to eat or see a movie).

Cocky basterds that we are, we weren’t content to sit back and improve
the show it was now time to expand. I had once upon a time used a
program called Adobe premier when I was 12 at my old highschool
(Prince Alfred College, back in Adelaide). I had only used it for one
or two times, but being cocky Aaron and me were confidant we could do
a Video based show. The very next weekend after this idea had come to
us (I think Aaron first), we were out in the Melbourne metropolis
scouring for a Video Camera. We looked at many in our supposed price
range (sub 1grand) however none of these appealed to us (bigger price
tag means better always). As a joke after while we were looking
through a camera store brocher and I pointed to a $3499 dollar camera
and said that’s the one for us. Two months later after much ebay
scouring, and pressuring distributors we got it shipped to us from an
online vendor and thus begin the Video Show. Now we didn’t sit back
for these two months we planned (read verbally speculated) on other
products we needed (read wanted under the guise of the Vidcast, the
camera being the main one). We needed, storage for video editing,
video editing applications, microphones (we were/are still looking for
decent non wireless lapel mics) and lighting. This however wasn’t what
we concentrated on, no we went after the stuff we needed for on camera
this included posters for background decoration, video amplifiers and
video switch boxes (so we could out put a videogame to two sources at
once, and have more than 1 game console connected to the TV at once)
and a analog to digital converter (which we use to get a digital
recording of the video games we play and how the game features for
PALGN are done). Originally Aaron’s parents 40inch LCD TV was to be
our backdrop where we played games using the aforementioned equipment.
We had two laptops with one that would display a slideshow with our
talking points in-between us and the other that would capture the
video games we recorded and play the game trailers on the TV. These
were merely for cut away shots (you see us start to play, then we fade
to fullscreen of the game). To this day we are still missing the mics
and storage, after each show the original source material is deleted
because of limited hard disk space on my laptop I edit the show on.

The day arrived and suddenly we found, the original part of Aaron’s
room we had picked to shoot the show was to close to the camera. We
also found it impossible to attach posters to the window behind the
only part of the room we could/do use. I had out of pure geeky
interested picked up a green bed sheet for 14 dollars when I went to
buy construction lighting to use for the show the day before, so we
hung that up and shot our
First show in front of it. We of course did a 30 second test that I
could remove the background (it was rough but I was confident I could
tweak it) before we shot the whole show (we are using final cut pro
5). The came the search for a background, Aaron just wanted to use a
purely background, i thought I would look stupid, so I scoured goggle
images for something we could use. The result is the travesty of just
we use for the first show. We decided we desperately needed to change
it for the second, but we didn’t have anything new when we shot the
second show, but we knew we would find something else before we would
edit it. The next day we met up and together we tried a whole variety
of ideas (over 4 hours) until eventually we scrapped them all and
Aaron just made this plain background but moving background in an
application called “Quartz Composer”, while doing this we stumbled
upon an option to create a spinning box with any image on it, we stole
the tpn logo and that’s how second background was made.

Editing the show takes about 2 hours, which I do alone as I am yet to
show Aaron how to do it. In that time, I make all the layover images
and videos mostly this involves removing white backgrounds from images
gathered on the net or creating unique backgrounds for on screen jokes
ect ect. The show takes 8 hours or more to be exported and rendered in
Final Cut, then a further 3 hours to be converted to the ipod and
hires versions we send out (the uncompressed version is 6gb). Then a
further 3-4 hours to upload the files from my machine).

Any mistakes done in editing our fatal as I cant see them until it’s
rendered at the previously mentioned 8 hours. So in the first show
there are a few bloopers (such as episode 2 reads episode 0001 in the
opening sequence) that we didn’t have time to edit. However the
biggest headache has been getting them up, when put in our RSS feed
they our automatically picked up in itunes and downloaded with out
people choosing to (Its not nice to come home and find 300 meg
downloaded while you were out especially on a cap). Only now is it
rectified after a week of work by the great TPN tech crew. So that’s
how we started up till now, we plan to keep going shooting 1 Vidcast a
week and recording one podcast a week.

The future of ‘The Gaming Show’?
I am glad you asked, what follows is the factual plan for our show.
(None of the following has yet been seen or approved by Aaron, but
fuck him).

2006
May - Listener base reachers 30,000

June - show has Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft as weekly sponsors
earning us (2 dollars a download each), listener base reachers 50,000

August - PALGN is bought out from James and his associates for 1.5
million (half of it by that by gaming show crew), listener base
reachers 100,000

September - PALGN is sold for 30 million to IGN as part of its Global
Gaming Media Domince bid (James was offered a further 8.5 million to
heal any wounds over such a net loss)

October - Australian game law over turned R rated games now allowed
(Thanks to heavy support from the gaming show and poster boy Matt)

December - James and other staff from PALGN are pinched to work for
the gaming show full time and expand the business IP (Intellectual
Property, no seriously that the business name)

2007

February - Listener base reachers 500,000 globally, Aaron and Michael
become the first recipients of the first Vidcast Oscar (previously
last year they won a Grammy for the podcast, but it wasn’t worth
mentioning fucking Grammy)

May - Web Logs Inc is bought out by the gaming show

June - Controversy hits, porn tape hits the net depicting Michael from
the gaming show have a 3 way with the Olsen twins

July - Riding the back of the controversy Michael helps the show reach
8 million people each week. (It is the highest downloaded show on
itunes)

November - The show goes on its first break for 3 months while Aaron
and Michael take sometime apart to spend some money.

2008

January - The show starts again this time to an Audience of 50 million
a week (the show is still shot, edited and produced by Aaron and
Michael the other staff if purely for podcast research and maintain
the blog)

February - Rockstar games is bought along with square enix by the
gaming show and other investment firms it was a mutual takeover

June - With the show still going strong Michael is appointed lead
development on a yet announced GTA game.

December - GTA World MMORPG is released by RockEnix (the result of the
by out) which was heavily restructured by staff from Blizzard which
were pinched when a merger failed

2009

January 1st - The bubble bursts and riots out break with in the
hardcore GTA fans as, Michael the lead designer on the program
included an option to kiddize the game to make it parent friendly
title.

January 2nd - Riots end when its realised this can be turned off,
Michael becomes universally loved (Aaron gets a little Jealous)

February - The Gaming Show Vidcast is broadcast on TV in every major
country (it barely lifts shows viewer base by 2 percent with 200
million choosing to download it at this point)

May - Michael and Aaron are fatally shot while recording episode 1000 of
the Vidcast alone, by Jack Thompson

December - Jack Thompson is put to death when he is found in a cave
next to Osama (Osama escaped in all the hoopla)

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