Obviously you can livestream games to streaming services such as twitch or youtube but have you considered streaming the show live. Many other podcast format shows I watch on different topics, including particularly gaming are going for this approach lately, nor would it necessarily increase the effort of putting together the eventual audio file.
I just think It could be interesting to actually get some live interaction going on in the actual show, as the stream delay is generally little more than say 30 seconds and most streaming sites have integrated chat, which is basically just glorified IRC, infact you can even connect to twitch chat channels with an IRC client.
You can create complex livestreams with Open Broadcast Software. http://obsproject.com/ for Windows. Also YouTube states you need 100 subscribers to use their streaming platform however iv played around with it a little and it worked fine for me, without having remotely close to 100 subs. YouTube offer a customised version of Wirecast expanding streaming to Mac pretty easily. As for linux, er yea, ffmpeg + sorcery + divine intervention, can be done, not fun though.
An example of the kind of thing I mean, as a Starcraft 2 player I often watch shows such as this. Most games have similar communities around them, however discussion shows not about gaming seem a bit late to the party on this one imo.
Anyway just a thought would love to hear your opinions.
Thanks for the thoughts, @sporious
While video seems a logical step, we have made a pretty firm decision not to do a video show, either pre-recorded or live. There are a number of reasons for this:
- Quality is of paramount importance to us, both in terms of content and production. It is really hard to get very high quality video without having a huge budget and lots of time; this not just a case of buying a great camera but we need good sets, high quality editing, and bandwidth.
- We live in different places so the video would seem…fragmented. When you hear the show now it sounds like we are in the same room…that was by design and is why we record the audio locally and mix it later. If we did video you would see four different streams which would make us feel more separated.
- Live video is a problem in terms of quality: we wouldn’t be able to edit the show to cut the crap out.
- There is also a certain mystique to audio only - it provides an opportunity for the listener to use their imagination to fill in the gaps.
- Audio means people can listen to the show when they commute; this is more complex with video. Sure, we could provide an audio-only version of the video, but then all the visual gags would be lost for those BV fans.
So all in all, for the foreseeable future BV is going to stay audio. Thanks for the kind suggestion though!
Though Jono, there could always be a one off, or the occasional “one offs” where you do something like that without the video etc, you could have Bad Voltage the main story like that but then have like… Bad Voltage Kids table where you play a game or something and do it live!
I mean on this sega addicts website, they had a main podcast which was being quite kid friendly, then they had the kids table where it was as vulger as could be with still being funny, I loved the SAKT so gawd damn much xD
And Jupiter broadcasting has the shows where they show there faces and others where they don’t!
I’m defiantly not saying do bad voltage like this, but I’m saying that spin-offs or one-offs could be an option to explore while keeping true to the bad voltage ways!
I think Jono and the other presenters have it right. The quality of the sound is much better than than it would be possible to produce from a live stream and If they were to add video then either the quality would less than ideal or the production costs would go up significantly. I suspect that if this were the case then it would not be finacially viable to continue producing the show.
I also suspect that since the show is largely unscripted things go wrong during the recording occasionally and that as a result the show needs to be edited.
Keep up the good work lads.
That said, there may be a case for the occasional live stream but I think these would need to be the exception rather than the norm.
I think this is our view. We are certainly not opposed to trying new things. I am sure that at some point in the future we will do some kind of special stream.
What I would like to see as our rare one-off though is a live event. 
…cue @sil yelling at me that there will be no live event (based on the amount of work LugRadio Live was to put on). 
