The Drabblecast

We've locked up the main discussion forums, to assure the sanctity of cast votes. In the next few days the whole carnival is going to be broken down, and put back on semis to head for the next town. The results podcast is coming, and these topics are going. For now if people have thoughts, this is a safe place, we share here. Also this is the spot for frothing outrage and death threats once the big winner is revealed.

I got some friends and family to do call-in's in the closing minutes: hope they make for memorable sound bites. The good news for fans of fairness - I did not tell them who to vote for, nor gave them an indication of who I preferred. We'll see which way the egg rolls.

I have no complaints or feedback as long as Lucifoul wins.

If he doesn't, all will die. And isn't that the great spirit of this competition that's brought us all together? *sniff*

Seriously, though -- thanks guys, for all the hard work and giving me some great belly laughs. I think in the realm of imaginary enhanced animal death matches, you guys are tops.

i agree. this is a truly unique idea coupled with an execution that's so great because so many people are actually into it. the effort norm put into the production and setup, the effort and mad talent bo put into the art and design, and especially all the feedback, passionate input and violently defensive opinions of all those who got worked up about it, all came together to make a great season, and i can't wait to find out who takes home the gold.
at dragoncon there were panel/forum discussions on some of the most uninteresting, worthless things ever. and while this isn't not worthless (the ridiculous speculative nature of it all is half the laughs to me) it's at least interesting, and 1 out of 2 aint bad. i propose we sign up for a super animal deathmatch panel discussion, and live Q&A at next years dragoncon.

I think it's a fun way to pass the thyme. It also pulls more people into the DC.

I have a request for the next evolution: Have somebody write, and Norm produce, an podcast of each round of fighting. So when the outcome of a round is known, actually create a story out of it. That would make it feel complete to me.

Plus merchandising. A little screwy in the head? Wear a Lucifoul T-shirt and let the world know!

I had considered that as a means of voting back when we were tossing out suggestions, but I thought it was too user-unfriendly. Basically, you'd write a story about your beast of choice winning and then we'd vote on who had the coolest story and that's how a winner would win. The podcast would then consist primarily of that story being produced. Better: the stories could be limited to drabbles and then several could be produced, leading up to the winner at the end.

That would be pretty hard to get into, though. Participation would suffer.

I love the idea of the fictitious battles being produced, though. Norm could act as the commentator and give ringside updates on the battle's progress. Of course, that could only be done after the winner was known, so I don't know how it would figure into voting.

I would see it as the "prize" at the end of each round of voting.

You guys are definitely on same page as an idea I had. Early in the competition I discussed with the editors the idea of 'results' delivered as written content. We were going to use the battle vote count to divine order of virtual elimination, and compose stories around that concept to serve as a kind of 'fan fiction;' interesting geeky bonus content. I wanted to get the idea rolling by writing up something for round 1, but got lost in site work and art stuff.

If you guys get a creative itch, and want to write anything, anything at all, in the style of documenting the battles as if they took place, I'd revive the 'results' concept in an instant, and get that up on the site. Attached to the rounds archive is my thought.

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Thanks Adam for the kind words. 'twas nothing. There certainly will be more of my visual stylings surrounding DC in the future. Fate shall decide the capacity.

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I had some concepts for a possible 09 competition format that I think might be quicker, and more intuitive, and also more fanciful and outright bizarre to please the creative souls round these parts. Don't want to steal any thunder away from the 08 winner announcement, but I'll sneak some stuff in to this topic before it disappears.

Wow bitches... it was amazingly Fun, Thanks to the Drabble team for all your hard work, tireless alchoholic drinking sessions, and cognitive brain fruit that has been what we have so enjoyed! No, really thanks guys. It was a fun journey to a Raptor's Rocky-like win! I look forward to even better things to come.

Well. it seems my phone-in vote missed the cut for the podcast again---I suspect adherents of the cult of Lucifoul are being discriminated against in a way that wouldn't be heard of in the Free World.

Either that, or Norm forgot to include it (again).

Anyway, for the sake of posterity I've included the text of the vote in the Drabble forum.

OH SHIT

Dude, a million apologies. I can't believe I forgot it again. No secret discrimination against the Evil One, just in my haste to get this thing pumped out I pulled all the skype calls in one big block and forgot I had one sitting in my email.

I'm sure karma's barn owl will crap on my head for this

Hee hee! Great finish to the competition!

Good fun, guys.

normsherman wrote:OH SHIT

Dude, a million apologies. I can't believe I forgot it again. No secret discrimination against the Evil One, just in my haste to get this thing pumped out I pulled all the skype calls in one big block and forgot I had one sitting in my email.

I'm sure karma's barn owl will crap on my head for this

Hmm... there's another attack Lucifoul had that nobody discussed. I've never been gored by a chainsaw wielding elephant, nor have I been eviscerated by a mechosaur. I have been pooped on by many a flying rat, though.

Oh, and don't sweat the missing-it-again thing. Writing it got me out of assignment work anyway, so its mission was accomplished.

Now, my thoughts on the competition. I thought the voting system for the final round was great. I saw the competition having three goals:

1) To get the Drabblecast community engaged in something that wasn't just discussing this week's story or squid reproduction;
2) Get listeners participating n the DC community;
3) Publicity for the Drabblecast, hopefully resulting in new listeners.

Number one (and, I suspect, number two) worked very well. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say the whole thing was a stroke of genius: with debate threads there's always the chance people are going to take the subject a little too seriously. People get opinionated, flames start flying... and before long, the community is fractured. We can also restrain ourselves very well (to wit, see the current 'R-word' thread). Sometimes, though, just having a good argument is fun. If you make it about imaginary Megabeasts, nobody gets hurt, yet we engage with each other in a meaningful way.

Well, as meaningful as you can get on anonymous forum.

It was interesting that the commentators on the podcast tried to link combatants to political and religious persuasions. But I digress.

In future iterations of the competition I'd like to see more avenues for people to put their creativity to use. I don't know how you could do it though---I mean, this year we had artwork, videos, mystery cults, drabble-haiku... the best thing about most of those is they were spontaneous.

On to number three. Has there been an increase in downloads since the competition started?

I wonder how the competition could best be put to use. I did see the competition mentioned in a few places around the web. That was good. I must confess that my attempts at roping people in was asking my Facebook friends to vote via my status thingy. I suspect it worked the first time I did it---there seemed to be a spike in Lucifoul votes in the hour or two after I did it--- but that was it.

I noticed other people said they were getting friends and family to go to the site and vote. Like my method of getting Facebook friends to vote, it's pretty hit and miss as a way to introduce people to the Drabblecast.

I toyed with the idea of setting up a Facebook group and inviting the right people to join. Facebook groups seem to start with a lot of fanfare and quickly die off, which probably suits a competition of this nature. If I invited fifty of my friends to join, twenty might have a look at it, and ten would probably ask what it's all about. That's how things seem to work on Facebook---other people would have more experience with the other zillion networking sites out there.

Anyway, I've just realised I haven't adjusted my clock for Daylight Savings and it's an hour later than I thought. I stopped making sense about six paragraphs ago anyway, so goodnight!

Thanks cammo, yes we have seen a pretty big leap in downloads since. But then again, this has been going on all summer so it's hard to pinpoint it. There's no way to tell how many people listened to the podcast but through feedburner I know we had around 50 downloads a day.

The completely juvenile behavior of the podcast surely limits it to a very segmented population for marketing. I'm not sure we are capable of doing a drunken podcast arguing about imaginary animals any other way though (we actually tried on the last one and look what that got us.)

Surely agree with points one and two. Next year I'd love to see even more spontaneous and planned community participation.

Lot of good points cammo. Those were the approximate goals.

I got a lot of folks to vote on the site, and generated some interest that wasn't there before, on facebook, deviant art, even some outsider messagboards. However, in a certain, critical very critical sense, I missed the boat. Even though a spark was lit for beast match, most people I contacted, one, didn't make the jump to the forums, and two, didn't connect and find their way to the drabblecast podcast itself. While we created a sub-community for the beasts, I don't feel like the drabblecast community itself saw a large rub. Perhaps this is just an iceberg effect, where you see the top, active and vital, with a silent group of involved but not herd folks below, but right now, my main thought for next year, if it happens, is strengthening the bridge over to the podcast proper.

Well, it all still turned out quite awesome, even if that *%*F)#@)_ Hellaphant won. Thanks for the shout-out, fellas.

Brother Azarel is going to be most displeased, however.

Oh man, did you wind up pulling in 30 votes from phone call in and 15 for style too>?

crafty bastard.

Can I just say, Bo's mom's call-in was adorable.

I second that. It killed me that I couldn't give her my style points because I was voting for Anarchtyichus