Author: Anusha

In the latest episode of The Longest Rainy Sunday, my group explored the game Democratic Socialism Simulator in which I served as the assistant producer. 

In this episode, we focused on how the game poses the argument that the most ideal form of government is a moderate one. The name implies that this is a game that will embrace socialist-like ideals, yet it instead, mocks them. The actual feedback loop and mechanisms of the game shows that when decisions are consistently made under one viewpoint, problems arise. One problem that we focus on specifically, is the bankruptcy of the country when we make decisions that lean left–decisions that in my opinion, are fundamental human rights. 

I greatly enjoyed being a part of creating this episode because we were able to incorporate topics from current day life other than the daily despair each one of us faces amidst a raging pandemic. We published this episode only one week after the presidential election, a time when many of us were entrenched in the outcomes because the repercussions for people both domestically and abroad could be severe. We had the liberty to thus reflect on this election and what factors may have contributed to Biden’s win. One point we make during this episode is how this game came out in February, amidst primary season. Many people believed that Biden should be the democratic elect because we needed a moderate president who would appeal to undecided and even republican voters. This viewpoint came at a time when Bernie Sanders and Biden were neck and neck in the race. Coincidently, the description of Democratic Socialism Simulator says that the game is “an attempt to prefigure the opportunities and challenges of a Sanders (or Sanders-like) presidency.” This game may have influenced people to abandon their support for Sanders after playing because it illustrates that a socialist government is unattainable and unrealistic. Other topics that we were able to integrate into our podcast was the role of young voters in this election as well as a reflection on Lincoln and FDR. I think this mechanism of incorporating political issues was very helpful because we were able to share our own opinions on this game and what a moderate presidency really means. In this way, our opinions gave the episode more character and helped it seem more natural. 

In respect to the process of producing, I think our group has gotten very comfortable with creating a podcast episode. When we produced our first episode, Temple Run, we were all coming to the task without any experience. Granted, we did choose a game we were somewhat familiar with–yet we were still very new to analyzing a game with a critical analysis lens. Deciding on a game, formulating a thesis, and recording took much more time that first week than it did during this episode. Now, I believe we have the ability to approach any game (including those we have not played) and effectively create an argument. We also very seamlessly have gotten into the flow of creating the other components of this podcast episode like the summary, cover photo, and script. I think that, in the future, if I ever have to create a podcast episode for another class, I would not find it a daunting process.  

Given that this was our final episode, I also want to thank Jiachen and Hayden for being really great group members during this process. I think we worked really well and efficiently, and for Jiachen, I have a great deal of respect for coordinating times with us when he was twelve hours ahead of us. 

The week our episode was due, I was initially stressed because creating a podcast is not something I had ever done before. Though, I am grateful for Hayden and Bob in how we all came together to produce an interesting and thoughtful episode. 

Our first challenge was deciding on a game. While we did start somewhat in advance of the project, we admittedly were constrained by time. When we got together, we all came to consensus that foremost, we had to choose a game that we had all played. Hayden and Bob definitely had played more games than me, so it took a bit of narrowing down, but we did settle on Temple Run. I proposed it mainly because when I was looking for games, I found out that Temple Run is still one of the leading games on the Apple play store. It really does surprise me how games that are no longer in the mainstream view remain popular for quite a few years (in the case of Temple Run it was almost a decade). I wanted to explore this aspect as well as think about the mechanics of Temple Run because I felt that it spurred the era of 3-D simulator games. I was slightly hesitant about pursuing the game because it very much was so casual that it did not necessarily fit into the definition in this class. Though, retrospectively, I think this factor of Temple Run being somewhat of an odd game made it that much more interesting to explore in our episode, especially with the added aspect of the pandemic. We will not be exploring casual games for every episode, though, so for future weeks, we plan to choose games that we are necessarily familiar with. 

We settled on roles based on our availability that week, and plan to switch for every episode. The responsibility was split up such that I, the producer, would be in charge of outlining the script of general ideas (including the sources) that we would cover as well as editing the episode. Hayden, the assistant producer, would be in charge of the transcript and Bob, the line producer, would create the cover picture and summary of the episode. We all, of course, contributed to the brainstorming of discussion topics and crafting of a main idea for the episode.

Looking back on my responsibilities, for the outline, I think I should have focused less on creating an actual script because our episode could have seemed more conversational. In terms of editing, I definitely do think I could have smoothed out the background noise or adjusted volumes more efficiently. Overall, however, the activity was more enjoyable than I had anticipated. I think being able to have the creative license to create something (video, podcast) has always been incredibly appealing to me, but I didn’t know how to even begin. After using Audacity and the Free Music Archive, I definitely see that I have areas to improve on, but I feel that operating the tools to create is not as much of a barrier as I thought it would be.