Channel Massive is a weekly podcast dedicated to an ongoing tour of super-awesome MMOs! We play Monday nights, and record an episode about our adventures on Thursday nights! The resulting episode is posted Monday morning and the cycle continues. Previously, the show has had a round table focus, as well as talking about games on consoles, gaming news and other glorious Geekery.
Channel Massive records its main episodes nearly every Thursday night at about 8 PM mountain time. If you want to have your feedback included in the next show, it should be in before then. We sometimes take the week off due to holidays, illnesses or unforeseen blizzards– we’re human and live in Colorado, after all.
We usually record our shows in a special studio in Mark’s home, face-to-face, whether we want to see each others’ ugly mugs or not. Sometimes we forget to mute our microphones for a chug of a local microbrew, Jack-n-Coke, or good ol’ Mountain Dew. Chemically-enhanced pink cookies and Del Taco are also sometimes involved. If we can’t meet in person, we record via Skype.
The magical editing and production baton has now been passed to Noah! Mark, Jim and Jason have also edited many of the show’s episodes in the past. We currently use Reaper as our editing tool of choice.
We will occasionally go outta bounds and record bonus episodes covering anything from game reviews, quick impressions, gaming conventions, and more. They’ll be included in the regular RSS feed so don’t sweat missing them!
Mark hopelessly tries to think of ways to monetize his useless autistic talents. In the meantime, he continues to grow his bangs out, raising the bar on fashion in the game commentary industry, which will someday give him the confidence to ask Michael Zenke out for dinner. (Mark’s Gamer Info)
Noah is a former Editor-in-Chief of Nintendojo who still records podcasts over there, as well as a traveling salesman who specializes in various Goth clothing lines. (Noah’s Gamer Info)
Jason writes for several underground web forums and likes smoking in his fine wood panelled basement surounded by his collection of antiquated computer equipment and porn. (Jason’s Gamer Info)
Jim is a militant vegan cyclist who enjoys a good game of cybersex. He is often seen roaming the streets of downtown Denver looking for women with over-developed typing fingers.
In 1939, as part of a highly classified US government project, four not-so-bright GIs were put in cryogenic suspension after being injected with a sort-of-super soldier serum. Due to lack of interest, their sleeping bodies languished in a cobweb-strewn army warehouse for decades.
In May of 2007, career janitor and occasional Othello player, Cletus Kapimphsky accidentally bumped into a big red button inscribed with the simple but pertinent words “PRESS TO SAVE WORLD”, and Mark, Jason, Jim, and Noah were revived. Sadly, their thawing was not 100% effective, which resulted in Jason’s perpetually slurred speech, Mark’s constant anger, Jim’s icy silence, and Noah’s hideous rash.
Liberated from their cryo-crypt, the four now somewhat-super soldiers embarked on a brave plan to save the world. But first, they would need money, and lots of it. To this effect, they started a podcast commenting on MMOGs and the rest is, as they say, history.
We’re not sure why you would really want to know the boring details, after our far-more-accurate and compelling mythology has been spelled out for you, but here you go, all the same.
Channel Massive is the brainchild of Mark, who back in the spring of 2007 was engaged in many-mile commutes to work, and, whilst cruising the highways of Colorado, listening to a variety of MMO and World of Warcraft podcasts. Inspired by his fellow gamers’ technological artistry, radio-unfriendly voices, and, in some cases, brazenly celebrated dorkiness, he figured out how to put his own podcast together, and he then asked Savagely Qualified Jason (later self-coronated as Resident Drunken Idiot) and Utter MMO Noob Noah to join him on a new podcast that would celebrate video games (particularly MMOs) and other super-awesome forms of Geekery.
The guys were game, Mark had the technology, and on May 8, 2007, the first episode of Channel Massive was released upon anyone willing to listen to over two hours of nervous and awkward round table discussion on a variety of Important Gaming Topics. At first things were rocky, and new episodes didn’t show up too regularly, but the “M-Team” later committed to weekly episodes, maintaining the round table-centric show format and adding Smooth Radio Voice Jim as a regular cohost in episode 11. Jim remained on the show, regardless of his death-defying injuries, until just after Warhammer Online released, at which point he thought “WTF” about the current MMO landscape and vowed to return when something spacey (Star Trek Online) or far, far away (Star Wars: The Old Republic) came out. And so he was then forcefully put back into cryogenic suspension. Did you think we made that part up?
Knowing that they couldn’t be a male geek version of The View forever, Channel Massive switched to a new show format of what we’re playing, gaming news, Blogosteria(TM) and your tough love emails of support and admonishment. They also decided console games, badass movies and sweet comics should be tacked into the mission, too. The team’s not sure when those changes took place due to frostbitten, failing memories: you’ll have to listen to every episode to pinpoint precisely when.
The show then went through about a year of special guest interview segments before settling into a grind of news and more news. Once that felt completely unfulfilling, Mark and Noah decided 2013 would be the year they came full circle, and are now engaged in one- to two-month tours of current MMOs, skewing towards games without subscription fees or that are completely free to play to enable as many listeners to join as possible.
MMOs toured so far…
- World of Warcraft (episodes 231 – 237, episode 239)
- Neverwinter Nights (sidequest episode 238)
- The Secret World (episodes 240 – 248)
To date, Channel Massive has surpassed 200 episodes of inanity, crude jokes and brazenly celebrated dorkiness, providing informed (some would incorrectly say uninformed) commentary and opinions on the latest MMOs, cool PC and console games, badass movies, amazing blogs and other Geekery. The team loves that it’s big overseas, with beautiful listeners in Scandinavia, continental Europe, Australia, South America, and, inexplicably, even Asia. They also of course love their sexy listeners in their home continent of North America, and hope to continue a global outreach that will ultimately end in worldwide domination.
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