I’m a bit undecided on this one.

The quality of the audio, lighting, and room/backdrop is much lower with the Zoom format, it doesn’t distract from the content but feels less polished. It also feels a bit more scripted, even though I suspect it’s the same, mainly I think as the format is consistently the same without the visual breaks of jumping camera views, etc.

In favor of the Zoom format. I feel that ben is much more involved than being “on the telly”, which is a good thing, that format never really worked perfectly for me. Overall I think the chats are more balanced rather than dominated by a single person and the current dynamic of Ben/Gerry/Free works. While 3 people work I think it’s generally better with 4, maybe that 4th could be a guest?

I’m not so keen on the news segment as it is, mainly because it ends up dominated frequently by a certain company but partly because it is just looking at images, while this is fine for new format the studio did use to get hands-on which really for me sold that, the simple things like showing a close up of a tank or mini off the shelf that might be like the new thing, etc.

What I found I do miss is the variety of content in the Cult of Games, it has become pretty formulaic now, I enjoyed having the guests on the show to break things up but also all the extra content such as the VLogs, etc. now its weekender/XLBS, tutorial, repeat. I miss the excited shows of Warren or Lloyd running around the studio, particularly in prep for the hobby weekends. That being said the tutorials are still excellent and haven’t significantly suffered from being done remotely.

I’ll continue to watch regardless as it’s always great hobby background, I quite like the idea of maybe mixing the formats up between the weekender and XLBS so one or the other is in person.

Something I don’t think has been suggested is splitting the shows up more, either switching formats in the same video or creating multiple videos? I’m not sure what the impact of that would be but if say the indie of the week segment was filmed in the studio that for me would up the quality of the show, particularly if there was something physical to discuss, equally I’d happily watch that segment as a standalone video, similar for the news or the 3D printing. The 3D printing segment for me screams out to have something physical added to it.

Playing devils advocate a bit, there are so many zoom style chats now on twitch or youtube that it somewhat devalues the cult of games as a subscription. Their quality is just as good, or in a few cases better. For me it was the Cult of games studio videos, and not particularly XLBS, (it was mostly those energetic vlogs) that got me to join, and I’ve stayed for the community as much as anything.