Announcing: Side Story

Hey everyone, Austin here with a big announcement: We’re launching a new podcast! It’s called Side Story, and it’s a new podcast about the games we’ve been playing (and the stories we want to tell about them). We’ll be releasing it every other week, generally offset with Media Club Plus, so you’ll always have a little extra FatT in your feed! And lemme be extremely clear: 

This is not a joke or a trick, it’s just an April 1st surprise that we think you’ll enjoy.

A little bit about why we’re doing this: Many of you know that early last year, I lost my job as the IP Director (i.e. lead writer and world builder) for a video game company. In the time since, I’ve done some contract work, guested on other people’s shows, and given a lot of thought about where I wanted to put my time and effort in the near future. And it turns out that where I want to put it is right back here, into Friends at the Table.

But I faced a bit of a dilemma. We’ve been here for ten years. We’re not huge, but we’re very grateful for the support and exposure we’ve had. But that means that we’re probably not going to tap into a big node of new fans just by doing what we’ve already been doing. So, how do we get people who don’t think of themselves as Actual Play Listeners (or who aren’t particularly interested in the topic matter of any given season of Media Club Plus) to give us a shot? 

Well, one thing I know people want from me—because they ask me for it all the time—is to talk more about the video games I’ve been playing. It’s something I thought was largely behind me until this last fall, when I got to be a Juror for the IGF, and I realized how much I’d missed thinking critically about games, sharing my opinions with others, and generally expanding my horizons by playing a ton of cool, weird stuff. Plus, something that I believe deeply is that everyone here at Friends at the Table has incredibly thoughtful and funny things to say about games of all sorts. Combine those things, and launching Side Story suddenly makes a lot of sense.

I could keep rambling about inspiration, goals, and ambitions, but I think I’ll let the work speak for itself. So, step one, go listen to Side Story! It should be on all the main podcatchers, and an RSS feed is available at sidestory.show. Step two: Go check out episode one of our Outward Let’s Play! This first ep is available for free for everyone, but starting with the second one, it’ll be for $10 Patrons. It has been an absolute blast so far, and I think people are really going to enjoy it.

One of our hopes is that this drives a little more attention to the Patreon so that we can also keep up with the rising cost of eggs, gas, and rent without dramatically reworking the other tiers again! So please, let folks know about this, give the podcast and let’s play a shot, and thanks from all of us for your continued support!

-Austin