To Substack ... and Beyond!

Why the move from one publishing platform to another?

Mainly it's to facilitate and foster a real community around the podcast that we've spent the last few years cultivating. At the time of writing, Pixel Vision has 36 podcast episodes, as well as a plethora of heartfelt reviews. But while the pod has grown organically, from a ropey Zoom chat recorded by phone on opposite sides of the globe in 2019 to a lovingly honed, pop culture filled, audio illustrated conversation produced in an editing suite, our mode of address hasn’t kept pace. We want our listeners to feel they can communicate with us directly, to comment on each episode, to feedback their views on the games we play and the gaming mechanics we discuss. Until now, short of plugging our email address occasionally on the pod and a minimal comment system on our website, that’s not been possible. Now it is.

credit: XKCD

Think of our posts here as the opening line of a conversation about each game, a conversation you’re all invited to take part in. Kind of like that childhood game ‘Consequences’ where the end result is the sum of all the players’ contributions to it… So in short, reason one is to help and encourage you to engage! Previously, Pixel Vision was not as slick, simple or inclusive for our listeners and readers as we wanted it to be. Nor was it efficient as a workflow, which brings me onto reason number two:

It’s to streamline our offering, bringing it all under one roof instead of chucking out a mashup of seemingly disparate publications. The podcasting space is massively fractured, and currently our output is all over the shop, with management of multiple platforms and CMS systems, and loads of accounts to update. Boring stuff, basically, that stops us from spending the time actually working on the podcast or playing the games we love to cover and talk about.

Our hope in moving to Substack is that all of that chaos is stripped away, leaving this has a one stop shop for all things Pixel Vision: a replacement for the different strands of the custom built website that was a faff to maintain and for the (fairly clunky and expensive) podcast hosting platform we were previously using. Now we can post our podcasts, reviews and commentary once, here, and it’ll go direct to you fans and to mainstream podcasting apps.

TL;DR - this should be easier for everyone.