It’s time to address the Mumak in the Room…
The Card Game Cooperative has always been a fairly laid-back Podcast (except for when James is on one of his rants…) we never had a strict release schedule, preferring just to record as-and-when we could.
That said, as-and-when is becoming a lot less frequent.
Since we launched the cast back at the dawn of 2020, things have changed. 3 of the 4 of us have changed jobs, Will has left the city, moved away, and often works evenings. We’ve collectively doubled the number of children that we have between us from 2 to 4. It’s nothing that doesn’t impact everyone else in the world, but free time to record has become harder and harder to find.
It’s also worth noting that the games themselves have changed a lot. When we started up, 2 of the 3 games were still releasing content most months, with assorted odds and ends still trickling out for Lord of the Rings. At the time of writing, the final official Lord of the Rings product is releasing this week (the repack of the Return of the King Sagas), and the fan-made ALEP content has also slowed down significantly. Arkham is sitting at about 3 products a year (a campaign, an investigator box and a standalone) Marvel still has the most releases in any given year, but that too has slowed down. It’s not that there isn’t content to discuss, but the tempo has definitely changed, and that impacts the discussions that people are having.
All of these things have added up to us not playing some of the games as much. One of us has already sold their champions collection, and another is on the way to doing it. We’re all still playing Arkham in our separate groups, but this coming Saturday will be a rare occasion where 3 of us actually sit down at the same table to do so. Likewise, we try to all meet up once a month to play Rings, but again, there’s just a lot of things competing for our time.
All of this means that getting everyone together for an evening is a challenge. And when we ARE all free, we’d probably rather play a game. It’s often Lord of the Rings, it might be Arkham. or Magic, or a Star Wars Unlimited draft, but ultimately, plugging into the same laptops that many of us are stuck staring at for the entire working day just isn’t top of the priority list any more.
We hope that people have enjoyed our episodes, and we’re not planning on taking them down any time soon. Who knows, we might even try splicing 2 episodes into one, then announce it as new content.
We hope that folks have found other podcasts to fill your listening needs, and that you still have the time and the enthusiasm to keep gaming.
James, Michael, Simon and Will
The Card Game Cooperative 