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Aaron
definitely does some rambling here, but the Brodeo's closing and the
departure of Jeff Green and Shawn Elliott to the world of game
development needed to marked somehow.
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The Brodeo: In Memoriam
February 16, 2006 - September 17, 2008
On a cosmic scale, the departures from
1UP.com of Jeff Green (to EA) and Shawn Elliott (to 2K Bah-ston)
and the closure of the Brodeo mean relatively little. But on a
micro-cosmic scale, my own life as a writer and self-proclaimed critic
has been pretty much upended.
Though I only met Shawn very briefly and recently (at E3 2008 to drop
off some candy) and I’ve never met Jeff, they are a couple of writers
that I look up to and respect.
Jeff seems to be able to make anything funny and when he claimed the
back page of CGW/GFW as his own with Greenspeak that was always the
place I turned to when I picked up the magazine. When the podcast
started, I was a listener. It was awesome to witness what the podcast
evolved into – from a group of guys barely
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masking their contempt for the podcast to a
period where Jeff would often profess that he couldn’t believe they’d
been talking for almost an hour to the 90 minute plus,
ramble-thons that went down a massive slalom course of games, childhood
stories, industry news, and off-color commentary about forum posters.
And on some levels I could relate to Jeff – he’s married to a woman who
doesn’t
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quite “get” games, he’s a dad, and the
general population thinks his career at the magazine was a waste of
time. (Playing games and writing about them? Why didn’t you become a
lawyer or a barrista!) Facing all that, he still persevered in
coming up with new ideas and writing articles that would pull me in at
the beginning and make me laugh or at least crack a grin. In the past,
Jeff has stated that he’s a writer that “bleeds the words out” but on
the podcast he always came across as a guy that could roll out of bed
with a throbbing hangover and still be able to hammer together a
1,500-word feature that would shame most other writers. That is exactly
the kind of writer I want to be.
With his apparently storied background, Shawn comes from a place that I
find hard to understand. The only point of reference we share is that
we’re about the same age and we like candy. His writing is so good, so
detailed, so expertly constructed that it was always surprising to me
that he would show up on the podcast and describe his efforts at social
engineering (or “griefing” as some refer to it as), a past life which
included a succession of schools and what he did to survive and make
friends, and be able to go off on tangents relating to “a tunnel full of
dicks” and creating the likes of Whiskey Nerd and Ralphie. I envy
Shawn’s effortless ability to shift gears so quickly and display a vast
knowledge of everything from mammalian testes to gross-out comedies to
the finer points of strategies in Company of Heroes, sometimes in the
same sucrose-laden breath. Being able to have such a wide range of life
experiences and have a very perceptive, critical mind… That is exactly
the kind of writer I want to be.
After 2 ½ years of podcasts – hours and hours of humor and insight – the
GFW podcast, the “Brodeo” as it came to be known, is no more. The
unguarded approach which allowed a peek into the thought process of
these two giants (and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I call them
giants) has been effectively shut off. Jeff has started his own blog,
but that’s not the same as a podcast. As you write a blog it’s very easy
to delete something before it’s posted and even afterward the blog can
be edited.
When they spoke off the cuff or allowed the stream of consciousness to
run freely and the water to be played in by the other members of the
crew, that’s when the magic happened.
That’s when the listeners got a chance to develop a bizarre relationship
with the podcasters, which is evidenced by the fact a lot of the gaming
forums filled up with well wishes for both Jeff and Shawn that sounded
way more personal than they ought to have been.
I would trace this back to the fact most of us listened to the Brodeo by
ourselves; imaging ourselves sitting around with the crew and just
listening and laughing. They spoke to us and only us, so in a weird way
they all became friends because we know something about them. Except
Ryan. We know he can’t stand Mark Millar and likes Booster Gold, but
really, what else do we know about him?
With the close harmony stylings of the Brodeo crew closing the last
podcast with “Auld Lang Syne” all the feelings of cyber camaraderie,
looking forward to the podcast each week, lamenting incessantly if it
didn’t show up and loving it when it did, evaporated.
That anticipation of the Brodeo every week will never happen
again.
That goofy grin as Max Chill and Shawn relate a story about what
happened last time they went out to dinner; that strange feeling of
wanting to call Anthony up and offer dating advice; and waiting for
Ryan’s “What the hell?” – that’s all gone.
It’s often the case that we don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone,
but with the Brodeo, we already knew what we had. It was something
special. But like some kind of evolutionary dead-end only a fossilized
record remains. Like wax cylinder recordings, the archived Brodeos are
still available; and the collected writings of Jeff and Shawn can still
be seen, like cave paintings in France.
As even these will pass into forgotten history, I just wanted to go on
the record and let those guys know what an impact they had on my life.
- Aaron Simmer
(September 19, 2008)
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