Knightly Musings – The ARKeologist’s Podcast: What I Learned

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to participate and host a couple of podcasts. After ending my stint as a host on the Press Pass podcast I wanted to keep podcasting. So I created the ARKeologist’s Podcast. I was not just a participant or the host but also the editor and the promoter as well. Filling all these roles made me aware of the challenges of trying to create and maintain a podcast. But, in hindsight, it also showed me the things I did wrong. 

So let me give you the background of the ARKeologist’s Podcast in addition to its current statistics before talking about the challenges and things I would have changed in hindsight. Unlike the Press Pass podcast, which covered general gaming news, the ARKeologist’s podcast was a show that focused on one single video game –  ARK: Survival Evolved. The first episode was posted in August 2016 and the show ran for two years with 100+ episodes that started on YouTube and, at episode 72, became available on other platforms such as Apple podcasts, Anchor, and Spotify. 

Considering that the podcast was focused on just one game, the assumption going into this project was how difficult it could be to generate enough topics to make this a weekly podcast. With Press Pass, there were always dozens of new stories, announcements, and releases every day to discuss (though my co-hosts at that time would say otherwise). But with this new podcast, I feared that it would be at the mercy of what the developer was doing in terms of updates, press releases, and overall churning of content for a game that was in Early Access. 

Even if the developers were constantly releasing new content and making changes to their game, how could one generate enough content to release a weekly podcast? Because there would be dry spells during the development process. This was a fact. The challenge was to come up with some kind of format that wouldn’t make the podcast wholly dependent on the developer. 

So why not look to the community?

Sure, for the podcast I could come up with a topic or theme, but there was an active and enthusiastic community that revolved around the game as well. What a few minds wouldn’t be able to do, a collective would and so, as was already my routine, I was gleaning the forums and Reddit. But this time, as a way to help look for things that we could talk about and discuss. 

And it worked!

For two years we ran a weekly podcast where, only a couple of times, we had to skip because I was either too busy or schedules wouldn’t align in a way to make it work. But it was never due to a lack of content to discuss. This resulted in over 100 episodes which, on average, got around 400 views on YouTube per episode and over 500 listens per episode over various platforms such as Anchor, Spotify, Apple iTunes, and Google Podcasts. Though with the latter, there are only the last 29 episodes on those platforms. 

While statistics are lacking for me when it comes to YouTube, Anchor provides some statistics based on the 29 episodes published via the platform. To the surprise of no one, 86% of listeners were male and 11% were female. For age groups, our target was primarily in the 28-34 range at 25% followed by 18-22 at 22%, 23-27 at 21%, 0-17 at 13%, 35-44 at 12%, and 45-59 demographic coming in last at 8%. In terms of which devices were used to listen to us the PC was where we were listened to the most with 36% of the audience, Android in second at 33%, iPhone at 29%, and Xbox with 3%. 

In regards to which platforms listened to us the most. Spotify comes in first with 54%, Other platforms with 23%, Apple Podcasts at 19%, and CastBox at 4%. As for where our audience originated from it was a predominantly American listener base at 72%, Canada at 9%, United Kingdom at 7%, Australia at 5%, France (2%), and Sweden at 1%.

Of course, I tried to improve the quality of the podcast over time. The addition of a musical introduction, incorporated timestamps on YouTube, making the show more PG later on with the addition of the dodo sound to censor colorful metaphors, and trying to tweak the audio helped improve the overall quality of the podcast. However, with how we recorded the podcast, the audio was as good as it was being recorded (recorded via TeamSpeak at the time). So all I really did was make sure there were no long pauses and no audio peaks that would hurt the listeners’ ears.

But what really helped the show keep going was the quality of the co-hosts/participants. More specifically, Reko and Legday who were the most active. Without such regulars, the show would have died early on. I would surmise it also helped that almost all of the people who were a part of the podcast were tribe members as well, which kept things fun, enjoyable, and provided a sense of camaraderie for the listeners to pick up on..

However, while we had most of the elements needed to create a good show, there were things that I could have done that might have made the podcast grow more than it did. 

In hindsight…

Overall, those are the stats I have for the ARKeologist’s podcast and, when all is said and done, not too impressive. Especially when you take into account the player base that ARK had at the time and the momentum it gained while we were active. ARK was in the Top 10 games played on Steam and Top 20 games being streamed on Twitch. Knowing that, and from an objective standpoint, I can say that the potential for an audience was there, I just failed to tap into it for a number of reasons. 

The routine was simple for me. Whenever I posted a new episode I would post it on the ARK reddits, N4G, Twitter, Facebook, Steam, and the official ARK forums. Unfortunately, response to such posts was almost non-existent to zero. It could be that, while people were playing the game, 99.9% of them didn’t care about it beyond that. There just wasn’t any interest in a podcast for the game. In fact, I bet if you were to go on the various Reddits now, and ask if people would want a podcast, the reaction would be as it was then. 

Of course, it could be that I just wasn’t using the right hashtags or buzzwords to get people interested in the podcast. It could be the fact that I am not charismatic, likable, or engaging. It might also be due to the fact that I certainly didn’t go out of my way to, like the majority of podcasters and content creators, constantly ask listeners to “like, subscribe, and share” to the podcast. Something that I hate to hear when I’m a listener. Yet, it is something I should have done that could have helped the podcast grow more. 

Another thing I could have done was bring on more popular ARK YouTubers, streamers, and content creators. After all, our most popular episodes involved other people from the community such as PepperJC and leaders from prominent Official Server tribes. Not to say that I didn’t try. But the majority of people I approached to guest on the podcast either couldn’t make it work with our recording schedule or, the biggest reason, didn’t want to talk about themselves or their tribe. Given the nature of ARK, the latter was certainly understandable. I mean, the ARK videos I posted weren’t recent fights or occurrences but events that transpired months before being posted on my YouTube channel. 

Yet, I could have made more of an effort to get more guests from the ARK community.

In addition, I never approached anyone from Studio Wildcard itself to be a guest on our podcast. But considering how critical we were of the dev team a lot of the time, I wouldn’t have expected them to want to have anything to do with us. I especially wanted nothing to do with them when I got banned from the official forums, without any warning, for posting one of our episodes on there. 

Another issue, and one of the most obvious things, was our focus on just Official PvP Servers. At the time, while private servers were a thing, they just weren’t popular and that has probably changed over the years since our last episode. Still, the Official PvP Servers offered us so much content to work with that it didn’t make sense to focus on private servers or the Official PvE servers aside from game changes that would affect that sector of the community. Though I’m sure that alienated the majority of those players from becoming listeners. 

Final issue was that, for YouTube, I stopped making videos for the podcast and only posting the audio. However, this was done due to time constraints because making those videos took a long time. Especially on an aging PC where converting a video file took too much time.

But aside from improving on promoting the podcast and trying to get the show’s engagements up, I should have thought of creating and offering merchandise as well. It was not something I had ever considered at the time and never really knew about. 

Yet this leads me to my biggest, overall regret. That I couldn’t pay people for their time in helping with the podcast. The ARKeologist’s Podcast didn’t make any money. All the time I spent creating the agenda, recording, editing, promoting, etc was done for free. Everyone who participated on that show did it for free. For that, I will always be grateful to them. Because, in the end, we did it for the fun of it and it gave us a flimsy excuse to justify playing ARK for so long. 

For our regular listeners who kept tuning it to hear us talk about the game and our experiences, I am very grateful. You were the main reason we even kept it going for so long. But if I were to be honest, if the podcast had started making money so that I could pay my fellow podcasters for their time, the show might still be going to this day. 

Even to this day, I still get messages and people popping up in our Discord channel who either used to listen to the podcast, or recently stumbled across it, asking if we are going to do any more episodes. Even though it has been years since our last one! I always feel guilty telling them that we aren’t doing any more episodes. Yet it’s nice to know that people still enjoy the work we put into the show.

After all, the time spent doing the ARKeologist’s Podcast was a great time and a fantastic learning experience for me. Going forward, the lessons I learned will be used for my future endeavors. 

So what do you think I could have done to make the podcast better and more popular? Let me know in the comments, on Discord, or social media.

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