RCG 5 Year Anniversary
2011-06-30The Red Card Group is something that means a lot to me. Without RCG, I probably wouldn't have the interest in web development that I do today because I would have never realized how much I enjoy making websites as opposed to my young and naive ideals of video game development. In celebration of 5 years of RCG, I thought it would be neat to get together for the long awaited 6th episode of the podcast.
March 3, 2006; a date that has been carefully expunged from many memories was the night of our first recording. Back then, it only took a few days to perform post-production and have a published episode online. I'm sure we can attribute this to my work ethic in school.
Episode 6 was roughly 4 months in the incubator. You'll notice the audio quality has been stepped up from "abysmal" to "tolerable" with our move to Skype as a recording medium rather than a solitary desktop microphone that I discovered in a disused computer box from 1995. The podcast was a lot of fun to be a part of and to edit. It was nice to get back together with the gang and geek out for a few hours.
Redesign
RCG also got a much needed redesign with the anniversary. It no longer takes the page 5 minutes to load while some convoluted scripts parse RSS feeds for content. It also works properly on a mobile device too (as long as it is using the latest webkit engine such as an iOS device).
Future Shows?
If you asked me 5 years ago where I thought RCG would be today, I probably would have thought about how popular and well-produced the podcast was going to become with a thriving community of tech enthusiasts posting on our forums and such. Fame and fortune still alludes us, but if I think about RCG now, I realize that it's more about getting together and doing things that we all like.
My main goal now is to capture the group experiences we have such as the podcast. However, my focus lately has shifted to our LAN parties and attempting to capture how much fun it is to get together and play our favourite games. To me, the future of RCG is publishing those experiences in a way that outsiders can stumble across them and enjoy them as well.
There have been brief discussions about how cool it would be to get together to do a regular show again, but it's just not practical. If a show exists at all, it might be a special annual show where we find time to just hang out and catch up. Although I think the vast majority of us are far more comfortable playing video games to produce a show.
LAN Party
If you haven't seen last years LAN party video yet and enjoy TF2, I urge you to take a look before the upcoming LAN party at the end of July. These are the kind of things that I want RCG to become.
Cheers everyone! Happy anniversary.