The topic of my autoethnographic investigation consists of research, development and creation. These are all being demonstrated through my digital artefact ‘The SIMpS Pod’. The SIMpS Pod is a visual podcast where we aim to determine the effects in which the life-simulation game, The Sims 4, has one player, and if the gameplay is an accurate representation of real life.
Throughout the creation of the visual podcast which is developed over Youtube, Twitter and Tiktok, while working with my collaborative partner there are some observations that have been collated over the past weeks. The epiphanies definitely will allow us to grow and develop our podcast and studies and hopefully achieve the final result. The media niche we have been focusing on is fitness, design and lifestyle. This branches from being able to relate our real-world issues to the life simulation game.
I have kept a list via my iPhone notes through the weeks of things I would need to discuss with my partner, epiphanies that had arisen or any issues we were encountering in the first few weeks of our project.
The first epiphany that occurred during the duration of the creation of The SIMpS Pod is I actually had no idea on how to create a podcast, especially remotely from the co-host. During the first week of our digital artefact we really were learning as we went. Whether it was the way to record, linking up audios, and of course being able to allow the other person to see the visuals and record them at the same time.
The second epiphany I had was in relation to audience engagement. The realisation of how important interacting with your audience to grab their attention and acknowledge that you’re creating for them is super important. This is something we have been struggling to reflect from our podcast. For the most part of the creation we have been super focused on the recording and trying to get ANYTHING out rather than focusing on the actual task at hand.
And finally my third epiphany was based on the importance of research when conducting this kind of investigation into our media niche of fitness and lifestyle. Having the correct and accurate knowledge into the niche and further into the key aspects of the ideas being presented are really important.
Our aim for the next few weeks and then leading into the final development of the project is to utilise the knowledge and grow from our mistakes and findings. We hope that these epiphanies has allowed us to really understand the concepts and ideas better and being able adapt and change our original plans and ideas to create something really informative and entertaining.
ediTORIal. 