Audio/video content to help text

[Arantor]

So I'm preparing a site with a whole bunch of content, some of which will be reasonably necessary for people to read before posting. This is reasonably expected by the userbase that will be coming, so I'm not worried about that.

I showed some of the content to my beta readers/proof readers, and the one observation made was 'is there going to be an audio version'. And that got me thinking.

I wonder if finding alternative ways of presenting our non-user-generated content is actually something we can look into - in my case it's a relative no-brainer to create audio versions of content, whie I think making video versions will be difficult (as I don't really have any good video presentation, or budget to produce such) and publish that alongside the textual reference material.

Anyone else think about producing audio content, even video content, alongside articles and so on?

 

[Cedric]

Providing alternative formats for non-user-generated content, such as audio or video, could be a great way to make the content more accessible and engaging for your audience. But I imagine they will be very time consuming to make and take a lot of resources as well. I would personally not go this road and just offer a text based version.

Creating video content can be a bit more challenging. Maybe you can try something else such as creating simple slideshow videos using tools like Canva or Vimeo.

I think it's about finding the balance between the benefits of providing alternative formats for your content and the costs of creating those formats. It's always a good idea to experiment with different formats and see how your beta readers or general audience responds. If you find that your audience is enjoying your audio or video content, you can consider investing more resources into creating higher-quality content in the future. Do keep us posted!

 

[Arantor]

In the case of the audio part, I'm perfectly happy to do the recording myself, and the majority of it won't change too much once created. It definitely would have advantages standing out compared to what I would think of as the competition, such as that exists in RP land. It's more that the material is not so much as supplementary material as preparatory material, and people will need to take some of it on board to participate, so engagement is pretty important.

Video is definitely a heftier prospect and something that my co-creators and I are talking about, but certainly an interesting prospect. I had every intention of hosting the video on Vimeo rather than YouTube since I don't want to monetise it or to advertise in it, while at the same time I don't want to deal with the mess that is YouTube's enforced monetisation.

 

[Cedric]

In the case of the audio part, I'm perfectly happy to do the recording myself, and the majority of it won't change too much once created. It definitely would have advantages standing out compared to what I would think of as the competition, such as that exists in RP land. It's more that the material is not so much as supplementary material as preparatory material, and people will need to take some of it on board to participate, so engagement is pretty important.

Video is definitely a heftier prospect and something that my co-creators and I are talking about, but certainly an interesting prospect. I had every intention of hosting the video on Vimeo rather than YouTube since I don't want to monetise it or to advertise in it, while at the same time I don't want to deal with the mess that is YouTube's enforced monetisation.

Agreed, Vimeo would be the better alternative for your needs. And nowadays video's are probably a better solution for a lot of content than text-based too.

 

[Heatman]

I don't know anything about using audio contents because I haven't come across it being used on any forum yet. But when it comes to video contents, I have seen it used on more than one occasion. It's very effective in passing a message to members. There's this forum that created a video content on how to use their website and it was so cool. I like it so much because it even showed a lot of things most users wouldn't find out easily.

 

[Arantor]

There's this forum that created a video content on how to use their website and it was so cool.

Can you share a link? I'd love to see it.

 

[Cedric]

To continue adding to this topic,
Promotion Future will be offering video content requests. @Malcolm can probably share some info about this.

 

[joelr]

So I'm preparing a site with a whole bunch of content, some of which will be reasonably necessary for people to read before posting. This is reasonably expected by the userbase that will be coming, so I'm not worried about that.

I showed some of the content to my beta readers/proof readers, and the one observation made was 'is there going to be an audio version'. And that got me thinking.

I wonder if finding alternative ways of presenting our non-user-generated content is actually something we can look into - in my case it's a relative no-brainer to create audio versions of content, whie I think making video versions will be difficult (as I don't really have any good video presentation, or budget to produce such) and publish that alongside the textual reference material.

Anyone else think about producing audio content, even video content, alongside articles and so on?

On forums, I never understood how we skipped from images --> video. You would think we would have evolved from images to audio to video (which is moving pictures pared with audio).

If you have the time and resources, I think it can make sense to provide non-UGC in a variety of alternate formats. One of my favorite examples are podcasts or videos that provide text transcriptions, which allows me to skim much faster.

But I also think you should think deeply about why audio was requested. Is audio going to be accepted for commentary? Does the medium of audio add or detract from what you're trying to convey (eg. Would adding background music to the audio help enhance a narration?) Do you have any feedback from the user? If you do publish audio, what is your minimum acceptable usage to continue investing in audio transcripts?

 

[Arantor]

I tried to avoid context for the purposes of discussion on the basis that I didn't want to unduly influence the outcome.

This is for a roleplay project; unlike previous attempts it is an 'original lore' roleplay, that is to say an originally created world, with lore, backstory, and so on. There's history, there's magic, there's a whole heap of stuff. And that the principle content is people collaboratively telling stories in this universe. (No dice.)

Now, this is very carefully being constructed that you could dive in and just get writing with limited/passing reference to the material at hand, looking up only the essentials as necessary - but for that to meaningfully work, the underpinnings must be set out and available even if the average consumer isn't going to consume the detail at a deep level. One does not need a deep study of the British Isles, for example, to write Harry Potter - a vague and passing understanding of geography is more than sufficient as in 'Hogwarts is in Scotland, there's a contingent in the southwest of England and the Ministry of Magic is in London'. Similarly, we know there is a Ministry of Magic, much can be written without fleshed out details - but for consistency, *these details should be written out for when it might actually matter*.

As such, the audio version is both an abridged version of the content for easy passive consumption (a la podcasts), but also available for those who might prefer to take it in, more audio-book fashion than by reading. After all, the detailed versions with facts and figures will be available as a wiki-like structure but people can internalise that stuff in a different way - and for some people it's a better option.

It's also a consideration that few other sites in the roleplay scene do *anything* like this. The other sites in the scene, even the 'original lore' sites, not even the largest and most technically competent (think folks like Wes at Star Army) have gone there, and I'm prepared to invest the time and resources to try it because I don't know how well it's going to work - I just wondered if I could get some thoughts ahead of actually doing it. As it is, we're still writing the lore (though, we've had a few bumps recently and I'm not sure if one of our key early contributors is going to drop out) so this is all 'down the road' stuff rather than right-now stuff. (Incidentally the principle person asking if it would be available in audio is the person who might be dropping out. Which renders it all a little bit moot.)

 

[joelr]

One thing to consider is that you could invest in audio once you hit certain other milestones. It doesn't necessarily need to be an all or nothing decision at the beginning.

With that said, since your context is lore and roleplay, I can see a really well executed audio with character voiceovers, background mood music, etc. that would be very compelling.