Discuss: Positron & Castle on Split Infinity Radio
By
Acyl,
Posted on: 2008-04-30 15:00 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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I seriously hope that the "debate" over fixing the Posi TF or creating villain SFs was a tongue-in-cheek answer.
Cause the lvl 10 - 15 SF seriously needs some love and attention . . .
And thanks Jules and Slug for the awesome work.
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Well, gee, at least you have one to [censored] about. Get real.
Posi: Please, villain SF's.
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
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"IOs are like proliferated powersets; there may be an issue that goes by where we don't do any, but there won't be two issues in a row where there are none."
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This scares me for two distinct reasons.
Yeah, it was a great interview, I listened to it while doing the new TF on the test server.
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I seriously hope that the "debate" over fixing the Posi TF or creating villain SFs was a tongue-in-cheek answer.
Cause the lvl 10 - 15 SF seriously needs some love and attention . . .
And thanks Jules and Slug for the awesome work.
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I would imagine there is a debate, but it's more about which they can fit into the schedule with the most ease. If they just revamp the Posi TF, it could be a "quick" fix compared to creatign entire new TFs and slipped into the schedule of an existign issue with few problems. If they have to rebuild it fromt he ground up, that's a whole different matter.
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That interviewer should have been thrown in a suitcase and tossed into a river. Half the interview I spent skipping her dead air and constant @55 kissing. Hell half the good questions were ASKED BY CASTLE. Yeesh. But some good answers.
P.S.
I saw your explanation and I am truly sorry for your medical condition. But if you couldn't physically handle such a difficult interview then you should have passed it to someone else that was fit for it.
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Jeebus. Could you be more of an [WARNING EXPLICIT LYRICS]?!? Jules has done a great job over the years and is a CoH/V treasure. Everyone can have an off day. And your backhanded apology doesn't cut it either.
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Burn him at the stake for not liking the interview! I myself had to read the notes 
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No. Burn him (?) at the stake for being a complete [WARNING EXPLICIT LYRICS] about it. If he'd said "That interviewer was pretty bad. There was way too much dead air", then I would not have an issue with it. I'd internally disagree, but probably would not have said so.
Also, he clearly didn't take the format of the interview into consideration (over Vent, so [considerate] people tent to pause excessively so as to not talk over each other, and with live questions coming in over chat [or PM]). You could clearly hear Jules typing (at least I think it was her) throughout the interview as she handled the chat questions.
Finally, no matter how bad he thinks Jules was, she's contributed to CoH/V for quite some time and has earned the right to have an off day and/or be cut some slack. Poor girl was clearly nervous too.
EDIT: I thought she was fine, btw.
I listened to the interview yesterday. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah, there were a few pauses, but...so? And as said above, the method used tends to encourage that.
I thought she did fine. Oh, and Jules, I like your voice!
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Oh, and Jules, I like your voice!
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Join the club (which seems to have a lot of members), lol. She's known as "the one with the cute voice" on SI Radio. Heard about that before I ever heard her.
Jules has a pleasant voice, no doubting that. Also I think she has good potential to become an engaging "radio" personality once she conquers the jitters.
However...
Constructive criticism: When interviewing, never never never just bring up a topic, trail off, and hope the guest will elucidate. Ask questions. Throw questions that won't let the guest get away with yes/no answers. Use your questions to control the direction and pacing of the interview. Even the basic techniques in Radio Journalism 104 will make a world of difference.
This post brought to you by the Thunderfire Campaign to Out-Weird the Internet.
Score so far: Thunderfire-0, Internet-157893678
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Constructive criticism: When interviewing, never never never just bring up a topic, trail off, and hope the guest will elucidate. Ask questions. Throw questions that won't let the guest get away with yes/no answers. Use your questions to control the direction and pacing of the interview. Even the basic techniques in Radio Journalism 104 will make a world of difference.
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Much <3 for the constructive criticism! I'll keep that in mind for future reference. 
I find one of my largest faults is to have incomplete sentence, word structures, thoughts, etc. I was an interpreter for a long time, and in ASL you drop a lot of those. Bad habit I'm still trying to break!
Thanks muchly guys! <3
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Constructive criticism: When interviewing, never never never just bring up a topic, trail off, and hope the guest will elucidate. Ask questions. Throw questions that won't let the guest get away with yes/no answers. Use your questions to control the direction and pacing of the interview. Even the basic techniques in Radio Journalism 104 will make a world of difference.
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Much <3 for the constructive criticism! I'll keep that in mind for future reference.
I find one of my largest faults is to have incomplete sentence, word structures, thoughts, etc. I was an interpreter for a long time, and in ASL you drop a lot of those. Bad habit I'm still trying to break!
Thanks muchly guys! <3
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DJ_Jules
Rookie
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Sorry Jules... after that comment, I.Just.Had.To! 
...
...
Crap... now she'll ignore all of my song requests tonight... 
I'm gonna slap you around in the D!
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I'm gonna slap you around in the D!
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LOL! Some people would pay for that privilege, I suspect.
Regarding all the criticism leveled at Jules and crew... I think she did a good job.
To me, the thing is this. If you want an interview to be nice and polished, all elegantly presented with no rough edges, it needs to be recorded. Stuff that goes out live - like this - is always going to be a bit awkward. That's the nature of the beast. You can't compare this to an edited podcast. When you're doing something live, you get weird pauses, people not sure what to say...and then there's the added pressure of knowing you're going out live.
A radio host can take steps to reduce that stress factor, but it's never easy.
I worked for a small station for a couple years, in old-fashioned broadcast radio. So I've got the greatest respect for anyone, both hosts and interviewees, who can pull off a live programme. I never did. I recorded all my work, and always cleaned it up at the console. I don't have the nerves for live broadcast.
Now, someone earlier in this thread recommended asking actual questions when conducting an interview. That's true, you need to, and it is the responsibility of the DJ to keep things moving and challenge the interviewee. Ideally, you'll have some sort of structure, a general framework of possible questions and points to bring up...though of course you'd want to discard some and throw in new ones depending on what folks say. Ask new questions based on the answer they just gave, poke them to elaborate on things, so on. How that's done...it depends.
I did a training course conducted by a couple guys from the BBC who were totally adamant that what you need to do is challenge your interviewee, actually try and put 'em on the spot. I never liked that, nor did most of my colleagues. The danger of that approach is you end up too confrontational. On the other hand, if you spend too much time praising the interviewee, it looks like you're a sycophant who only knows how to kiss posterior.
The folks at Split Infinity did a great job creating a laid-back atmosphere. It felt relaxed (well, anxiety-pokes at Jules aside =) and nice and friendly. That's excellent. Could it be better? I don't know. Again, that's difficult if it's a live show. Especially if you've got live audience feedback, like this one, via IRC and such. That's an added wrinkle.
All in all, I think it was well played.
@Acyl
VIRTUE
Blue: Realpolitik, Leading Lady, Glass Lass, Superball, Alec Kazam
Red: Battery Acid, Obsolete, Bugfix
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Wasn't really a great interview. The developers seemed to be asking themselves questions in lieu of being asked by the interviewer.
Jules, next time maybe have a list of questions before-hand, so you've already got a basic structure written down. You can then follow on to any answers you get if you want to, but you at least have another question.
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People, people, the topic shouldn't be about whether or not Jules did a good job of the interview....it's about getting that extra 0 in the Empath badge removed! :P
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
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I totaly agree with Thunderfire's constructive criticism...
I missed questions regarding PvP, like many ppl have written lots of suggestions in special the idea about PvP template builds (like Guild Wars) for toons...
I've never heard of Jules or SI Radio before. I had to stop listening about 5 minutes in....it was painful. So much awkard silence, etc.
Maybe put together a list of questions from the forums next time...some of the "hot topics". Would be pretty easy and you know it's stuff people are interested in then. Just a thought.
/no offense intended
//cool idea though
All righty!
So I know people complain about the silence. Let me explain why its present.
When we do an interview, it is either via phone on Skype, or they come visit us in Ventrilo. Ping runs 31 to 47 on the server, which is nice and low. So there isn't too much trouble there.
But, since there are four people speaking, each will wait a moment to make certain they won't be speaking over anyone else; simple courtesy. Then you have the time it takes for my voice to transmit to them, depending on their lag/ping, and then their response back, depending on my lag/ping. So the silence isn't awkward, but a courtesy to other people in the interview.
Aside from that, I normally edit out the waiting silence in between questions and answers if it is a pre-recorded interview. In this case, it was live, and that wasn't precisely an option.
Also, there actually was a set of questions that were approved by marketing, that we fully went through, and then discussed further topics concerning i12.
I know some of you may not be accustomed to the silence with podcast interviews that are edited and cleaned up, but this is what happens with live radio - especially internet radio. It is simply unavoidable.
Hopefully that helps clear up any issues anyone had.
EDIT: Oh! I forgot. I did offer several places for players to post questions. This thread, SIRadio Forums, Vidiotmap forums, and various private SG forums that I could contact. So the option really was present for people to take advantage of.
Haven't been keeping up with the board comments about the interview but now that I have gotta step in and defend my DJ.
Though I wasn't too disturbed with the overall flow of the interview, nor with the quality of the questions. There has been some valid constructive criticism. Also Jules has addressed some of the reasons behind the delays. Some of the angry negativism, however, is your typical 12-year-old-fan-boy-nerd-wholl-try-to-flame-something-as-
hard-as-he-can-cuz-if-he-calls-something-stupid-it-will-make-
him-look-cool-even-though-hes-a-dweeb-who-will-never-get-
to-2nd-base-with-a-real-girl type of thing...but just some of it. There! Consider my DJs honor defended.
Not saying everybody isn't entitled to their opinions, it's just obvious when someone is being critical only to fill some empty part of their own lives, as opposed to true criticism.
Basically, I've always found interviews handled purely via voice are somewhat different than interviews handled face to face. With face-to-face interviews there are really handy non-verbal cues for good interaction. Voice only interviews seem to go one of two ways. Either it's being done by someone who steps over the interviewee (very common from shock-jocks or other types with large egos) or the interviewer defaults to the interview subject to some degree. When done too much, the latter can sometimes go the way of Thunderfires criticism. Sure it can be limited (and should be). As Thunderfire said, you can Use your questions to control the direction and pacing of the interview but Id still rather see a SLIGHT err on the side of giving your interview subject more room to elaborate than to err on the side of stepping all over them. I believe Jules didnt stray TOO far into the former.
Cya Friday night!
Professionally certified pessimism expert
Statesman is someone who shouldn't rap ever, even if he's trying to help people out. -IolitePhoenix
Check out my Infinity toons at the Vis Viva family web page.
While I agree with your post, your string-of-too-many-words has broken the thread. Please fix.
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While I agree with your post, your string-of-too-many-words has broken the thread. Please fix.
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and broken would be bad? 
Fine, the number of carriage returns has been increased.
Professionally certified pessimism expert
Statesman is someone who shouldn't rap ever, even if he's trying to help people out. -IolitePhoenix
Check out my Infinity toons at the Vis Viva family web page.
Gratzi!
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Been listening to this interview but I got just one burning question, Why does Positron keep saying issue 13 instead of issue 12? Like he said the VEATs were for issue 13 eventhough they are in issue 12, he said issue 13 on alot of other things.
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I think it was just a mental slip-up. Gotta remember, they work sometimes several issues into the future. So you say i13 around the office all the time, and it can come out instead of saying i12. Y'know?
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Yeah, that's pretty much it. Positron is knee deep in I13 work at the moment (fleshing out exactly what is going to be in it, and such) while the rest of us work on finishing up I 12.
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Here's a thought for all us content-craving players:
With all the new minions added to the dev team, we might see larger issues on a regular basis as they have entire teams working simultaneously on several issues at once!
That, or the new hires are just glorified gophers, mostly assigned to fetching cheetos, pie and mountain dew for the dev team.