Hyperspace Beacon: Wretched radio of scum and villainy

Many fan sites pull back just a bit when the game launches to absorb the traffic dip, especially when it's as large a game as Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's expected, right? All the fans are playing the game; why put work into something might not be read or listened to? However, the guys over at Mos Eisley Radio did the exact opposite. The MER crew expanded the number of podcasts and created one of the largest guilds in the game. (They hit the member cap pre-launch and had to turn people away.)

This week, I appeared on the site's weekly broadcast, and in exchange, I sat down to interview three of the leads for the site: Executive producer Zach Brown, MER co-host and producer Evan Lewis, and producer of Alan Shot First and guild leader Alan Nauman. We talked about everything — what has happened since launch, what they think of the game so far, and what they see for the future of the site and the game itself.

Since Mos Eisley Radio launched back in 2009 with a single podcast and Brooks Guthrie (now a BioWare employee) and Zach Brown at the helm. Now, the site boasts three podcasts, two regular video series, multiple written segments, and a guild. Has the vision changed? What inspired all this growth suddenly?

Zach Brown: This goes back the very beginning — we were originally a news site because there weren't really any news sites around at the time expect for TOROCast. As time went on, other sites started to pop up: Darth Hater, TORWars, Corellian Run Radio. I started saying, "We're all doing the exact same thing." Epecially when I started comparing ourselves to Darth Hater, which was the go-to site for Star Wars: The Old Republic news, and they were everywhere. I quickly realized that there was no way we were going to be able to keep up with these guys just because we don't have the staff or the man-power to do it.

As time went on, we moved away from being a news site. We concentrated on being a site for news, observations, laughs — I think that's what it says on our Twitter profile. As time went on, I realized that I need more content for the site — this is last October. I didn't have the time to create anything new for the site. I found that the only that I'm going to get new content for the site is if I find new people who produce quality content. Another thing I wanted to do is get away from doing the news stuff. I realized I really like the culture of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I find it fascinating that all these people share their stories and things like that. I wanted to create a website that was a hub for all of that.

How do the podcasts differ from each other, and what do they bring to the table?

Evan Lewis: MER covers news. It is news, but we aren't tying to cover the breaking news; it's not CNN. It is commentary on the hot topics.

Then you've got Sunny's Dinner, which attacks the hot topics from a different perspective. They tackle the entire game from the perspective of guys in their late 20s, 30s, maybe even 40s with a wife, kids, and job. They don't have a lot of time. How do they get the most out of their game? It's for the casual player. That speaks to a lot of people. I'm one of them, I have to say. I've not been quite as dedicated as I probably should have been lately, but life gets in the way. We all know that.

The Ossus Academy is something that I felt was missing from the podcasting arena as I've seen it — or heard it, rather. There are a lot of Star Wars podcasts out there. The main ones, like the ForceCast, are great, but they don't know games. Then a lot of video game podcasts are on the pulse of everything that's happening with this particular game, but they don't really know their Star Wars. So we are bringing the two together. We are bringing more of the greater Star Wars Universe to TOR fans and bringing TOR to Star Wars fans so that they can get excited about this world that we are all playing in.

Zach: You can say that Ossus Academy had its origins on Mos Eisley Radio because we did something for a while that was very popular over the course of six months called the KOTOR round table. We went through the entire original KOTOR game. We would take little sections of the game and go chapter by chapter. We would talk about it in detail so that, leading up to the launch of The Old Republic, it would be fresh on people's minds. Evan would prepare those segments, and I'd tell him, "You could definitely make a podcast out of this."

Evan: It's definitely a spin-off. I don't think we would ever say, "We're separate; we're not like MER." No, we came out of MER. That is 100% for sure.

You are spinning the TOR player toward Star Wars. Do you find the inverse happening? Do you find yourself leading Star Wars fans to TOR?

Evan: I think so. On our first episode we were lucky enough to have one of the busiest Star Wars authors — John Jackson Miller — on the show. He writes comics and books. The man is just swamped with Star Wars right now, and he was asking us, "How's the game going?" We got to tell him, "Yeah, it's really cool and they're using names from stuff that you wrote in the game." He's Tweeting out and Facebooking to people who follow him just because they read the Star Wars comics and Star Wars books, "Hey, I'm on this show. It's an Old Republic podcast. Check it out." We are reaching that hardcore Star Wars fan who doesn't play games.

Speaking of reaching out to the community, I wonder if you would tell us about Alan Shot First (formerly 90 seconds with Alan). What is that all about?

Alan Nauman: When I came back from the first fan site summit, I realized that I wanted to do more to contribute than just being a forum moderator. When I was taking a shower before I left — and this is probably way too much information — I had this idea. Number one: I didn't want to waste anyone's time. I wanted it to be short and to the point. The focus of it was not Alan; the focus of it was to be driving conversation within our community. Our community had amazing characteristics already. If we disagreed, we agreed to disagree. There was no flaming; there was no cussing or your mama jokes. It was this amazing community that had been cultivated by Zach and Brooks already that I got to come in and continue to cultivate and fertilize that community by driving a conversation because quite frankly, Zach and Brooks didn't have the time to that sort of stuff. I have the luxury of having a job where I'm at a desk a lot of days. So Alan Shot First, or 90 Seconds with Alan, was just my way of giving back to the community.

I spoke for about an hour to the guys at MER. I will finish up this conversation next week. We talk about the guild, how Sunny's Diner joined the MER network, and the future of this amazing fan site.

The Hyperspace Beacon by Larry Everett is your weekly guide to the vast galaxy of Star Wars: The Old Republic, currently in production by BioWare. If you have comments or suggestions for the column, send a transmission to larry@massively.com. Now strap yourself in, kid — we gotta make the jump to hyperspace!