Xbox As An Indie Movie Studio

jhsiao writes "The NYT has an article about machinima and movies set entirely within video games. In the article they interview a number of machinima artists including the folks at Rooster Teeth Productions who brought us Red vs. Blue." From the article: "He created a comedy series called ''Red vs. Blue,'' a sort of sci-fi version of ''M*A*S*H.'' In ''Red vs. Blue,'' the soldiers rarely do any fighting; they just stand around insulting one another and musing over the absurdities of war, sounding less like patriotic warriors than like bored, clever video-store clerks."

Comments

5+orange=teal

[milktoastman]

Pay no attention to the subject, it isn't for the times. I want to engage in pretenious opinion spewing now.

Relevant to this article, though, I have to say, I don't think this would ever take off as a legitimate source of quality independent films for three reasons:

1. Serious filmmakers would just invest in software aimed specifically at professional 3D animations.

2. If successful independent films started coming out of X-boxes or other consoles at any significant rate, there'd be royalty, DMCA, and/or copyright lawsuits from the console makers.

3. While slow cookers are a convenient way for bachelors to prepare healthy and tasty meals without taking to much time for the prep work, darker beer will always be for us to animate in Hollywood.

Something actually new

[panurge]

This is actually pretty interesting, but likely to be stamped out by the IP owners.
It actually shows pretty clearly what is wrong with present attempts at continued IP extension; it suppresses innovation and originality at the expense of a fossilised business model.

Kids have always played with dolls and toy soldiers and engaged in imaginative play. This is actually a way of actualising that play in a reproducible manner. It's getting back to a core process of the human imagination, and suddenly making it more than just a transient entertainment for a few children.

Up till now animation has been a relatively expensive process which puts it under the control of studios, or results in tiny cartoons produced with great labor by students. This shows that the process is now ready to be democratised - if it is allowed to happen. Potentially Open Source could do this, by creating Open Source animation engines which work with Open Source avatars - meaning that kids (and people a lot older) could create and release those avatars. The result? Well, if it's like music, where the means did NOT result in talented outsiders getting much exposure via the P2P networks, but does result in a lot of piracy, it will be disappointing. But it would be nice if, for once, educators and others got a clue and encouraged kids to use their creative talent on computer generated animation.

On a slightly relatied topic, I do not believe that the real driving force behind the attack on P2P networks is fear of piracy. Piracy just legitimises the existing pyramid structure of content creation and distribution. They are under attack because of the fear that one day they might result in democratisation of content creation and distribution - which would destroy the recording industry and the movie industry as their "blockbuster" lowest common denominator model had to compete within a huge number of niche markets. That's where freedom (the right to create and distribute without being suppressed by the monopolist) meets Marxist socialism - the idea that citizens rather than capitalists should own the means of production and distribution.

Why Xbox?

[ilyaaohell]

Referring to the Xbox as THE game console is like referring to the Mac as THE personal computer.

What's up with Slashdot, and these other publications like the New York Times, talk about Xbox like it's what the kids are playing these days? It's selling like 1/5th the rate of the PS2. I don't have either of these consoles, but I'd still like to know why the less successful product in an industry composed of only a handful of competitors get this publicity.