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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."
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.
Lets see red vs. blue just finished season 3, with a insanely large number of fans waiting for season 4. So basically you are totally and completely wrong. I mean at least visit the website once.
Philosophy.
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.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
That is not the funniest joke ever. That was the German attempt to counter the funniest joke ever. Oh, and it goes as follows:
Hitler: "My dog has no nose."
Crowd: "How does he smell?"
Hitler: "Awful."
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Bored, Lazy Video Game Store Clerks: The Game
Buy your copy of the game at the store today to get it autographed by a bored, lazy video game store clerk! Hurry while supplies last.
Keep an eye out. Hopefully in about a month I'll be releasing something that should change a few minds. (btw, I created "Ours Again," and am one of the producers referred to working on "Game On" in the article).
This really has nothing to do with MS...lol. It could have just as easily said Gamecube or PS2, but the truth is that most of these machinma shows are made with Halo on an Xbox.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
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.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
While I'm not 100% certain, I believe machinima began with Quake, yet it's strangely absent from machinima discussions. Arguably the greatest (but certainly the largest and most ambitious) machinima movie for Quake is Seal of Nehahra. It's a background movie to the Nehahra modification (which has extensive cutscenes as well). I think the length is close to three hours. The story was written by a published writer, and it's an expanded version of Quake's originally vague backstory interconnected with Nehahra's own storyline. Custom engine, custom maps, custom music, custom models, multiple voice actors... even before Nehahra and Seal of Nehahra were released, Quake was already forgotten by the rest of the gaming world, so I guess that's why it's never mentioned.
Another movie worth mentioning is Eschaton: Darkening Twilight, which was one of the few attempts at serious machinima (along with Nehahra). I think it had some Cthulhu themes in it. A sequel was made for Quake II (Nightfall), but as far as I know it was discontinued after that.
Quake had a lot of great machinima, far more ambitious than what I've seen these days. I've seen a bit of Red Vs. Blue and it didn't really impress me. Maybe I just watched some lackluster episodes. Over the Counter-Strike had a few funny episodes, but it was really just voice acting in official CS maps. I admit that I don't actively follow machinima, so I don't really know what kind of stuff is being made these days, but the more famous (or "mainstream") machinima like RvsB isn't as good as the older Quake stuff.
The new Half-Life 2 short movie, "A Few Good G-men," is a nice example of what Source can do with its facial expressions and lip synching and such, but I wonder if anyone will take it further by making a longer, original movie.
As for that article, I find it very strange. It makes machinima seem like it was invented by Red Vs. Blue, and that there's something profoundly mysterious and amazing about it. I mean, does RvsB take as much work as making maps, models, music and textures from scratch along with engine modifications? I doubt it. Some of the earliest machinima pieces for Quake were much like RvsB, but they became more complex, and now it seems like we're back at square one.
Ok Paul Graham. I guess if the reporters used LISP they could generate their own stories.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences has announced the 2005, not so annual, Machinima Film Festival. The festival will once again be held at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York.
Machinima in general has grown in popularity and commercial success since the last festival in 2003 with such recent work as Paul Marino's Half Life 2 music video, "I'm Still Seeing Breen" appearing on MTV2's Video Mods, Rooster Teeth's recent series of shorts for IFC, the Nisha Chronicles for GMD Studios' latest A.R.G. promoting the Audi A3, and The ILL Clan's "Gamer Gags" for SpikeTV.
In all it's been a good year for Machinima, and it's only August.
I, for one, welcome the New York Times to two years ago.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
... that you'd be smart if you didn't waste your time doing machinima. I'm not going to get into the argument of whether or not something is funny or interesting, what I am going to talk about is ownership.
I can't remember when I read it but Gabe at Penny Arcade explained why you should not use sprite animations in a comic strip. He wasn't talking about drawing your own sprites, he was referring to making a comic from Mega Man sprites or some other game. The fact is you don't own the sprites and while it's possibly fair use to use them to not make any money, what do you do if you actually do make a good comic? Say you get 5000-10000 readers per day or more? What are you going to sell? Penny Arcade and PvP, as examples, sell a lot of different merchandise, from key chains to t-shirts to laser etched prints.
Red vs. Blue sells t-shirts that are mostly softball team shirts (small icon on the front-left, name of character and a number of the back) and probably do ok. But they can never have a shirt with the characters on it because they don't own the characters.
I don't know the licensing scheme with 'The Strangerhood' characters but that show is just lame anyways. If you bought a shirt from that series you are unquestionably without taste.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry