So Saturday night, I had a really awesome evening, for many, many reasons. It really shook me to the bone. I wanted to tell this story both to document it and to share it with you all. This story is about people, connections, synchronicity and serendipity.
So since the story is about the people, it’s important that I introduce the cast of characters involved. Read the rest of this entry »
My buddy Matt wrote this with my hetero life mate, Jack, who I love like a brother from another mother and spoon whenever I get the chance, and it’s now coming to life. Check out the trailer, it’s short. It is what it sounds like, a good-old slasher flick that takes place in a LAN party set in a slaughterhouse. Everyone involved is a gamer in some capacity, so they aren’t just exploiting the demographic. The script is awesome, it’s going to be great.
http://www.lanpartymassacre.com/lan_party_massacre_teaser.html
I don’t want to be that guy that says “I liked this show before you,” but I liked this show like five years ago. A few of my friends are from England, and they imported this over here for us to watch. We literally watched an episode or three whenever we hung out. Over and over, it was ritual.
This show, I say this with the utmost sincerity, is my favorite television show in all of creation. It’s masterfully crafted, hilarious, but also ‘real,’ it has it’s share of drama, and some of the messages it has are very valid. The show is ‘only’ two seasons long, but each individual season has it’s own amazing conclusion, as well as both seasons tie together wonderfully. The characters are amazing as well. I want to tell stories like this.
Turns out they are finally putting out on DVD July 22nd. American release, previously it was a different region or whatever, you could watch it if your player could handle it. One of my favorite things about the DVD release is that it has a special feature called the Homage-O-Meter, which is basically a set of subtitles that point out ANY references made in the show. Both pop culture, and to other episodes.
I could rant about it for hours, and I often do. If you’ve not seen it, do yourself a favor and get it and watch it.
Wall-E was soooo very good. It’s honestly masterful storytelling. No spoilers but just in case:
So I go to youtube to watch/listen to one of my favorite music ids, Knights of Cydonia.
In the comments, I see:
“MUSE + Joseph Kahn = GREATNESS”
I look up Joseph Kahn on google, and find his IMDB, then I see:
“Neuromancer (2009) (pre-production)”
OMG. /dies
This is a very, very legendary statement:
The games industry has not historically paid royalties and residuals for voice acting and motion capture work because, according to entertainment company lawyer Ezra J. Doner, “What drives video games is not Tracy and Hepburn; what drives it is the conception of the creative director. The actor whose appearance or voice is used is more analogous to a session music for a band. The session musicians don’t get residuals on the sales of the CD. They get paid a session fee.” There is also concern among gaming executives that offering royalties to actors will lead to all individual developers and artists working in games to request similar treatment.
Games aren’t driven by the talent…………. YET. This is a perfect example of the clash of Hollywood vs. Games, they are still figuring out how to play with each other. Saying a voice actor is just a ’session musician’ or ’session actor’ is a bit insulting. Especially if these voice actors become known as a result of these games.
It is completely reasonable for me to say that at some point I may get a game because of the voice acting. I do agree that other people involved with game creation will want residuals but… wait.. what’s that? They DO get them! They are called roaylties!
I’m also amused at all the comments of people saying “WTF 100,000$ and they are asking for more? What babies! I get paid 8 dollars an hour and I make due with my life!” That’s not the point people.
Also having just purchased GTA (:3!) I can say that the voice actors deserve a little something-something.
Some Woahs and some WTFs, emphasis mine:
According to Variety, the deal was inked with Grosvenor Park in order to fund the production of a number of titles including Castlevania, which has been written by Paul Anderson (Resident Evil), a sequel to John Woo’s Hard Boiled and a big-screen adaptation of Pac-Man.
“This financing is helping us in our expansion plans to greenlight films more quickly,” said Steven Paul, head of Crystal Sky.
“We’re now one of the few companies to have a big budget with which to develop our slate.”
Crystal Sky Pictures is also producing a new Tekken movie, scheduled for release in 2009.
…………………..PacMan?
I fully and readily admit to LARPing quite extensively in high school. This caught my eye, because I’ve always been a fan of Shadowrun, (while I admit to never actually playing a game, I’ve made several characters and almost played in two games,) and of course a fan of cyberpunk. These people set up a Shadowrun LARP using laser tag weaponry and did it in a really awesome and fitting warehouse setting. Very, very cool.
LARPing to me is one of the more pure forms of interactive storytelling. It’s a game, it’s acting, it’s storytelling. It’s also ruined by negative stereotypes and it’s my experience that most of the people that tend to do it are super obsessed with it and make it their life.
I think I would enjoy some sort of convention or amusement park setting where everyone who was attending was a ‘character,’ the boundaries and time limits and rules were clear, and you could play as a character for a weekend or whatever.
This week, R. Stevens of Diesel Sweeties webcomicry wrote and made the web comic idea I had always wanted to. Basically try to sum up every gaming-related web comic ever created and create the arch typical web comic out of it.
One thing I frequently reference and like to talk about is Genre Theory, which states that all genre, (I abstract to forms of media, as well,) go through three periods or phases: primitive, classical, and revisionist. To explain them, I’ll use Westerns as an example.
This is all important to illustrate because I will probably be referencing it quite a bit. In the case of web comics, I would say that we’re currently in the middle or end of the classical era. Looking at web comics as a genre, it’s established, people are developing patterns and routines and rules. Specific web comic genres themselves, like ‘the gamer web comic’ are very well-defined, so much so now that other web comics can be meta and parody them, saying there’s the magical equation to making a gaming web comic.
I say ‘middle or end’ of classical era because web comics are starting to emerge to play with the rules. Without listing every single one, let’s use XKCD and Cyanide and Happiness as examples. Both comics are story and content-rich, and use minimal substantial artwork to get their points across. KXCD focuses on intellectual and ‘geek’ humor, while C&H is more shock and base humor. I’d say that the fact that there are great web comics out there that ‘only’ use stick figures to convey their humor and story means rules are very defined, and assumptions can be made. I.e. these two webcomics would be just as good if they were full illustrated, but the genre has matured enough that we can see past the stick figures.
This was up for a Webby if I’m not mistaken. It’s an awesome look at the history and evolution of video games from a very basic perspective. Very well done, and something I’m very interesting in. It teaches and shows the user things while they interact with the experience using casual game mechanics. This is obviously instead of watching a video or clicking through a sideshow, which you could have done to display the same information.
People understand games.
