Machinima Info Barf #8

Today's post is brought to you by the word 'Gush'. Stand up and say it loud 10 times. Isn't that a fun word. Then after your family and friends look at you strangely settle back into your comfortable chair and peruse this enormous collection of links.

Previous Info Barfs (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7).

Away for a week.

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eSports:

The World Cyber Games are taking place this weekend. Coverage at GotFrag.
The Escapist covers fraggers.

Video Game News:

Bungie and Microsoft broke up (more at Law of the Game) from 8bitjoystick. You can send sympathy flowers.
Koster talks about the current game industry (Gamasutra).
Top 10 most influential AI games (via AIgamedev.net). Please, why is Black and White at #1?
In-game ads using discussing historical Monopoly, Monopoly today, and social commentary games like Disaffected (via Gamasutra).
Top 21 Linux Games (from LinuxGames).
The Guardian talks about in-game advertising.
BBspot has a flowchart for those who can't decide to stop playing video games.
McDonald's video game, social commentary? (via Play This Thing). Any game where you pay to corrupt politicians has to be fun?
Minerva single-player mod episode 3 for Half Life 2 released.
Writer's Guild announces video game writing award.
The next 25 years of video games on Cracked.com. Likely to be oh so wrong.

Virtual World News:

Habbo Hotel manager discusses the enormous popularity of this free retro virtual world (via Gamespot).
More on Habbo's development (via Gamasutra).
Habbo's mobile version has 110 000 users (via Virtual World News).
Some strange virtual worlds like The Endless Forest (via Clickable Culture).
Metaversed discusses MTV's 6 virtual worlds.
MellaniuM showcases Skype broadcasting of Second Life. I recently had a chance to talk to Joe Rigby about this, and he used Skype to show some virtual worlds they were creating (using Unreal Engine - see previous post and comments). Fascinating stuff.
Virtual world numbers from virtual world news.
Virtual world venture captial from Cnet.

Contests/Festivals:

Bitfilm voting is over. All machinima nominees are listed here.
Hellgate London is having a contest. Machinima accepted (via What Providence).
Machinima will be shown at U of Wisc.
Machinima Europe is next weekend. Who's going?

Machinima News:

Paraworld movie game for kids.
Blizzard introduces WoW machinima page, recognizing the importance of machinima and coupled with their recent announcements on machinima usage, this is great news (WoWInsider).
Machinima mailing list and wiki for Second Life. Linden labs also realizes the importance of machinima.
Plopp moves sculpted prims into Second Life.

Machinima/Video Clips:

Artist almost drawing dirty pictures and then transforming them into something else (NSFW - WebTVHub).
Burning man time lapse (via O'reilley Radar).
Richard Kelly's Southland Tales trailer shows that the movie certainly looks to raise the bar on the weirdness from his first movie, Donnie Darko. Brazil meets Inland Empire, meets Donnie Darko?
Virtual Guatanamo in Second Life.
NewTeeVee has a list of Nintendo Odes.
When Cell Phones Attack (ad from Argentinian Leandro Fuez).
23 Things We've Learned From Movies (metacafe). Hilarious slide show (the pics are brilliant). There should be a contest to parody all of them in a single movie.
MachinimaCam demo for SL (via SecondLifeInsider).
Game Probe explores video game narratives (Thinking Cinematic, ie. Lucifer Jones, ie. Mike Jones). He also does Motion Sketches which is very impressive.
I'm sick of Halo3, but the Believe ad is well made. Production info on Motionographer.
Wired covered The Sex Life of Robots. Then YouTube pulled the video.
Lego Half Life episode one and two. Remaking HL stories using stop motion lego.
Club Elona hi-res Guild Wars machinima (via Mike Abundo).
More Guild Wars machinima listed here (from Max Damage).
Pirates in Saskatchewan using Everquest (Captain Tractor song).
IdeaWorld documentary on early days of Second Life.
iCloneTV covers Second Life Convention. Isn't that a little strange?
Greek tragedy Oresteia in the Sims2.
Elk Cloner student animation is impressive (via Cartoon Brew).
Terrible video game endings (so 8 bit - via Videosift).
Grouchobeer is back with his bizarre political commentary - Strange Interregnum.

Digital Online Video/Cinema/Imaging:

Some interesting notes on interactive cinema from the 1967 Montreal Expo from Czechoslovakia's entry the Kinoautomat (via Radio Praha).
NewTeeVee lists some new internet video startups. Scenecaster looks interesting (sharing 3D spaces with people?).
Graspr (more how-to videos).
Blade Runner to be released again this December. (Wired, NYT). One of my all time favorite movies, no matter what you think about the ending, the voiceover, or the ambiguity (or apparently not) about Deckard's humanity.
A comparison chart of 3D applications (extremely useful, but damn is 3DS expensive - via TDT 3D).
Flip Animation online magazine.
Digital puppetry (site, video).
David Cronenberg at the Washington Post
BoingBoingTV vs. Wired Science. Fight!
Dataisnature talks about live cinema. Interesting, and Indonesian shadow theater. Cool. (Solu).

Misc:

These images of the reimagining of books are fascinating (book autopsies - from Centripetal Notion). I wonder if it could be done with the world's longest book (million page books? - via
The Millions).

Machinima Info Barf #6

Another huge collection of links all packed with vitamins and minerals.

Previous Info Barfs (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5).

Festival news:

There actually is some machinima being shown in the western hemisphere (see my nanorant on European machinima festivals).
The Second Life Community Convention in Chicago (Aug 24-26) will have a machinima track led by Moo Money.
Blizzcon announced the machinima winners for their contest in Ca. Oxhorn had an extensive post-fest writeup.

Interesting that the two large conventions/events holding machinima are both about virtual worlds/MMORPGs. Would you ever see something like this for The Sims, The Movies, Half Life? With all of these eSports events going on, why don't they showcase some machinima too?

Other festival news.

The International Fertility Film Festival will accept machinima (bizarre).
Bitfilm announces nominees. Now if only they would link the damn movies.

eSports:

New WoW observer mode discussed. Will it help sell eSports to the lay audience? Will it help in machinima?

Games:

A brief report on modding at TechNewsWorld including mention of Microsoft's XNA, and Sony's LittleBigPlanet (bringing modding and development to the consoles).
Unity game engine developers are having a dev contest. Interesting that it is for the Mac.
The Game Innovation DB. Who came up with what first?
Top 100 indie games at GameTunnel and 50 good indie games at Tigsource, and a list of linux games.

Machinima news:

Borg wars report at Nashua Telegraph.
Interview with Alexander Winn (The Codex, The Heretic).
Siggraph 2007 blog briefly mentions motion capture integration via iClone3 and animazoo's consumer-priced mo-cap suite.
Global Kids receiving a Macarthur Foundation award is awesome news. They will also be at SLCC.
Moviestorm to sponsor Mobile Jam Festival. Impressive looking creative festival.

Machinima/Video Clips:

Some referential machinima.
Overman noted that Officer Dan is back. In the extended Machinima vs. Frag Video, there's a riff on Deviation at the beginning.
Someone has cut up This Spartan Life and Red vs. Blue.

Other clips.

This looks like a discussion of machinima in German.
The Information Machine. 1957 cartoon about information.
Fatal Mortality - gamer riff on famous characters from movies and Mortal Kombat. Bizarre. Watch Rainman vs. Jules.
FonejackerTV. Bizarre animated prank calls. Odeon cinema. Flat to rent.

Digital Online Video/Cinema/Imaging:

Apparently someone liked my idea of having multiple YouTube videos playing at the same time so much that they created a site for them (ok, it was already there and I just discovered it). There's even a blog dedicated to split screen cinema.
Lance Weiler from The Workbook Project is interviewed extensively at Knowledge@Wharton. There's a lot of information here on digital distribution and how indie filmmakers can succeed.
A bloody expensive camera presented at Sci-Foo that can capture enough information to produce a 3D image. Forget the mapping potential, imagine capturing the "real world" around you and being able to reproduce in a virtual world.
Save a film. Upload it to the archive.
Digital screens expanding.
Marketing Harry Potter in Second Life (Hollywood Reporter, New World Notes). Successful or not? There has been a lot of discussion lately on whether Second Life is useful for marketing or not, including an article in Wired.
A list of free music sources (free and Creative Commons) for podcasters. Of interest to filmmakers too?
SFGate has an article on Charles Ferguson who made "No End In Sight", a documentary on Iraq. Internet millionaire decides to focus his life.
Anyone heard of Frameforge 3D previz and storyboarding software?

Machinima Info Barf #5

Another deluge of links. I suspect the hyperlink will become the dominate form of communication in the coming century. Overman's already doing it.

Previous Info Barfs (#1, #2, #3, #4).

eSports:

Discussion of the recent CBS airing of WSVG competition.

Games:

Quakecon announcements: Quake library coming to Steam, new iD game Rage (tech demo), Return to Castle Wolfenstein movie, Quake on the web, etc.
Disney buys Club Penguin for up to $700 million (yes, that's right - more than Murdoch paid for MySpace). Are virtual worlds the new dotcom bubble?
The Multiverse is coming. All I see is a machinima playground.

Machinima news:

Matt Kelland from Moviestorm is interviewed on Digital Production Buzz.
Brief slideshow of the history of machinima. In case you need some slides to present to a class.
Machinimasia workshops in July. Did anyone go? Intel sponsor. Quote:

Machinima currently has a community of more than 500,000...

Gotta love press releases.

Free Pixel has an excellent post on pre-viz that everyone should read.
Some sort of machinima film festival is announced on this MySpace page. If anyone has more info it would be greatly appreciated.
Red vs. Blue will release a five episode special series (promoting Halo3).

Machinima/Video Clips:

That was Dennis. Sad machinima in HL2.
Animation done in MS Paint. Not sure if I linked this yet.
Student videos from Johns Hopkins Digital Media Center course (I have not watched all of them).
Visualizing biochemistry in Second Life (where are the damn enzymes).
Quake movies at the Cineplex (old school machinima).
Faith, Hope, and Charity trailer (IL2 movie based on real life events during WWII).
William Gibson visits Second Life to promote his new book Spook Country (I, II).
More from Le Grand Prix MMO Machinima 2007 (have not watched these).
One Piece at a Time. Johnny Cash music video set in WoW.
Second Life videos (have not watched them all).

Digital Online Video/Cinema:

Information on the Miro (formerly Democracy) video player and aggregator.
Tube2SL film producer contest (animation, machinima, real life film).
Jing screen capture tool (from the makers of SnagIt and Camtasia).
Public domain films from the National Archives to be available from Amazon.
BoingBoing post about Polish movie posters.
50 best movie robots. I disagree with the placement. WTF is Kitt at #3. The video links are the best part.

Saturnine Saturday

Friday was a blur.

Global Kids year end project.

GTA IV Trailer 2. Shows more in-game footage.

The Imagineer discusses machinima.

Amped talks about the recent WSVG in Louisville. Some good news (Guitar Hero II) and some bad news (poorly organized CS event and WoW arena events).

Wednesday - WTF Is Wednesday For?

Wonderland has an interview with Brent Friedman from Afterworld.TV. Fascinating how no one except Sony wanted to work with them but equally fascinating is how they set out from the get go to build this for today's digital audience (also how they still manage to control the rights).

Some Jovial machinima from Koinup. What's Koinup?

Koinup is the first social network to share virtual lives, screenshots, machinima and virtual stories.

Social networking for machinima and virtual lives? How is this different than say machinima.com or mprem.com?

Sculpting data in Second Life (via NWN). Pushing ever closer to the 3D web.

Quakecon to feature all four versions of Quake in the Quad Damage tourney. Sort of like the decathlon of eSports.

This replica of a Japanese castle painstakingly recreated by an obsessive (fan? modeler? hobbyist? weirdo?) is absolutely fascinating. Maybe he should have done this in SL, it would have been quicker.

I will be a judge for the 2008 OMFF (Online Machinima Film Festival). I am now accepting bribes in large bundles of unmarked bills or gold bullion (the last is a joke for the humor-impaired).

Esports - Bigger And Better?

Some interesting news recently on the eSports front.

The CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) has partnered with Sierra Entertainment for the 2007 World Tour, bringing two games: Fear on the Xbox, and World in Conflict on the PC with stops in Europe, Australia, and South and North America and a total purse of $500 K (GotFrag, Amped). After years of supporting games like Quake and Counterstrike the move was routinely ripped apart by the eSports community and GotFrag had a satirical post announcing the demise of the CPL. Interview with Angel Munoz at Amped.

The reason is likely the 800 pound gorilla in eSports now, the CGS (Championship Gaming Series) which has sponsors with big pockets, TV coverage via DirectTV, and $5 million in salaries and purses. The suite of games are more along the lines of what is typically found, although their league structure (each team will have players for each of the games - selected by a draft) is rather bizarre. Competition from CGS and WSVG is putting severe pressure on the CPL.

Gaming News announces a dedicatedUK eSports television show XLEAGUE.TV. Not sure yet if this is part of a league, tournament, or just free for all competition. There's a large selection of games there, including some for PS3.

Personally I think having 20 or more games spread across four or five leagues/tournaments is not going to do a damn bit of good for eSports. Games like Counterstrike require some dedication on the part of the audience (and the broadcasters) in order to get up to speed on the complexities of the game. Changing the games every year in order to make the sponsors happy
is just short-sighted. In a few years I suspect there will only be a single league with a monopoly on eSports.

WSVG Brings WoW To Esports

Hmmm...massive multiplayer roleplaying online esports game?

WSVG announces one of their games for the upcoming year will be World of Warcraft 3v3 arena battles (best of 5 - via Amped). Interesting choice, but so are the others on their list: Q4, Guitar Hero? and Friday Night Round 3 (a boxing game) as primary games with $750 K in prizes. I suppose they are really differentiating themselves in the somewhat crowded esports scene. This announcement comes hot on the heels of MLG's PR on their $1 million prize structure for Halo2 and Rainbow 6.

In fact along with the olympics of esports, the WCG, and the newcomer CGS, there's actually not a lot of overlap in the games selected. Is saturation about to hit? How many video game tournaments and different games can the public actually support?

eSports Update

What's going on in the world of eSports lately?

Not a lot really. Many shakeups in the major clans as they realign themselves for the DirecTV Championship Gaming Series.

GamingJunky asked where are the major tournaments awhile back? That post and this one on VideoGamesBlogger list most of the events for 2007.

Announcements from WSVG (World Series of Video Games) and WCG (World Cyber Games) about their tournament schedule followed (via ESreality and GotFrag). Expect more announcements from the other events soon.

Major League Gaming also announces a TV deal.

Global Gaming asks if eSports is even spectator worthy? If people can watch poker, cricket, bowling, and darts, then I say yes, if it's done right.

Esports Events

eSplat has a brief summary of the major esports events and it is a good introduction for those who are not familiar with all of them. Unfortunately, half of each blurb appears to simply be a PR snippet from the respective websites (so ignore that part). Note that this list really only covers events which have FPS games like Quake and Counterstrike in one of their tournaments, so events solely dedicated to games such as Starcraft and Warcraft are not listed.

Game Movie Awards

Planet-videos has posted their top game videos of 2006 (via Creative Movies). Some people appreciate these frag videos whereas others do not. Even if you are in the negative camp you cannot deny that these videos often have interesting effects, edits, and cinematography (not to mention audio effects or music) that can at the very least be educational or inspirational.

Esports and DirectTV's CGS

Some interesting developments in the world of eSports. The last CPL event was supposed to have been broadcast by DirectTV (see previous posts: "DirecTV/eSports", Esports event to be broadcast by DirectTV"). That did not happen, and according to articles at various sites (HLTV.org), this was because the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) was asking for far too much money for the broadcast rights. Either in retribution, or because they feel that working with established leagues was not working, DirecTV (in conjunction with IGN) has now turned their attention to their own eSports gaming league: Championship Gaming Series (CGS - noted on GotFrag 1, 2; ESReality).

Some interesting facts were released by CGS in their FAQ and in an interview on GotFrag:

• 1. Players will be paid a salary (tourney winnings will be on top of this)
• 2. There will be a draft (and a hierarchal tourney structure to get to this stage)
• 3. The three games will be Counterstrike Source for the PC, and Dead or Alive and Project Gotham Racing for Xbox360.
• 4. Fatal1ty will be involved in broadcasting (color commentator?)

Probably the biggest news is the player salaries and the draft concept. Midway at GotFrag has an analysis, as does Dunn at Amped Esports. Midway says that the draft should be location based so that teams get local support. I completely disagree with this point as there are many sports (golf and tennis come to mind) where locality means nothing. There are many people in the world who follow Roger Federer and Tiger Woods in their respective sports solely because they like the player, not because they are from their home town. I think eSports in the digital age will generate the same type of followings. Of course there are the international competitions where national pride for one's teams will occur but for the most part people will follow teams and players because they are fans, not because those players live down the block.

This is a big step forwards for eSports in terms of sponsorship and money, but it remains to be seen if the audience will be there to support the whole structure. DirecTV is investing a lot of time, effort and money at this concept, so if it fails it will likely have repurcussions for years to come. If it succeeds, then I suspect even larger media companies will enter the arena. 2007 looks like it will indeed be a big year for eSports.

CPL Winter Showdown

The Cyberathlete Professional League held their winter tournament last weekend and this past week (why did it start on the weekend and end on wednesday?).

Quake3 and Counterstrike were the two big tourneys, with czm making an appearance to take the top Q3 prize, while fnatic won the CS tourney. The games were good, the action furious, and there were some notable nail-biting games, including the triple OT between 3D and Complexity.
There was a nice international mix in the top 3 from both games.

The interesting thing from my perspective was the coverage of the event. GotFrag had exclusive streaming coverage and did a far more competent job than what was displayed for the recent WSVG finals (as noted in my previous post). There were still some major issues in the stream but it was nowhere near as bad as what happened during WSVG. Coverage of the games utilized Octoshape, a streaming tech that uses some peer to peer model to help offload bandwidth to the clients. It was generally very smooth, but there were buffering problems, and one very repetitive annoyance where the stream would simply stop but not rebuffer which required me to manually reconnect.

The commentators did a good job and there were even things like instant replays and overhead maps showing some of the tactics taking place on the CS maps. More importantly, they didn't stick a camera in the players face as much as the WSVG did. There were some unfortunate missed timeslots during the tournament and some dead airtime, which was not very professional.

This brings me to my next point, which is that Quake, although fun to play and watch is going to be a very difficult game to sell as eSports continues to grow. The games are non-stop, which leaves no potential for commercial breaks, instant replays (without overlapping the continuing game), or extensive commentary. The gameplay, although simple in concept, can actually be very boring to watch. Observing two players trading rail shots across a 3D dungeon is not that exciting, and a running player is absolutely dull. The other problem with Quake games is the spawn dependencies and the fact that a single player can take a dominant lead from which he cannot be usurped. This is a big downside to the game. An example took place in the WSVG finals where Toxic went up so many points in the first two minutes that his lead was insurmountable. At that point the game was over and the rest of the match was a complete waste of time. If Quake games want to push towards mainstream viewing this problem will need to be addressed.

CS on the other hand has some faults of it's own, although I think it makes for a far better spectator sport. On the first hand it's team-based, which makes it far more interesting (to myself at least, I still don't know why people watch things like tennis). Secondly, it's very tactical, with clear offensive and defensive sides (think football - and it is easy to explain). Third, it has definite breaks in the action, which are perfect for instant replays, commentary, and probably most important of all, commercial airtime. One big problem with CS, however, is the money schema. If a team has to save for a round or two, then that makes for some very boring game rounds until that team can purchase some weapons. That also makes for some very complicated explanations, and I think that if eSports wants to start reaching a general audience they are definitely going to have to some nice graphical charts to help the neophyte viewers. In the meta game, however, the increasing amounts of money allow for a team that is down several rounds to come back, which happened many times during the tournament and made for some exciting matches. This is not something you see that often in Quake. The "any given sunday" phenomenon is very appropriate here and until a team clinches that 16th round win, the game is still up in the air.

My suggestions for the future are to have more overhead map views for CS, perhaps even displaying it permanently during the game. And although there was a scoreboard present, it only showed rounds won for each team. A more useful presentation would be to show each player's status during the round, so that somebody watching could tell if it was still 5 on 5, or 4 on 5, etc. especially since unlike normal sports, the camera can not always be on the action, so keeping track of who's alive, who's dead, etc. is difficult (split attacks on a single bombsite means that there are many places where the action is taking place). Health and gun status would also be nice. Perhaps these could be incorporated in the map view. Think of how the current poker mania makes for some interesting television because the audience at home knows what everyone is playing with (pocket aces, ace king, bluffing, etc.) while the players themselves do not. Another concept to consider is showing the view of all of the players, with the center of action enlarged or highlighted. Hmm...the audience will have to become smarter and the way games are broadcast are going to have to change (then again, people watch cricket, and for that I have no explanation, nor understanding).

Final WSVG

Some mainstream coverage on cnet:

But the Counter-Strike match wasn't easy viewing for a live audience. If competitive gaming is going to gain more footing as a sport, at the very least there's going to have to be a scoreboard of sorts.

It's too bad that with such exciting matches that the coverage was so poor. I mean 3D tied the match and it went to OT in the CS final. I was reminiscing about NiP vs 3D on de_nuke oh so long ago.

More info on the live audience experience on eSplat.

All I can say about being in a studio audience is that it sucks. Spectators are not allowed to do pretty much anything during the match except cheer for the player you want to win. Sure it makes for good TV but damn it really sucks having to sit there for an hour not being allowed to go to the bathroom while the crew are trying to fix a technical problem and they won't let you out because they don't know when the'll be able to fix it and start the filming.

Nice to see that they actually knew what they were doing. I can just imagine during an NFL game not allowing the audience to go to the bathroom. Can you say riot?!

The net coverage was horrendous. On the first day nothing worked. On the second day the coverage was spotty, laggy, and often down. On the last day, with the biggest CS matches on the line, the technical details still had not been worked out. Not only that, but the producer (or technical director, or whoever was in charge) obviously had no idea how to broadcast the show. Although the TSN shoutcasters did a decent job covering the games, the camera kept cutting from in-game footage to a view of a player staring into a computer monitor. Wow, exciting! And not just during the slow times in the matches (say at the end of a round or during buy time) but when critical moments such as one team attempting to penetrate a bomb site were taking place, or when it was 1v2 in the final seconds of a round. Brilliant! More problems like a poorly shown scoreboard, epilepsy-inducing in-game camera changes, and station/commercial breaks that were announced but never taken (we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, I think I heard that twice, but the break never happened?). Whoever was in charge should have been fired.

Additional notes on Amped and GotFrag.

Hopefully the CPL Winter event will have better coverage (Q3 and CS 1.6).

eSports and Drugs

The Cyberathlete Professional League is going to start testing for performance-enhancing drugs in 2007. Perhaps they should just pay attention to the map exploits that some teams use (how is eSports ever going to become popular when you have map exploits, and shooting through walls - try explaining that to your grandmother).

Update on WSVG.
1. The MLG WSVG controversy has apparently been resolved.
2. Fatal1ty vs. Toxic was probably the best set of games I've seen in Quake in a long time. Fatal1ty came from the losers bracket to beat Toxic in the first best 2/3, but lost in final map.
3. The CS series continues. The Scandinavian domination of CS is not going to continue at WSVG as both NiP and fnatic are out of the tourney. That leaves Team 3D and ALTERNATE aTTaX to play in the final match. Maps 1 and 4 were especially entertaining, while the rest were lessons in domination in the first few minutes.
4. Grubby won the WC3 tourney in a 2-1 win over Sweet.
5. Str8 Rippin won the Halo2 tourney.

WSVG Finals

Filed under eSports:

The World Series of Video Games is taking place this weekend in New York. There will be tournaments for Halo2, Warcraft3, Counterstrike, Quake 4 as well as some other games. There are supposed to be live streams from CSTV and TSNCentral, but of course CSTV is not working, and TSN is down. Big surprise there. Almost every tourney I've tuned into has had technical problems. You don't see this crap on ESPN now do you? If I was a sponsor of the event I would make make sure that the technical infrastructure was there in order to meet the audience demand so that the sponsorship dollars were being well used. Otherwise, what's the point?

Since we're on the subject of the WSVG, there was recent news of a cash infusion from a venture capital firm to the tune of $4.8 million (read PR, not news).

Also, there is apparently already some controversy brewing. This comes from a disupute between Major League Gaming (MLG) and WSVG. Some of the teams qualifying for WSVG are under contract with MLG. WSVG requires a waiver form to be signed to appear on CSTV as part of the tournament, and MLG is advising its players not to sign, a move that would surely prevent the teams from playing at WSVG. Hmmm...interesting...as MLG not only represents the players and teams but is also a rival with WSVG. Conflict of interest perhaps?

Well, I guess I won't be watching this.

More New Cyber Cafes

A new cyber cafe venture. These things are popping up all over the place these days, which begs the question, didn't arcades die out a long time ago? Most of the cyber cafes I've been in crashed and burned within 6 months. The reason cyber cafes flourished in the first place was the downward trend in computer prices, which also meant that everyone could go out and buy their own computer, obviating the need to go to a cyber cafe. The only time people physically remove themselves from their home computer to play PC games is for large LAN parties, typically when a tournament is being played for monetary prizes. How, then, is a cyber cafe going to succeed? The reason cyber cafes die out is that they never recover the initial capital investment required to start the business in the first place, let alone earning enough to cover day-to-day operations and actually earning some money. The only way I can see it working is if there is a reason to go instead of just to log onto a computer (and check your email, surf the web, or finish a quest in WoW). That means a reason for other people to go, similar to what you see at a Starbucks, in that people don't just go for the coffee, they go to hang out, to use the WiFi, to surf, to meet friends, etc. Or like a bar, where you can watch the game, grab some food or a beer, pick up members of the opposite sex. Otherwise the whole thing is going to be a big waste of cash.

IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable | CNET News.com

Terra Nova's State of Play Symposium took place this weekend. Apparently the most interesting session was the one discussing the taxation of virtual goods, services, exchanges. It has been covered here, and here). Are there any H&R Block offices set up inside of Second Life yet?

In other news, the World Series of Video Games will have extensive TV coverage on CBS, CSTV, and Voom HD (from AmpedSports and NYT). Unfortunately, it sounds like it will have to be edited so that the 'violent' parts are not shown. Wow, how exciting.

Friday Nite Roundup

A collection of links of interest:

1. MMORPG company goes bankrupt. Players want to buy to buy the game (from the BBC).
2. The Antikythera Mechanism has been solved (world's first computational device? - how long before a copy shows up in SecondLife? - via NYT).
3. Fox News to interview Angel Munoz (from CPL). Is this good,or bad? How will Fox News treat the concept of playing video games in a tournament. Freak of nature style news reporting, or video games are bad and are subverting our youth style news? (via GotFrag).
4. 3DFilmMaker reports that machinima is topping the list of gaming innovation awards.
5. There.com has a machinima festival (have not finished watching all of the entries yet - There looks a lot like Second Life).

The digital revolution is of course sweeping through the filmmaking industry, ripping it apart from the inside like a syncytial virus. How long before the actual process of filmmaking no longer uses film at all? When will the last big budget Hollywood film be shot on film (future Jeopardy trivia question). How many Final Cut Pros does it take to make a blockbuster?

More Machinima Festival Coverage

On machinima.com and machinima premiere there were links to two articles about the 2006 machinima festival. Gamasutra has a fairly comprehensive article, with two short interviews, one with Chris Burke from This Spartan Life and another with Matt Dominianni from Trash Talk (Ill Clan) tacked on to the end. The article on Renderosity is written by guest columnist gToon (Ricky Grove) and is shorter than the one on Gamasutra but covers the major topics.

On a completely different note. There is a short clip about the World Series of Video Games made by MTV. It's fairly superficial, and definitely does not get into any depth when talking about the players or the games being played competitively, but it might be a decent introduction to someone who has never heard of or seen anything with regards to the competitive scene.

A Few Interesting Tidbits

This post will just be a collection of items that may or may not be newsworthy:

1. PS3 to allow users to record gameplay footage. Look for a massive tidal wave of console-based machinima. Let me guess, they can only upload to Sony's proprietary website?
2. IBM to use Second Life to host town hall meeting about spending large sums of money on new business incubators. Is SL going to be the place to have new PR events? Will the White House Press Room move into SL?
3. Oh yah, the World Cyber Games finished in Italy (the olympics of video game tournaments). It sounds like it was poorly organized. Surprise winners of the CS touranment were Pentagram from Poland while Korea took the overall championship (and the US did very poorly). It looks like there was very poor media coverage at this event, which is a shame. Perhaps the upcoming CPL Winter event will actually be watchable on the web (without having to use Half Life TV?). Sponsors need to start pressing these organizations hard for some sort of decent media coverage otherwise what's the point of sponsorship.