Amusing Look At Halo's Effect On Gaming

This short documentary style video (it actually is very similar to another - can you name it?) on the history and the future effect of Halo on gaming is pretty amusing (from LoadingReadyRun v4.0).

The Bioshocked video is somewhat amusing as well.

Interesting Change In Microsoft Game Content Usage

UPDATE:

Apparently a bug meant that this was posted twice. Second post deleted.

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As noted by Xbox.com, MS has changed some of the content usage rules for the games they produce for the Xbox consoles so that machinima makers can use some of the resources. Still fairly restrictive, but as far as I know, this is the first time any crack in the dreaded EULA has ever appeareed. Some quotes:

We know that people like you love our games and sometimes want to use things like gameplay footage, screenshots, music, and other elements of our games (“Game Content”) to make things like machinima, videos, and and other cool things (your “Item” or “Items”). We’d like to make that easier for you. So long as you can respect these rules, you can use our Game Content to make your Items.

...these Rules only cover games published by Microsoft Game Studios and where Microsoft owns the copyright.

You can’t use Game Content to create pornographic or obscene Items, or anything that contains vulgar, racist, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content.

You can’t sell or otherwise earn anything from your Items. We will let you have advertising on the page with the Item on it, but that’s it.

The list of games is short, but does include the Halo franchise. You can't use the music, can't 'add' to the game universe, reverse engineer the game, produce objectionable content, or make any money or even enter a contest. But for some reason you can have advertising on a site with this content. Interesting. I would like to know what a lawyer would have to say about this.

Two Video Links - Haloid - Super Mario Frustration

Everyone's taking about Haloid, a mix of Halo and Metroid and The Matrix that is technically very well done. All style.

And this video (Super Mario Bros. Frustration) just brings back warm memories. WARNING - adult language saturates this from beginning to end. It's an unbelievably long (23+ min.) of someone attempting a hacked/modded level in Super Mario that is breathtaking in it's cruelty. For all that, it's almost amusing, if you can consider sadomasochistic level design amusing. Funny that I feel empathy for the player/narrator though.

Comparing the two is revealing in that we see the enormous jump in graphics from what seems like ages ago (but it was only the 80's) when Nintendo dominated to today's multi million dollar triple-A games. Gameplay-wise, I'm not sure much has evolved in that same time frame. As to the videos themselves, as I noted above, I felt empathy in the second, while in the first I was simply wowed by the technical achievements, and nothing more.

Red vs Blue To Finish At A Century

Well, everyone else has blogged about it, so I will too (via Joystiq). Apparently (but it was posted April 1?) RvB is going to end on their 100th episode, which is only 6 episodes away.

End of an era? April fool's joke? Regardless, 100 bloody episodes is an amazing achievement. Likely one of the biggest factors in spreading the idea of machinima to the masses, RvB has also spawned a million imitators, most of them not worth watching.

Whether you hated RvB from the start, or idolize them and wait with baited breath for every episode, you have to admit the profound effect RvB has had on the machinima scene.