Yours Not Ours

Or so the social web 2.0 internet seems to say.

But that is not how it is. As soon as you 'share' some data (video, image, yourself) on these sites, the data is no longer yours. Perhaps more importantly than letting pieces of yourself float on the digital sea is the fact that they can easily be eaten by data sharks.

Early in 2008 DivX shut down Stage6 (Overman).

Vimeo has decided that game only clips are not welcome there (SK). Even the recent UT3 vs Halo dance off, which was done under One Shared Vision for the Child's Play charity, was yanked.

Filmmaker magazine reports that certain facebook profiles have recently been disabled.

Move, copy, and delete are some of the foundations of the digital age (too bad there isn't a 'create' button).

Back your data up and consider anything you post on a social web 2.0 twitter blog egospam is not yours.

Machinima 101

I'm sure everyone who reads this blog already knows about Machinima 101.

What is it? Machinima.com's resource center with an emphasis on community-generated content (most of it was already there to begin with). All of it repackaged in a far slicker interface.

Now if only there were a way to collect all existing tutorials on the web and pull them into one site?...hmm...

Personally I prefer wiki style community editing as it can be kept up to date. I'm really tired of reading tutorials that refer to older versions of software.

New Social Networking Site For Indie Games

Garage Games is promoting a new site, The Great Games Experiment, that will be a hub for social game development:

The Great Games Experiment is a social networking community for gamers, developers, and publishers to play show off, promote, and ultimately enjoy.

See the Press Release.

The site is just getting started, so you can request beta access by submitting your email and there will be some ongoing contests as the site gathers steam. This will be an interesting experiment to see if the interchange of ideas from all interested parties will actually increase the quality and accessibility of games.