Ahhh. Another failed effort, but never the last. I felt like typing a lot, and this video I made a few months ago is a good excuse. I wanted to make a machinima series (video series made within a game, usually recorded in real time; think how “Red vs Blue” used Halo.) The idea was to use the DMZ mode in Warzone 2. I hope context isn’t necessary for basic gags, but of course things always work better with context, which if you’re bored, you can read about below, along with my initial plans and why they’ll never happen.

The above video is basically four simple bits:
• I open with a bit about a guy deep in thought, asking “what makes you tick?”. But it’s to a bomb. It’s a simple gag a pal put on Mastodon and I asked for permission to steal and make a video of. It’s funny, but put into action it feels like a great attempt to display high emotional intelligence in someone with low general intelligence. I actually thought this was a great summation of a character I wanted to do, and a great way to introduce them. The idea was a misguided “warrior poet” who often chooses the exact wrong approach. (They poet when they should warrior and vice-versa.)

• Second, I regularly ran around in-game trying to interview people who could kill me at any moment. The vast majority of the time I was killed. But once I actually got someone to come completely out of their way into an in-game TV station and talk to me (well, to a friend posing as the interviewer,) on set. I actually have had several “successful” run-ins. I lost the best (a guy who instantly went into the character a perfect trust fund psychopath who chose to work as a merc for the thrill, and the ability to kill human beings with no recourse. He killed me when he decided the interview was over, even foreshadowing it properly, which was a very nice cherry on top.) Sadly, my recording software crashed and I didn’t realize as I had it running in the background.

• “The Backpack Joke” is a silly, basic joke. But the crazy part is those items (minus my adjusted descriptions) are actually items you can find, loot, and sell, in the game. Originally it was supposed to be a three-part gag about this guy finding backpacks with weirder and weirder objects that you actually find in-game (including the “game console” I’d call a PS6,) as he finally met up with his new commanding officer, then finding out the boss’s backpack was the worst. That would’ve taken time*.

• The Credits. I finally convinced my brother and cousin to act out The Backpack Joke, and when we went in, not intending to play seriously at all, we found a GPU, a valuable item at the time. My cousin didn’t want it to go to waste, so we gave it to someone else and spread the word that I was making a thing. Even at the time I was thinking “this is post-show material,” and then the kid came back and asked again, so, that was perfect.

What is DMZ?
In a battle royal like PUBG, Fortnite, or Warzone you (or your team) fight other players inside a shrinking play area, and being “outside” the area slowly kills you, until there is one winner/winning team. DMZ is more of an extraction shooter. Players run around on the same map, loot items, kill bots, do story quests, kill or befriend other players, and then try to escape out so you can bring your gear in again the next time.

What WERE my plans for DMZ_TV?
I wanted to create a cast of characters and have them eventually weave into the actual story that was being told by the missions in the DMZ game mode. Ideally the cast would’ve included:-The aforementioned warrior poet.
-“Rook”, the guy from the Backpack Joke, would become the main character.
-Two programmers who become unhinged when they realize the world around them has become a warzone, mixing Office-Space corporate speak with gamer lingo. (I imagined them chasing enemies, making up new back-ronyms for “TPS” in “TPS reports” and while killing people.)
-A self-professed sheriff chasing a moonshiner.
-A TV news anchor/reporter and photographer.
-Regular features of employees of an in-game burger chain.
-And a few guest appearances(/voice work) by some streamers I enjoyed, (a couple of whom had already agreed to voice something!)

So, what went right?
DMZ. People talk smack against Call of Duty, but like any group of people complaining about a large product, some of it is “big company bad”. For all the actual “bad” there is, and there certainly is some with both the game and the company behind it, let me also tell you: there’s a lot  of good here. Especially…

• The tools. I realized I could turn off enough of the UI elements that I was able to crop the few remaining ones out of the “camera” (the portion of the screen above my character’s weapon) easily and still get a decent resolution. Sure it would’ve been better if I had better hardware and was running 4K, but it is what it is. They certainly did their part. The only negative here is character animation. To keep people moving, when you’re up close the characters actually sway drastically, like they’re heaving after running for a long time. It really breaks down close-up shots. Given it’s an FPS game, you don’t really notice it until you look. And this is a minor thing when you can just use a still shot if need be.

• Location, location, location. These people have a lot of genuine artists working for them. The game’s maps are absolutely filled with phenomenal scenery, models, and textures. There are a few issues with table tops/desks being oddly low or high, which I assume is a result of a large group of people across the world working on one map/game… (And maybe not the same people who made the characters.) But they’re honestly not painfully common. And as scenery goes, this place is beautiful and widely varied. When a game says “features X different areas for combat” it reads as a shitty bullet point, but this offers the real deal. So. Much. Variety.

What went wrong?
•*Time. Well, and dedication. Doing this requires the time and effort of other people who just were not interested in helping me. Not my personally, but in general, I had no one as interested in the idea as I was. My brother was willing to humor me for one sketch (The Backpack Joke), and my cousin helped twice (that, and the “What Makes You Tick” gag.) A random guy I met in-game (Jason, who is great, it turns out,) was more than happy to run in with me a few times and interview random people. But I couldn’t find anyone willing to reliably waste a few hours with me to record things that no one will probably watch. Generally I believe in “fail early, fail often,” so I was absolutely ready to put in lots of time recording things. But I couldn’t find anyone else as eager.

I’m not blaming any other people in this, just recognizing what gave me problems. Nor am I particularly crying about it. It’s a lot to ask of others to say “help me do a thing I want to do that you have little/no interest in, and no one else might either”. Any blame is mine. And I find this to be a recurring element in many things I want to do. That’s not others failing me, just me repeating myself expecting a different outcome. But it’s tough to fight that. I want to do things and I want to work with other people who are excited to do them. It’s just tough finding my crowd. And that’s certainly something that’s wrong.

And this project probably won’t ever happen to the scale I want. I wrote most of this early Thursday, November 30th. Later that day Activision announced DMZ support is coming to an end. No new missions. No new content. They’re not shutting it off instantly; it’ll be up for an undetermined while. But without the new content I expect it to become solely about PVP, which is not what it was initially, but what it became anyway over the several seasons. And will make recording machinima in the game far more difficult. Also, it reintroduced a bug that made getting rid of some UI elements not possible, so, that sucks.

The big takeaway?
Do less. Not just “smaller” projects in terms of scope. That’s incidental. Smaller in terms of required manpower. I need to do something POSSIBLE to do by myself.
But the worst part? Writing this really made me want to make a short film in DMZ before it’s taken offline.

That’s a pretty interesting phrase to me. I was born in 1980. I have memories of my life before video games. I may’ve known they existed to some degree, but I wasn’t enamored with them or holding in the high regard that I do now. But I remember when that changed. I was around the age of six or seven when I saw Super Mario Brothers on NES. My mind was blown.

My story starts with my uncle in Japan who worked for Nintendo… Okay, actually it wasn’t an uncle. It was a close friend of my father named Mike who I called “Uncle Mike”. And he didn’t work for Nintendo. But he had been in the military, and was stationed in Japan. My memory tells me either he was stationed there in the early-to-mid 80’s, or knew so many people that he was still in touch with the culture to some degree, because as I remember it from talking to him as an older (but still young) kid, he was really impressed by the Famicom. So when Uncle Mike got back to the U.S., and got some spare money, (and actually found a NES,) he bought one. And at some point, he brought it over to our apartment, to show it to my dad.

Now, I was born in 1980. And these two were in their mid-twenties at the time. They also had these huge robotic models of dinosaurs that walked around that kid-me thought was the most amazing thing. So, y’know, they liked cool things. (I just did a little searching and apparently those toys were called Zoids, and I distinctly recall at least the Bigasaurus and Garius, who had comically silly feet for a robot dinosaur so awesome. Of course, to seven-year-old-me, in 1987 or 1988, they were insanely complex, huge, and very cool.) And in early 1986, my younger brother was born. So I’m thinking this was either at the very end of 1986 or 1987. It’s quite possible Uncle Mike bought this for himself as a Christmas present in 1986.

But to the point, Uncle Mike brought over his Nintendo, and I loved it. Fuck the Zoids he’d brought over before, THIS was the coolest thing ever! I desperately wanted to play it, and my dad wasn’t having it. I recall strong tones of “this is no toy!” and “this isn’t for kids!”, which is funny now. But obviously being so young and it being so advanced of anything I’d seen at the time, that seemed reasonable. But ultimately, Uncle Mike let me play it, and Mario was a dream come true. Several deaths later I got the same stunned reaction from the adults (my parents, Mike, his wife,) that all kids do when they accomplish something the adult can’t easily do. “Look at him! Wow! He’s great this! He’s a natural!” But far more important, at some point I think my dad saw an opportunity to make his son happy.

Soon he came back from his parents house with something special. He had an old, thick, cardboard box, which contained a thick black garbage bag, which contained his old Atari 2600, and a couple dozen games. He’d left it in “storage” at his parent’s house when he moved out. But seeing the opportunity to give me something to make me happy, he brought it to our home, and my mind was blown again.

Now, we’re talking Pac-Man, Combat, Warlords (with paddles), Breakout, Defender, Vanguard, Yars’ Revenge, Berzerk, a couple of Sears games… Just several games here that I adored. And that doesn’t even count Adventure or Superman, which I didn’t play until like a decade later when I met a friend who also had an old Atari 2600 and we broke it out again and hooked it back up. That thing actually was kept in that same trash bag, and in that same box, and drug out at least a couple of times a year, for a decade. At that point it was hooked up every few years until we would’ve had to have bought new hardware to hook it up to modern TVs. Now those games sit at my cousin’s house in his collection of gaming stuff.

Soon after giving me his Atari my dad learned he could rent an NES from Sunland Visions, the premiere local video store in Sylvester, Georgia at the time. (It was where he rented his laserdiscs, because he was a nerd; see above: Zoids.) I should write about that place some time. It’s not very well remembered on the Internet.

But despite having a relatively new baby brother, this was a boom time for my family. Money was decent. Several weekends we rented an NES and a new game. And one Christmas? I actually got one! It was amazing. I can’t tell you how awesome I felt showing my grandfather (my father’s father,) Duck Hunt. See, he took me hunting a few times as a kid, and I LOVED the idea of going hunting with him. But when we got there, the gun was too loud and freaked me out, and I just really loathed the idea of killing a duck. But Duck Hunt? All the fun of shooting them without killing them! I was sold, and he could not have been less impressed by the “Ninteengo”, as he called it for years.

In addition to eye-rolling from a previous generation, there was something else that also happened after that which was pretty important in my gaming awakening. I learned what arcades were.

I vividly recall my dad and Uncle Mike taking me to a place that I recall thinking was just a laundromat. Thinking back, (and for my own notes,) I honestly can’t recall if it was at 446 N. Westberry Street, or on Monroe, just off Highway 82… I’ll have to call and ask my dad sometime… But the point here, is that I remember walking around and seeing pinball machines, seeing all these video games cabinets, being in this big dark room full of games, lights, noises… And realizing this was not a laundromat. That was just next door. This was something amazing!

And in the far back corner? A large sit-down cabinet with an enclosure, stowed away from what was probably a more popular run years prior, but kept me enraptured.

It’s funny. I remember sitting in the Star Wars sit-down machine and I remember hearing it. The cabinet speaking lines from the movie sealed the deal; this is where I’d be spending most of my money. I was killing TIE fighters, and bombing the Death Star over and over again. I was the kid of nerds. Of course I loved Star Wars. I genuinely thought this was the best thing ever. And if you recall an early experience like this, well, it’s easy to understand how that can still be formative to a degree. Sure, games look better, play better, are more immersive, etc., etc., etc. But when you’re a young child it’s easier to not see the world as it is, full of cool things but also lamenting unrealized potential. As a young child see new things you hadn’t thought of, and it can outpace your expectations for the potential of the world. It’s like magic. It leaves an emotional gap of that childlike wonder that’s more difficult to cross when you’re older. And for young me, it looked like this:

Now it feels obvious that my dad didn’t want me to play Uncle Mike’s Nintendo because he didn’t want me to break it, and for him to have to pay for it. Realizing I loved the games, my dad digging up his old Atari, and eventually renting an NES, were holdovers until my parents could justify spending money at Christmas. Especially with my younger brother just being born. I was very lucky to even get so many game consoles throughout my childhood, but the speed at which they let me dive into games was, for lack of a better word, spoiling. Hah, or at least enabling. I’m gonna have to call up my father and tell him “thanks” this weekend.

One thing to do, however, is link a few tiny projects that I’ve worked on. Some succeeded, some did not, and that’s okay. This will basically be a longer format of the pinned tweet from my Twitter account.

The last mentioned was in my prior post, Ghosts of the Living Dead, a legal fanedit. Before that I’d mentioned I’d messed around with ScreenLook, which I did a few times in effort to see how much work it would be. Turns out a lot. The response ratio to emails sent to independent creators was abysmal. Finding and emailing enough creators to fill a 30m block was pretty time intensive for someone with a job. Then when my job picked up, I put it on the backburner, from which it has yet to return. And that was 2016ish, I believe.

Crate Hunters

In May of 2019 I’ve took at stab at a more traditional “gamer video” with Crate Hunters.

In the game PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds, teams of players compete against others. Occasionally a crate full of nice gear and good weapons will fall from the sky into the map at a random location. Securing these crates are intended to give you a leg up. Especially a good helmet. With a few wins under our belts, my brother and cousin, with whom I often do most of my online gaming, decided that chasing these crates were “spicier” than competing in a typical way. I recorded a game in which after a certain point we decided to go for every crate we saw, and though only I could record my perspective, I decided to take a shot at adding a tiny bit of production (read: color-coded-to-each-player words on the screen and throw in a cheap gag or two,) to make it a little flashier. I also played around with a few potential openings. The song, which is great, is ANGEL FACE (2) by the Van Buren Brothers. It wasn’t included in the above video because this video was intended to be a placeholder. I waited a few days for the artist to reply, and then made the video showing the options. (I’m big on permission, and they were all for my using it.) But within those few days, that’s why my brother and cousin both decided they didn’t want to play PUBG anymore. Though they also felt the music was too chill. It’s a shame. Regardless it was clear Crate Hunters was dead before it was born.

Baby Driver: Purple Paint Job

Around July of 2019 I finally decided to follow up to an idea, I always wanted to do, a fanedit of Baby Driver, a film whose editing is driven by its music. (See what I did there?) I came up with Baby Driver: Purple Paint Job.

It’s a “5 minute opening clip” because before the film released, the studio released “BABY DRIVER – 6-Minute Opening Clip” to give people an idea of what the film would be. It was a smart move, though I don’t know how well it worked. (I also used a promotional still that was a vertical poster with originally a pink background, squared up and made purple.) I’d initially wanted to re-edit the entire film with a musical theme. I’d considered a general metal theme, Baby Metal (Driver), Southern rap (as the film is set in Atlanta,) and some that now slip my mind. But I did have an idea that stood out. Prince. Of course, that’s a big no-go on YouTube. You get dinged for copyright violation instantly. So Vimeo did the job. The reason it’s ONLY that opening clip, however, is the same reason the sound effects run out very early into it. It’s pretty difficult to source good effects without music already drowning them out. And it’s impossible to remove parts of audio from film. I used a few I could find, but then called it quits before I decided to spend actual money on sound effects completely re-doing Foley effects on the whole film.

The Midnight Son

The Midnight Son is a film trailer I wanted to make (I didn’t want to make an actual film, just the trailer). Sadly that didn’t happen, but I did end up making storyboards for it back in May of 2020.

The name is a play off the summer daylight during the nighttime hours in Alaska. But it was really just an excuse to film Dave, my TV sports anchor that I worked with at the time, in this role. He literally looks like he IS a detective from a noir film. There’s just the small fact that he’s almost always smiling, is a very polite family man, and loves wearing Aloha shirts. Actually, the Aloha shirts thing still works, I think. Especially for that shot of him driving down 4th Avenue at the end. I didn’t have a strong plot in mind. I really just wanted to hit the noir tropes as they’re available in Anchorage, Alaska, and I think that’s very doable. If filmed at night with a heavy blanket of snow and some ice on the ground, with some falling (especially at that scene of the person approaching another to grab their shoulder, which would’ve been filmed at the docks with shipping containers behind Dave with his arm outstretched approaching the camera…) Well, I really think it would’ve worked. Sadly the TV station we worked for was purchased and we were all laid off toward the end of 2020, before it snowed, and before I could make this happen. Shame.

My (Production) Problem with Pro Wrestling

Somewhere in all of this, around 2017, I kinda began to watch pro-wrestling again. It’s a stunt person stage play, it’s great, and I will not be taking questions, unless you’re asking what to watch, when, and where, in which case I’ll gladly help you out. Pro wrestling is better than most other things, but I do have a problem with it. The production. So, I made My (Production) Problem with Pro Wrestling.

The video explains itself really, but in a nutshell the major US wrestling promotions, WWE and AEW, do a poorer job of their TV production than Japan’s NJPW does. With a single Reddit post it got 34.7K views on Vimeo (as of this writing), which is neat. I contest that if I’d been able to upload this to YouTube I’d have gotten well over 100k at launch, and more by now. The reason I wasn’t able to use YouTube is because I used a clip from New Japan Pro Wrestling, and they’re very overbearing about copyright. Now, you might be thinking “but Jeff, this is a clear case of fair use, given its purpose is to compare and contrast with similar production styles (in a favorable light,) as criticism/comment! It’s also only just over a minute of footage from a match that lasted for over an hour, and it betrays no substantial information from this match which could affect other market exploitation of the work! Hell, I’d argue it could only HELP them, given I praise them!” Yes, you might be thinking that, but New Japan Pro Wrestling are, in my assumption given their reaction, not caring about that.

I uploaded it on March 30th of 2021, and New Japan Pro Wrestling had a copyright takedown against it before I even hit “Publish”. So I used Vimeo, like I did with the Baby Driver trailer above. I submitted a counter-claim immediately, and YouTube sent the reply to NJPW, which was supposed to have some set time to reply. About two weeks I believe. They did. The site tells me that. But YouTube has still yet to issue a ruling, over six months later. Sigh.

/edit: They did eventually clear it! On October 29th, 2021, seven months later! Whew.

This Blog

So, that’s a few ideas I’ve kicked out. I’ve got a list of about 30 more things I’d like to make of varying sizes, budgets, and viabilities. Games, things to write, podcasts. Who knows. But one thing I’d like to do is write more in general, and that’ll include blogging/journaling. So this place will likely be getting a lot more personal. I don’t expect anyone to read it, and that’s fine. But I do want to write it. I think taking the time to process it and getting it out will help me, and that’s what this is for. This, the writing, is for me.

Several years ago Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV, a collection of music largely devoid of vocals. It was released under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA).

I’ve re-scored the film with this album, and removed 36 minutes of footage, in a one hour fanedit that I’m calling Ghosts of the Living Dead.

Purposefully made using legally distributable media, you are free to download and distribute this as you see fit as no money is made.

Some notes on YouTube storage: A company named “SND” claims to own Night of the Living Dead in France. As no one owns the copyright, I don’t see how anyone could sublicense/sell the copyright in France, so I’m disputing this copyright claim on YouTube.

While copyright claims are made to the music (by Audiam, on behalf of The Null Corporation/Trent Reznor), they do not block my usage of the content anywhere. As I have not monetized my YouTube upload, it should perfectly fulfill the CC license requirements under which the audio was released. But due to this claim, I’m unable to properly mark the audio as a Creative Common work on YouTube. I guess YouTube doesn’t think something can be copyrighted and available under a CC license.

The idea for this? Years ago I actively watched many fanedits, and among them was the fantastic Conan: Man of War from someone called “The Man Behind the Mask”. It was Conan with almost all of the audio from the film removed, and scored with the metal band Manowar. It was pretty crazy, but pretty damn great. I not only enjoyed watching it, I subsequently enjoyed having it on in the background; the perfect idle viewing when I was doing something else. Kickass music and a fun film synced wonderfully. What’s not to love?

Rockstar Stories – My Suggestion Rockstar Foster Their Next Generation of Talent with an Open Storefront for Content http://jeffool.com

Rockstar Stories – My Suggestion Rockstar Foster Their Next Generation of Talent and Make Tons of Money Doing It http://jeffool.com

Rockstar hasn’t released any single player DLC for their 2013 game Grand Theft Auto V. What they have released is tons of free content for it’s multiplayer component, Grand Theft Auto Online, and offered in-game currency for real money. Apparently it’s sold gangbusters. Every time news hits about GTAO there’s always complaints “I wish they’d release single player content” or “They said they would release more heists!” (They haven’t.) So, I’d like to pitch an idea for a lot more, widely varied, single player content. Allow me to dream for a moment.

I’d like to see Rockstar open a new studio largely staffed of fresh hires to bolster their future games. People looking to get into the industry, for that first job. The kind of people who want to apply, but don’t have the experience to get the type of jobs that are actually advertised. Start them off with jobs scripting single player DLC content in Rockstar’s open world games.

You want your A team on your A job. Rockstar’s teams all have excellent content creators who create, often, very compelling and interesting quests that work on several levels, both offering fun gameplay and compelling main quests. I imagine (maybe wrongly?) that a second team, still of top level quality, is tasked with the non-essential quests, offering wonderful atmosphere and characters to fill out the greater world. For brevity’s sake only, let’s call them the B team.

But what about the minor leagues? I’m confident Rockstar can create a studio chiefly staffed of entry level developers, all tasked with learning and using the tools to put written missions into action. This farm league of content will obviously need scripts. Open that to everyone.

Create a blind submission system open to everyone, and let the studio decide what works well as a combined DLC package. Let aspiring designers write and pitch concepts at different levels, let those ideas be greenlit, conditionally greenlit with criticism, or turned down with optional criticism. From this point Rockstar can bring those designers in to flesh out points of contention or script, or do it themselves, but it’s key they cut those writers in on the profit. And while those rookie scripters should all get a salary, I can imagine some of them wanting a percentage too, but that’s their place to argue for.

The real benefit to this? Once you have teams able to work with each other, and others, to create worthwhile DLC? You have a team of people pumping out lots of small content for small fees, using existing in-game resources and existing tools. Then what do you do? You pluck the top talent of this creative team, and you partner them with big names.

I’d love to see the mix of character and crime drama author Greg Rucka, or Daredevil season 1 showrunner Steven DeKnight, or maybe some inspired work from Dear White People’s Justin Simien (did you know that’s getting a Netflix series? I and @GiantSquidOverdrive called that in January, and Simien even retweeted that, four months before the announce… Ain’t he a stinker?)

Offer players a storefront for single player DLC. I’m not even asking for the ability to inject new models or sounds. Rockstar would probably demand full voice acting, but honestly so many people click through that it’s crazy. Only bother with rookie voice actors too, to help them get their chops, if you really want that.

My underlying point here is a simple one. It’s completely feasible. And with the half a billion Rockstar has made in GTA V’s online alone, it would be doable for a very tiny portion of that. Especially if you use similar tools for more than one of their future games. Then you’ve opened the floodgates to creators making money from working with, and writing for, Rockstar.

Spare paragraphs written for, but not used in, this post:

In 2015 Bethesda tried to monetize mods for its game The Elder Scrolls Skyrim, and the backlash was palpable. Not just because people were stealing mods and uploading them as their own to make money, or the concern that popular mods used as bases would demand payment, but also because the rate the mod creators were paid was shit. The modders who made the content could set their own price, but they only received 25% of that fee. The rest went to Bethesda and the store owners, Valve.

Did you know Star Trek used to have an open script policy? From 1989 to July 2001, any fan who enjoyed the show could write and submit up to two full scripts in attempt to have it bought and made into an episode. Of course the vast majority were never followed up on, they had several lawsuits thrown at them, and only handfuls were made into episodes for the various Star Trek TV shows… One might say the lawsuits are the prime case for not opening your doors to new entrants. I say the 12 year lifespan of this is exactly why it’s worthwhile. They canceled the program just a few years before they canceled the TV show that was on at the time, Star Trek: Enterprise (February 2005).

Would it change your mind if I told you one of those writers was Bryan Fuller, creator of Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, and Hannibal? Or Ronald D. Moore, who went on to win a Peabody for his work on Battlestar Galactica? Read up on some of the people who got their foot in the door that way: https://weminoredinfilm.com/2015/06/27/6-writers-who-got-their-foot-in-hollywoods-door-thanks-to-star-treks-open-submission-policy/

It’s called Screenlook, and it will be a 24/7 stream of smaller, indie, and amateur game videos, trailers, and things. I’ve also reached out to one person about even featuring a very short review that was creatively done. (My point being I’m open to content.)

I’ve created a few volumes to show the idea. I’ll be looking into the 24/7 aspect soon. While not a direct comparison, the inspiration comes from my love of the old G4 show Cinematech, and how it made phenomenal “background TV” when getting things done. I want to make a channel you can turn to when you don’t know what you want to play, and you can find something. Steam Queues or browsing itch.io show a ton of varying options. But Steam often shows you clones of games you have, and with itch there’s tons to wade through before you find what you want. I’m just trying to make a new avenue for discovery for smaller games.

I WILL be monetizing the channel. Be that on YouTube or Twitch or wherever else I find to air the show.

If you want in on it, feel free to follow the Twitch, which will alert you to when it goes live: http://twitch.tv/screenlook

And the YouTube, which enough subscriptions will get me a custom URL (YouTube doesn’t give everyone a URL now, due to name hoarding.) That’s at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa0Smevh5EBqREP7hGWlWqg

And you can always follow on Twitter, for the very rare tweet. http://twitter.com/_screenlook

And if you’ve got an opinion about it, or know of a game I should include, email or tweet me.

For a better idea, here’s a volume that would air, in loop with other similar volumes:

The only way I care to see it working is with little speaking for the majority of the film. And I don’t mean this will become Quest for Fire, or even Once Upon A Time in the West. Having long stretches with little speaking totally worked for Cast Away, and that was a $90 million Hollywood film with Tom Hanks. (And in revision, how great was Mad Max: Fury Road? It cost $150 million.)

What’s important is how the visual storytelling and the tone are handled, and to that end, I know exactly who I want to take this endeavor with. I want to see (at least the non-action scenes) it directed by Andrew Dominik, with cinematography by Roger Deakins. The two previously worked together on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. If you haven’t seen it, that movie IS the very concept of amazing cinematography encapsulated in celluloid. Their work, what they got from those actors and the world they were in, made the moments without words some of the best in that film. Hell, the film even made a narrator work exceptionally well (though, I wouldn’t want that here.) Admittedly, I can’t say how they’d handle a CG-extravaganza with certainty, I don’t have many reservations.

That said, also, you’d have to cut down the number of colossi, obviously. No more than four. Sure, we could do a montage, but no one wants that. Though I suppose you could put more on the “Insanely Long Director’s Experience” version, if they’re feeling ballsy, and want to create the lore of, say, Apocalypse Now. (There’s a poor quality workprint that rabid fans watch that has 87 minutes of footage that wasn’t even included in Apocalypse Now Redux, totaling almost 5 hours!) But at that rate, do a TV show, right?

The beautiful shots of scenery in The Assassination of Jesse James and the characters existing in them offer a wonderful place to start. Begin with our introductory journey as shown in the game, traveling to a land with the body of a woman over his horse. Our protagonist converses with Dormin, but at a fountain inside the temple. Wander holds up his sword, determines the direction to travel, and speaks to Agro a little as he journeys; traversing environmental challenges when… We meet our first colossus.

Wander finds a grassy plain and in the shadow of the canyon, finds his sword doesn’t pinpoint the location of the colossus. Not seeing him, he climbs a onto a large stone. He hears rumbling, and sees a shift in the ground some distance off, then suddenly the statue he’s on lurches into the air, and he flies off! Yes, it was part of the sword in the colossus’ hand that Wander was resting on. The rumbling in the distance was part of the colossus’ foot becoming unearthed. It was asleep and the earth settled around it probably decades ago.

The fight could be amazing. If you’ve played the game I don’t think I even have to lay out how well the drama could be handled. But if not, watching our hero Wander climb up a massive beast as it struggles and attempts to shake him off is a glorious feeling in the game, and I’m sure a good director could convey that to video well. And each time Wander wins, something comes from the colossus, and he wakes at the temple, in the fountain, confused. Sleepily he asks Agro why he brought him back here. He runs a hand over the hair of the woman’s body he left in the temple. He tells Agro “you brought me back to her”, and that she won’t be waking up again. He checks his sword and sets out. Now he’s slightly weaker, and hungry. Wander trails a lizard climbing a tree with his bow, but sees a sole piece of fruit hanging from it, and shoots it down instead. Good.

Cut to Lord Emon discovering Wander has stolen a mysterious sword and left for the forbidden land. He sends words for a hero of the kingdom to be dispatched immediately, and calls for his troop of personal guards to be prepared. Wander travels through the remains of a decayed colosseum where he finds, fights, and kills another colossus. This time we watch as Wander pointlessly attempts to fight off the darkness that spews from the fallen colossus, then falls unconscious. He wakes coughing up water in the fountain again. He cries at the body of the woman he brought to the temple. Wander uses Agro to help him hunt and eat a large lizard. He cooks it, but it’s not great. It’s edible, but it tastes bad.

He finds another colossi, this one near a beach, in loose sands. It looks like a snake with wings, it flies, and with a force that shakes the ground, it dives into and out of the sand as if it were water. The third time he kills a colossus he bursts from the water on his last breath violently sick, puking up cups of dark viscous murk, visibly pale and cold. He heaves himself over the edge of the fountain and climbs on Agro again. He checks the reflection of light from his sword and sets out again for his next challenge. We follow him this time, traversing the natural obstacles he’s faced. Lord Emon’s Hero arrives at the temple, and seeks him out, trying to stop him, but Wander wins the fight. Lord Emon arrives at the temple, where the guards find sign of the Hero on the hunt. Lord Emon says they should stay there, and guard the fountain inside the temple.

Wander crosses the bridge, and sees the final colossus. (Yes, that thing that happened by this point has happened.) Wander tries to approach the colossus, but is almost killed by it when the Hero saves him! Wander does not take this lightly, killing the Hero, and showing no remorse. Then he conquers the colossus. When there’s a loud boom and darkness erupts into the sky, Lord Emon and his troops at the temple notice even at their distance. A moment later there’s a slight whine, and then a huge splash into the fountain behind them. Wander has landed.

From here, well, the game plays out.

I don’t remember what started it, but I’ve been thinking about wrestling games a lot lately. It started before I even saw the highly entertaining video from Max Landis, rebutting the bewilderment of people who don’t enjoy wrestling, citing wrestling isn’t real. I haven’t watched wrestling in over a decade. But wresting video games? From Nintendo Pro Wrestling, to WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64, they were fun, especially with friends. And especially in later games when you could team up with your favorite wrestlers to wreak havoc on other players. But after a few duds, I stopped playing them. From the reviews I’ve found of recent wrestling games they haven’t progressed as I would’ve imagined.

It’s important to note that wrestling games have one are in which they’e always reigned supreme – character creation. From early N64 games allowing combining of different wrestler’s body parts and palette-swapping, to more modern wrestling games giving in-depth cutomization and flair other games only dream of. Many of them even allow general move sets and highly specialized moves (akin to Mortal Kombat’s finishing moves.) But the fighting isn’t the most important part. The character drama and plots, the key parts Max Landis touched on, have not been made more interactive. From the reviews I see of recent wrestling games their “career campaigns” have become heavily scripted, giving a near-linear story experience, scaled back from previous games.

We’re in the time of Shadow of Mordor; games should at least have a fraction of the procedural storytelling found in an Elder Scrolls games. What, you want to complain about dealing with data? Crusader Kings 2 has a huge amount of data. Thousands of NPCs have constantly evolving opinions on each other and the player based on several metrics and attributes. That game is often played at several-updates per second, with major changes happening in any update. And the players are rarely of any of those opinions, much less the changes that result in them. But a wrestling game? In this proposed kind of game whose primary draw is drama is predicated upon character attributes that are changed once every ten minutes or so isn’t heavily mapping that data in a way to facilitate more dramatic and interesting gameplay is a crime.

Players (as a new character or an established wrestler) should go through a couple of events (broadcasted shows) a week, each one offering the player an established fight schedule, and the opportunity to interact with other wrestlers. In interacting with other wrestlers, the player’s actions should generate friends and nemeses which leads to plots for the night and generally larger character arcs for them.

Like Crusader Kings II, give each wrestler a data table that indicates how they currently feel about other wrestlers. Add in a popularity meter with the faux audience, and how good/bad the audience views them, and this provides a lot of options for procedural storytelling. Add in the physical traits, and even personality traits to tag the player with that only matter behind the scenes, and things could get even more interesting. If you create a quick, small, luchadore-style wrestler with a zen attitude, the game can trend toward different angles of other wrestlers that you fight against.

The player can be given easy onscreen cues about these things. Presented as a TV show, you can have announcers say another wrestler’s name, talk about their character, standing (good/bad) and have the audience sheer/boo to show his popularity (100/-100). Players should be able to attack, insult, honor (press X to pay respect), challenge, offer to help, or ask for help. But to make it less of a random jump by button pressing every chance you get? Only let a wrestler initiate with another wrestler if their target is 10 or fewer points above the initiator, or 30 points or fewer below the initiator. You could expand this range by raising your popularity, and accomplishments like winning the title. A champ might get a larger group of on-comers and a wider berth to mess with others.

Help a bad guy? You trend from good (face) to bad (heel). Become a champ and help a good guy with low popularity? You could lose some poplarity, but the neophyte gains more and that person starts to like you. If you’re in good standing with someone, offer to create a team or stable of wrestlers who often work together! Or for no reason than to cause drama and maybe raise your notoriety? Stab them in the back!

And if you liked wrestling games in the past, or can just imagine fun fighting? Imagine being able to do that with four players, or even online. I can easily imagine a pay-it-forward style of gameplay in which playing A finishes their match, then player B, then player C, etc. for a large number of players. Even let them schedule it at a certain day/time like a real wrestling event, so they could all interfere with each other. There’s no reason you couldn’t run an entire federation full of players if you want to go turn-based (except for matches between players) with a few slots for spectators.

The big secret to this? In TV, when someone makes a big deal about airing something completely unrelated to the Super Bowl during the same timeslot, and makes a big deal about it? It’s called “counter-programming”. You don’t compete; you go completely against the people your opponents are going for. I think WWE has made such a big deal out of their roster (whom I respect) that this game doesn’t have to be about the roster. This doesn’t have to be a WWE game. Honestly, if a new Tecmo World Wrestling* was released with a bunch of fun characters, customization tools, fun wrestling, and a robust career mode? I genuinely think they could run a good “counter-programming” campaign, and rake in some cash.

*Also acceptable: Nintendo Pro Wrestling, Saturday Night Slam Masters, or entirely new IP. Imagine a Capcom or Square-Enix wrestling game. I can.

Today HTC announced they’d partnered with Valve for the Vive headset (part of HTC’s “re” product line, so, re:Vive). Obviously the thoughts quickly turn to software for it. With Valve being the partner, Portal came up in a post I was reading. (Imagine sailing through the air in first person.) It always felt like Portal 2’s online component didn’t take off like Valve wanted, so, let me pitch a Portal 3, or at least a Portal Online. The chief decision in my choices is that it should be a game with continued updates, like DOTA2, CSGO, and TF2. And even better would be allowing it to rely on community support for content, but still allow financial opportunities for the developer that seem fair to players.

The important part? Each server is a testing facility. The person who runs the server (herein owners) should get a large series of options to better fine tune the experience for players. And this will present financial opportunities for Valve AND for the community members that contribute to the game. Also important is offering several non-required elements for players to improve their experience. Let’s look at those items first.

1. Maps – Highly rated maps should be vetted for inclusion on the marketplace if the creator wants. A very small minimum price should be required. ($0.25?) This pays for the evaluation of maps, as well as hosting, and should benefit the map maker. However, server owners should be able to run maps from outside of the marketplace, just without a logo of approval in server lists.

2. Player components – Players need to be differentiated. Playing as the people unfrozen at the end of Portal 2, suits and colors are a solid start, but offering new purchases (maybe play as robots, especially if done in components) could do well. Components, suits, colors, sounds, and mini-actions are never integral, but can be used as random drops as well as purchasables. Much like TF2, each server can do its own, or abide by the official list.

3. Personality cores – And here’s where it gets a little more interesting.

Server owners will choose a “GLaDOS”-like AI to run their testing facility. You can start by giving players a few basic free options like some of the personality cores from Portal 1 & 2. Imagine bounding across giant gaps with Rick, the Adventure Sphere from Portal 2, urging you on. To triumph in the face of danger! Or imagine a dark room with flickering lights, with the hiss of the evil red sphere from Portal 1. Then it snarls violently as a piston came from the ceiling and tried to smash you. (Or RuXx Emma Thompsonor even actress Emma Thompson who narrated Will Ferrell’s life in Stranger Than Fiction.) Even allow players to fashion their own personality cores and offer them for free download, the better ones vetted and placed in the marketplace.

Each Personality core recording (that costs money in the marketplace) should have story hooks built in for story arcs that rise and fall that trigger X maps into the server. The important part is different script portions that can be used by map makers and communicate the same information in a way specific to that personality core. The types of script needed to be used in the procedural story would be “introduction”, many “normal chamber” lines, appropriate “going away” scripts, and “re-introduction” recordings as well. Why? Each server starts with the introduction. Then the owner’s chosen chambers progress normally. But with the first Valve Update, GlaDOS takes control of the owner’s test chamber from the ownerâ€s personality core, runs a few levels (introducing updates), then the ownerâ€s AI regains control. Maybe GLaDOS patches in via network. Maybe itâ€s a copy. Maybe the two AIs are battling; maybe theyâ€re working together. That’s not important here.

Itâ€s only really important that personality cores in the marketplace have the appropriate generic audio recordings that maps will assume and reference. The lionâ€s share will be the large variety of “normal chamber” recordings, but Valve Updates would include maps that would use rare plot advancement hooks that would be required of all personality cores on the marketplace. Those would be the “going away” and “re-introduction” scripts. During the update we may get a new paint color (a la Portal 2) or world item (enemy units, new world mechanics, etc.). Maybe you could even let users trade off cores with the right audio hooks. Maybe some servers wouldn’t care and just want tons of levels.

Another important factor is that while the server owner decides the order of the chambers, this is not TF2. There is no automatic progress. Each chamber needs to be instanced when a player arrives in it. If a chamber already exists, a player should be joined with whoever is currently running that chamber on the server. In the elevator at the beginning of a chamber) players should be able to go the previous puzzle, or restart the current one. “Next chamber” should be possible in exit elevators, as well as beginning elevators if you’ve already completed the current chamber. Servers should track player progress, like they currently do for non-standard TF2 items, so you can easily get back to the chamber you belong on. But people should be able to backtrack and help, if they want. If you get to chamber 2, and I join the server for the first time, I start in chamber 1. Server voice and text chat could be passed off as communicating on a network.

So, players can buy suits, components, colors, sounds, and actions that spread across servers. Server owners can buy AI personality cores to personalize their server, and maps to use in their servers. And occasionally Valve sends updates that temporarily take over servers and seamlessly advance the world.

That’s the Portal Online I’d be happy with. Also, you get two Oâ€s in the logo. POrtal Online. One blue and one orange!

Does FTL make you a space-faring bringer of death, or a kamikaze pilot flying a rickety death trap? Yes. Is it worth playing? Absolutely. Dying hasn’t been this fun since Dwarf Fortress. Killing hasn’t been this surgical since Fallout 3’s VATS system, this easy since you first picked up the BFG, or this difficult since you spec’d completely opposite the way you should have for a RPG boss fight. Each play has the potential to serve up a wildly different game due to the game’s elements being so randomly generated, that each play will bring many stories of harrowing success and escape, telling friends how you barely did this, and almost got killed while doing that, and each story will almost certainly punctuated by the full stop of your death. It’s billed as a “a spaceship simulation real-time rogue-like”, but what does that mean? Let’s start with the basics.

The Salad (Before the game.)
In Subset Games’ FTL (yes, it means Faster Than Light,) you fight for the Federation against rebel forces and other nefarious tropes amassing weapons and crew for the big showdown. This is done by plotting your own course through eight sectors full of nodes as a wave of enemies chase you. Each node providing an event. Events range from battle, a social opportunity, an environmental threat, a store, to empty space. Sometimes you’ll even get combination of those things, or they’re made more intricate as the game reacts to your crew, your ship upgrades, or some of the (simple) quest lines you’ve previously opened. As if those combinations didn’t offer enough replay, the nodes of each sector, and the available paths between sectors, are generated freshly with each play through. Each event allows a chance to gain resources along the way.

The Potatoes (The good.)
Ship management shines. It’s what every RPG wishes its management was, simple and robust. It’s so intuitive you can become good at it by accident. You start with one ship available, but more begin to open quickly. You acquire a crew of up to eight from the seven different races, each with special abilities. You choose from six different weapon types, each with strengths/strategies. There are also five different automated drone types you can deploy, not to mention the option to board your enemies’ ships. And on top of it all as you progress you can equip your ship with up to three of twenty-one augmentations that vary wildly in effect.

Upgrading your ship in FTL is micromanagement heaven as you spend scrap (the in-game currency) upgrade your ship. All ships have a reactor. As you spend money to upgrade it, more energy is produced. It’s from this common pool that most of your ship’s systems are powered. Each ship has several systems (weapons, shields, medical bay, life support, etc.) which can be upgraded, and extras that can be purchased. As you upgrade a system, it opens a slot in which you can route an extra cell of energy. It gets frantic when you realize that energy is hot-swappable, meaning you can power and de-power items as needed. So while you’ll likely always want your life support system working, if you don’t plant to run from a fight, you can take energy from your engine and fight your battle with stronger weapons, shields, or what have you!

The Steak (The great.)
Battle is superb for a player like me. FTL offers the perfect amount of control. In most games either the developer has very stupid AI and is too easy, the game cheats to make things interesting, or the player simply can’t match the AI in accuracy/quickness and things are too hard. This is a known problem in nearly any game from Madden to Tetris. This is not the case here. Enemies operate at maximum efficiency (minus a little dumb AI in asphyxiation created by simple logic, not cheating or intentional dumbing down,) because FTL lets the player pause the game at any time with a tap of the space bar.

This makes every meaningful choice available at any time, and you can change strategy instantly on a whim. Pausing time, issuing commands, changing attack patterns, and resuming the battle in a single moment allows you to match the AI move for move. Earlier I mentioned VATS, Fallout 3’s method of giving players a refined control in battle, but it was limited in making the player wait until your endurance was recharged. Captaining your own ship in FTL, giving out orders is expected to come instantly, and pausing time works perfectly to that effect.

Just Desserts (The self-indulgent run-through.)
I load up on offensive slots, going light on reactor energy, and rerouting power from my meager engine and medical bay and give that extra bump to weaponry. Toss a few Zoltan crew members (who add energy to the ship systems they’re assigned to) and you’re boxing above your weight class. My starting ship is the Red-Tail (Kestral B), which comes with one Zoltan (who add one energy to your reactor), one Mantis (excellent fighters), and two humans. It also starts with four single shot lasers.

The first thing I do is invest in blast doors to asphyxiate boarding enemies, expand my crew with as many Zoltans as possible, and invest heavily in laser weapons. Soon I’ve got an opening volley of lasers that rips through enemy shields and begins taking apart a system of my choice. Worst case scenario, I use the lasers to tear at an enemy’s shield and then use a beam weapon to do my damage in a line drawn across the enemy ship with my mouse. Either way, I have a good chance of jetting straight to the final sector in no time as long as things go decently well for me, but I only really get a chance of beating the final boss if I’m lucky and a certain few augments and the right weaponry come my way. To ensure that, I take my time, scouring as many nodes as I can in each sector. I’m a man on a mission, people!

But before I leave the second sector, I die. That happens often. You’ll have bad luck, you’ll not get awesome items by the time you expect to. You’ll need to spend your scrap repairing your ship, instead of buying upgrades. You will die very often in this game. Here, let me go back and underline that for silly comedic effect. And you’ll quit the game, and you’ll start something else, and you’ll instantly want to start it back up and play again. I actually wrote all of this in a relatively short time, I just kept starting the damn game back up and playing again… In fact, I think I’ll go play it now!