Modding and Machinima

In the Bethesda Softworks game “The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion”, the game was released with a ‘construction kit’.  This construction kit, allowed everyone and anyone who had the game to create anything they wanted to add to the dungeons of Oblivion.

Leo Berkeley explains, “machinima can be seen as an offshoot of the broader phenomenon of game modding, where fans seek to modify game engines to extend and customise their gameplay experience.” If Bethesda Softworks has become comfortable enough with their fans having a construction kit, (which ultimately allows them the make better machinima), then I feel that the acceptance to machinima from all producers is soon to come.

Both Bethesda and Frictional Games (creator of first person horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent) have an understanding of their fans that others in the entertainment industry would do well to learn. As I said in my previous blog, if the entertainment industry weren’t so busy fighting the internet revolution, they could see that theses mods, gameplay videos and machinima only promote their games and create a positive personally around the game studios that fans always respond to well.

Come on guys! We only do it because we love you!

In light of this, here is my favorite machinia vid to date:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke9wtbzGjCI

And a how to machinina vid for Oblivion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHs0O0-qbYU

Enjoy!

-Berkeley, L. (2006). Situating Machinima in the New Mediascape. Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society. 4(2): Pp.65-80

Entertainment Industry vs. The Internet

          In his article, The Canadian Copyright Bill: Flawed But Fixable, Michael Geist summarizes the Bill C-32, what he calls the “long-awaited copyright reform Bill.” The reform has brought some extensions that provide more legroom for Youtubers and videos created as satirical or educational. Geist describes a few of these changes as “provisions worth fighting for.” He may be fighting for the wrong thing though.


         All of these legal wranglings are really the result of a much larger problem. The entertainment industry is still living in the early nineties and can’t seem to deal with the internet revolution. If the industry, tried to adapt to it, rather than fight against it, they may realize that people would stop downloading illegally if it was more readily available online in the first place.


        The CRTC recently tried to set us back even further, by allowing media corporations (such as the unscrupulous Bell) to influence a decision about internet use. Had the bill been passed, Canadians would have faced a significant increase in internet fees, a result that seems suspiciously connected to major networks’ decline in TV subscriptions. Increase internet fee’s = keep people watching TV.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/02/01/internet-usage-based-billing-clement.html


       It has been hinted at by fellow internet users that the reason this bill almost went through is because the big shots on the review board for the CRTC are the big shots that run Bell and other such networks. Someone should be cutting down these monopolies to size. Let’s hope its done soon before its too late.

- Michael Geist (2010) The Canadian Copyright Bill: Flawed But Fixable. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5080/125/

- Can I Use Someone Else's Work? Can Someone Else Use Mine?' U.S. Copyright Office. http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html

How To Become A Successful Blogger

            Faulkner’s and Melican’s “Getting Noticed, Showing-Off, Being Over-Heard: Amateurs, authors and artists inventing and reinventing themselves in online communities.” Is almost a “How to” for successful blogging. Though not the paper’s intention, it talks about how a couple of people become financially successful using blogs, reputationally successful or succeeding in ‘not getting caught’.


            Apparently it’s all about appealing to a niche market, which at some point everyone realizes they like the same things and it’s no longer a niche. I guess I don’t feel the same way about this blog. I guess I’m not doing it for other people. To be honest, I’m doing it as part of a course project, and although it was initially the professor’s idea that we would be posting these online, it is no longer required, and I believe the only person actually reading this is my T.A. Oh well.


            I don’t hope for others to start reading this, I do this for myself, or at least, if I continue to write, it will be for personal reasons. Though if there is some one out there who happens across this writing, I hope you manage to take something interesting away from it. A recommendation for a reading mayhaps? Or an interesting thought? If not, but your still reading this, then sorry. There’s probably something more interesting on Youtube.


I personally suggest the following:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHPgCdGhbng&feature=related


Enjoy!

- Faulkner, S. and Melican, J., (2007). Getting Noticed, Showing-Off, Being Over-Heard: Amateurs, authors and artists inventing and reinventing themselves in online communities. In Proceedings of EPIC 2007: The Third Annual Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference.