Runescape’s the 500lb gorilla in the MMO field right now, boasting arguably more players than World of Warcraft. As such, it’s very exciting to hear that the Runescape developers are adding a Machinima tool, the “Orb of Oculus”, to the game - looking forward to seeing what it can do!
UPDATE - the forum thread on this is up to 29 pages already. This could spawn quite a lot of new Machinima…
Favourite films of 2008 - Hugh
As I mentioned in my review of the year yesterday, it’s been rather a quiet year for Machinima. Nonetheless, there have been some simply fantastic films released, several of which haven’t recieved the kind of widespread acclaim that they deserve. Indeed, I’d say all of my favourite films this year deserve to have viewing figures in the hundreds of thousands - yet only one has, and that’s only barely over 100,000.
Good god this piece of World of Warcraft Machinima is good. A very simple tale of a young man - or Tauren, as the case may be - and his dream, it’s probably my favourite piece of the year. The editing and cinematography are amongst the best I’ve ever seen in any Machinima - incredibly cinematic. The story itself is both surprising, moving and touching - there’s even a love story in there, all in 4 minutes or so. Made for the Blizzard Machinima contest this year, it won third place, proving once again that the ones to watch in the Blizz contests are never the winners. (The Demise just missed out on winning last year).
The film was inspired by Fantasia, and is certainly led by the stunning musical score. It’s got absolutely none of the clunks you’d normally expect with a WoW movie, and a lot of subtle post-production touches (check out the sunbeam) that really make it stand out.
If you don’t play WoW, you’ll need to know that the cow people are called Taurens, they’re the enemies of the humans in plate armour, and that they can choose, amongst other things, to be either a warrior (sword, shield) or a druid (shapechanging and magic) at the start of the game. That should do you. Now go watch this incredible movie.
If there’s one thing that’s rare in Machinima creation - or anywhere in filmmaking - it’s the ability to tell a serious, complex story. On that front, 2009 has been a very good year.
Clockwork’s a Clockwork Orange-inspired dystopian short. I can’t really say more than that without spoiling the plot, save to say this - it’s possibly the best piece of storytelling in Moviestorm so far. It’s not perfect, by any means - it’s a bit overwritten in places, the acting occasionally has flaws, and the Moviestorm engine rears its uglier head from time to time with flickering shadows and flat lighting. But its strengths far outweight its weaknesses.
The visual aesthetic and camerawork, for starters, are both fantastic. Iain Friar, the director, has managed to put together a sophsticated, coherent noir visual that puts many broadcast efforts to shame. There’s some genuinely iconic shots here, whether you’re talking about the droogs heading across the landscape or government meeting shot mostly in moving shadows.
The writing takes risks - sometimes it gets it wrong, but far more often it gets it right. And the world Iain presents is interesting and complicated. It’s not subtle - the future has abolished democracy - but it’s moody, it’s more complicated than a 10-minute short has any right to manage, and it’s compelling. And the lead character’s a genuinely memorable figure.
Machinima storytelling that, frankly, puts most of the BBC’s efforts this Christmas to shame? More of this, please.
And talking of TV-quality storytelling - Shelf Life.
It’s an enormous pity that Valve aren’t more interested in licensing Source to Machinima creators, because some of the most watchable Machinima of the last few years has used it for its startlingly detailed, expressive characters. Pixel Eyes appear to have picked up the mantle of Lit Fuze, and are running with it to even more interesting places.
Shelf Life, of which only the first part (approximately 16 minutes) is available, appears to be a TV-style drama treading somewhere between The Prisoner and Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Complex, detailed, with fantastic action sequences, great voice work, and a genuinely intriguing plot involving memory downloading and dubious science, it’s moody, atmospheric, and thanks to great Faceposer work, easily as watchable as any other TV or film. I can’t wait for the next part - I want to know what’s going on - and I could really see it, if only there was some kind of commercial possibility for the engine, turning into a full-length TV-style series.
Occasionally it feels a little too slow, and the action sequence in part 2 is a bit protracted. But it’s deliberately moody, it’s tremendously well-acted and edited, and it fulfils something I’m always looking out for - Machinima enabling people who don’t have a Hollywood studio to outdo the so-called professionals at their own game.
And so, it’s that time again - time for a round-up of the last year in Machinima.
It’s been a very quiet year, overall. We’ve seen a few notable additions to the Machinima world (Pixel Eyes Productions), but overall, as far as I know there have been less films that broke out of their Machinima area this year than any year previously.
Why? I don’t have any answers on that one, just a few suggestions.
The Machinima communities have now entirely separated. The world of WoW Machinima and Moviestorm Machinima cross over only insomuch as there are a few Moviestormers who play WoW. No-one’s watching Halo movies except Halo players. The Second Life/Anymation/Moviestorm communities are still crossing over, but that’s about it. That makes the likelihood of finding out about really good stuff from any community you’re not involved in much smaller. For example, I only found Warrior’s Dream, probably my pick of the year, when I was specifically looking for 2009 Machinima.
That there’s a glass ceiling in Machinima is now well-understood. I don’t have any hard evidence that’s having a chilling effect on game-based Machinima, but it seems a plausible theory. A budding filmmaker can, with a little Googling, discover that if he makes a film in the Source Engine, for example, he’s effectively giving up any chance not just of money, but also of TV or other widespread distribution outside YouTube. That reduces what used to be a significant intake into Machinima - that of the frustrated professional. (Obviously, Second Life and Moviestorm don’t have that problem, but they’re also not as well-known as World of Warcraft or Half-Life 2).
It’s been a very slow year for new technology, and new tech drives Machinima. World of Warcraft Model Viewer is limping along, sadly. Second Life hasn’t had many graphics improvements I’m aware of. The only new Machinima tool that appeared (MachinimaDev) seems to have stalled. IClone 4 arrived this year, I believe, but still doesn’t seem to have much of a hold on the Machinima world. Only Moviestorm and OpenSim saw significant technical developments.
There aren’t many sources of recommendations out there, either - at least not that one can reliably expect to recommend really good work. WoW.com has Moviewatch, but the frequency of posting there means that the quality can be variable. The Movies Underground is starting to gain traction, but is still finding its feet. Machiniplex is good, but pretty infrequent. There hasn’t been a physical-world Machinima festival this year. I’ve not checked Machinima.com’s recommendations in a while, I must admit. Maybe there is good work out there, but we’re missing it.
Will 2010 see a speed-up in Machinima production? Perhaps. But if it does, it’ll largely be because of…
If we hadn’t had Moviestorm, it would have been a near-silent year, not just a quiet one. Moviestorm’s supplied several of the best movies of the year, including one of my personal favourites, Clockwork. It’s had a steady stream of technical improvements, it’s grown exponentially, and it’s moved from borderline-credible as a tool to very capable indeed.
Of course, it’s also supplied a few controversies, most notably the move to a subscription model. Apparently most of the noise from that has died down by now, and I’ve heard informally that Moviestorm will be addressing both lifetime subscriptions and an End-Of-Life (or “What happens if you go bust?”) policy.
Next year will be the really interesting year for Moviestorm. I have a sense, as I’ve mentioned before, that this is the make-or-break year for Moviestorm. There’s a reason they’ve been the source of all the interesting news this year, and that’s that they’re the only seriously funded company (20 or so employees) who are solely focussed on Machinima. Sooner or later, they’ve got to start making that money back, and from the move to subscriptions, my feeling is this is the year. Will they manage to turn the promise of this year into them becoming the next Photoshop, the first easy and powerful 3D moviemaking tool? I think they’ve got a hard fight, but it ain’t impossible.
Valve doesn’t want anything to do with legitimising Source Machinima. We’ve not been able to find a single person who’s had film festival permission from Blizzard Entertainment (although you might not need to). Even producers of tremedously successful Machinima, like Clint Hackleman, haven’t been able to strike a deal with the games companies.
With the recent news about Valve, it seems that 2009 has put the nail in the coffin of a breakout hit ever launching a commercial Machinima career using game engines. Maybe a future game engine creator will have a more optimistic attitude (and it’s worth noting, again, that Microsoft are very interested in discussing commercial Machinima production), but right now it seems the big names - Blizzard, Valve, EA - are, pretty definitively, not interested.
What effect will that have on Machinima production? I’m not entirely sure, but it seems like a real pity. I’ve ranted about the glass ceiling in Machinima before, and it’s still very frustrating - there are so many great films that could be made in these engines, but with the controlling attitude currently in place, I can’t see them happening.
(As a side note - it might seem like a funny time for me to be working on a very high production value WoW short. There are reasons for that…)
In 2007, the big engines of note were World of Warcraft, the Source engine, Halo, Second Life and Moviestorm. In 2008, the big engines were World of Warcraft, the Source engine, Halo, Second Life and Moviestorm. And in 2009? WoW, Source, Halo, SL, Moviestorm. For a fast-moving technology-based medium, we ain’t doing much fast moving.
For several years now there has been a notable lack of Machinima being created in new engines, despite a fair number of promising options arriving. Medieval Total War 2 never got any traction, nor did Empire Total War. Uncharted 2’s Machinima mode doesn’t seem to have produced much at all. I’m not hearing anything about Conan Machinima, Lord of the Rings Online Machinima, Aion Machinima.
Why? Well, for starters, even engines that try to be Machinima-friendly seem to have an appalling tendancy toward making really bone-dumb decisions. Take GTA4, with its movie editor, but no way to lipsynch characters. Or Playstation Home’s Machinima mode, which looks awesome, if only there was some way to record the video it produces and make, you know, a film out of it.
Added to that, Machinima communities are more and more centering themselves around their tool of choice. The World of Warcraft Machinima community isn’t, by and large, interested in making films so much as it is interested in making WoW films. Most Machinima creators just aren’t looking for a new tool.
And the old-time Machinima creators have become jaded by years of promising-but-flawed games, not to those of us with the experience to get into a new engine and make films in it are by and large now reluctant to touch a commercial game engine without really good reason, because of the legal issues.
One possibility for a new Machinima engine in 2010 seems to be Dragon Age. It’s developed and supported by a team including a bunch of very experienced ex-community Machinima creators. (Michelle Petit-Mee, for example, Leo Lucian-Bay, Paul Marino and Ken Thain, to name but a few). Initial tests show that Bioware are interested in supporting Machinima creators actively, and tests seem to reveal that the toolset actually has sensible, well-thought-out tools for film creation. The only downside will be that, owned as they are by EA, we really shouldn’t expect commercial possibilities. But of all the games of 2010, Dragon Age looks to be the one that might take off in Machinima.
The other quiet contender for Machinima creation is OpenSim, the open-source Second Life clone. Currently it’s in the very early development stages, but the world that Pineapple Pictures have been doing with it looks very promising indeed. The idea of a truly Open-Source Machinima creation toolkit has been floating around for years, and whilst it’s not as developed as Dragon Age (and realistically I wouldn’t expect to see any really impressive work in it until 2011), it IS commercially usable. it’s the other engine to keep an eye on.
And the other big elephant of Machinima ain’t exactly in the room yet, but you can certainly hear its feet pounding closer if you listen closely. Mocap is coming to the home, and it’ll be sooner rather than later. Microsoft have announced Project Natal, which allegedly includes full-body motioncapture for the X-Box. The PS3 is getting mocap controls too. IPISoft now offer a motion capture program for a few hundred dollars. And the first Machinima production company - mine, Strange Company - has just invested in the higher-end but still low-priced NaturalPoint mocap tech.
Will we see a low-budget Avataralike from the Machinima community in 2010? Well, if we don’t I’ll be very, very frustrated this time next year, since we’re in pre-production already, and it’s only a short, dammit. But I don’t think we’ll see much of a rush on the tech for a while - maybe more than one homegrown Mocap flick next year, but realistically, I see Mocap becoming important to Machinima in 2012-2014.
Why that long? Well, Natal won’t turn up before the summer at the earliest. The first version will utterly suck. IPISoft’s software currently doesn’t, from the tests I’ve seen, produce usable results, but by the end of 2010, if they survive, they’ll be getting there. There will be announcements of more low-cost mocap in 2010, but no actual releases.
In 2011 I’d expect us to see the first usable prosumer-level mocap, but probably near the end of the year. Maybe it’ll be an update of Natal, maybe it’ll be the rumoured games mocap device from Animazoo. But by 2012, Machinima creators will be able to afford mocap that works.
Then we’ve got the fabled Machinima lag. Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen that it takes new technology an average of one to two years to be incorporated into Machinima production on a wide scale. This is the first year we’ve seen lots of Moviestorm production, for example. It was two years before Half-Life 2 saw lots of Machinima. It takes that long to work the bugs out, for people to become aware of the tech, and for the production process to grind its way through.
Given all that - look for Machinima mocap in 2012-2014.
Of course, 2010 will, if all goes well, also usher in another new era of Machinima - the era of arguing about whether performance capture is Machinima. I look forward to it…
How was 2009 for you? What trends did you see in Machinima?
And the big news at the end of the year keeps on coming:
Pixel Eyes Productions have been trying to get an answer out of Valve Entertainment forever on the subject on Machinima, and finally, they’ve got this:
“”We are not interested in licensing our technology or IP for machinima. This includes providing copyright approvals.”
(Emphasis mine)
Wow. That’s kinda big news. The creators of arguably the best engine out there for high-quality Machinima has no interest in letting it extend beyond YouTube.
Having said that, it’s not new. I’ve had similar conversations with iD Software in the past - the summary being “We’re a games company, not a film company.”
Pixel Eyes have some interesting analysis on their blog. I haven’t really thought through this news yet, so - what do you think?
I’ve just noticed that Moviestorm have announced content rental options for their content packs, for subscribers. In short, rather than buying a content pack outright and being able to use it forever, you’re able to rent it for a day or a month to make your movie, for significantly less money.
That’s a very interesting idea. Most Moviestorm movies won’t take years to make. Being able to rent props for a day or a month, particularly if you’re planning your film well, will significantly reduce your outlay on any given movie.
Obviously, though, again it will result in movies sitting on your hard drive that you can’t play the 3D assets back from. But how much of a problem is that? I’m uncertain - I know I’ve not looked at the 3D assets for BloodSpell since I completed the film, for example.
It’s also interesting I haven’t heard much noise about this feature, and that it’s being dropped in just before Christmas. This is a pretty significant new option, we’ve never seen it before in a Machinima tool, and it represents another modification to the MS biz plan. But there’s not a lot of shouting going on, either from within or outside the MS camp.
What do you think?
The big news this month in the Machinima world has been Moviestorm’s introduction of a subscription plan, the most controversial aspect of which is its lockout feature for mods.
Obviously, Johnnie can’t really comment on this, what with being Product Manager for Moviestorm and all, so it’s just me.
The highlights:
There has been quite a bit of chatter on the subject, much of it negative. A large number of long-term Moviestorm users, including AngriBuddhist and award-winner Iain Friar were concerned about the new plan on the official forums, and there was a similarly heated debate on TMO Radio - both attracting official comments from Jeff Zie, the CEO of Moviestorm, and Matt Kelland, the Creative Director. by contrast, Phil “Overman” Rice reacted strongly against detractors on his blog, saying “Let’s save that kind of action and drama (and comedy) for our screenplays, where it’s actually fun to see”. And Kate Fosk provided a rather balanced commentary over at Pineapple Pictures, ending up with the decision that she won’t subscribe for now.
I don’t have a hard angle on this change yet. From a business perspective, subscriptions are obviously extremely attractive as they provide steady, predictable revenue stream, rather than one-off sales. On the other hand, consumers have traditionally been very reluctant to invest in software, particularly creation software, which is subscription-based - the threat of the software stopping working, either through business change or the user stopping paying, and denying the user access to their work is a serious one. My current feeling is that this is a make-or-break decision for MS on a business level - it’ll either give them a steady revenue stream or cut them off from their early adopters and evangelists, and only time will tell which.
As far as users go, there are a whole raft of issues here:
MS has always had a Digital Rights Management system in place, but before it has effectively been invisible. However, now it has the capability to lock a user out of his own created mods, the usual problems with DRM become more obvious. What happens if MS goes out of business? What happens if MS’s management changes? Do users have any assurance that they’ll be able to access their software at any price? Commercial usage, in particular, of MS for any long-term project must now take into account that it might, perhaps, some day stop working, and that’s a non-trivial risk. There is currently some discussion of a “lifetime” subscription for MS, which, depending on how it works, might eliminate a lot of these concerns, but as it stands, if the MS authentication servers go away, MS stops working. (That’s not very likely, however.)
It seems that MS have put their good reputation directly on the line as security for this change. Most of the defenders of this policy are currently defending it on the basis that Moviestorm have a great reputation for supporting Machinima and generally being cool, which is currently true - if that changes (as can happen, as most old-time Machinima creators will be aware), expect to see confidence in MS’s value sink rapidly. On the other hand, it may well be that the only way to make a subscription like this work is to maintain a reputation for trustworthiness - the only other successful example I can think of is Fog Creek, who run several subscription-based developer tools, and are also very well-known and trusted thanks to the efforts of their founder, Joel Spotsky.
I don’t have deep insight into Moviestorm’s current finances, but it seems pretty obvious to me that some kind of additional monetisation was going to be required if the company was to continue developing MS. From that point of view, a subscription ain’t the worst deal in the world, and fits with their “low-cost” principles. An iClone-like $300 or so sticker price would probably have attracted a worse reaction.
MS will also now have to deal with security on a notoriously tricky problem - that of controlling a program running on a computer under the control of someone else. I wonder how long it will be before someone publishes information on how to re-enable the mod shop for free, and what MS will do about that? (I’m not going to discuss the technical issues behind that further, but I know if I was contemplating a large-scale project with MS, I’d make damn sure that in worst case I could crack the control, Just In Case.)
The big issue here is clearly the control over third-party mods, including those that were created before their creators knew about this upcoming change. Many creators are feeling betrayed or insecure. It’s early days yet, and I’m unsure as to whether MS’s management team anticipated the outcry that has resulted. Hence, I’m watching this space to see if they can find a good way to resolve those concerns. Again, watch this space on the lifetime subscription issue.
There are two ways to look at the risk represented by MS’s subscription model. On the one hand, film projects always overrun. If we’d decided to use MS at the start of making BLoodSpell, would we really have thought that we’d still need it 5 years ahead? Would we have budgeted for that? On the other hand, whilst I always make sure I can still access and use old film production material, I haven’t touched the assets for any of my films in the last 12 years after production was complete. It’s important to remember that MS’s license controls the 3D assets, not the 2D footage, which at the end of the day is more important for film production.
Personally, I’m finding this entire episode fascinating. I’m not using Moviestorm at the moment, nor am I likely to be for a while (until there’s an easy import route for motion capture data, basically), so I’ve not got a dog in this race. As a businessman, it’s really interesting to watch as more experienced biz people (Matt and Jeff, amongst others) try new models to find one that works for their business. Almost makes me wish I was in the boardroom with them.
(Almost. I learned a long time ago that amongst the things I’m very good at, software development ain’t.)
And as a Machinima commentator, it’ll be fascinating to see how this all plays out. Will it turn out to be a damp squib? Will subscriptions prove themselves worth it? Will the mod tools for Moviestorm improve now that they’re driving revenue? Or will the discontent turn into an en masse rebellion? Will MS decide to make changes to their policies, or will they stick to their guns? In particular, will they find a way to solve the “but it might die on me some day” problem, or the “but I want control of my content” problem?
What do you think?
(Some full disclosures on this article: I’ve consulted on Moviestorm several times and used it professionally, and many of the people involved in its development are personal friends of mine. I have also consulted for their competitors, although that company is no longer in business. Finally, I’m involved with several organisations whom are heavily critical of restrictive software licensing and DRM in general.)
OK, this falls into the “very big news” category - Epic have just announced that the Unreal Engine is now free to use for indie developers - presumably including Machinima creators. That’s very big indeed, since it’s been used for commercial Machinima already.
Anyone know how much modding the engine requires before it’s Machinima-ready, if any?
Very interesting news from the guys at Pixel Eyes Productions - they’ve been trying to enable revenue sharing through ads on YouTube, and they’ve found the following:
I’d be really interested to hear more on this topic from someone at the Machinima.com team - anyone?
Also, has anyone had more luck talking to Valve?
We’re always interested - nay, fascinated - to hear about new Machinima-capable engines here.
So:
Keep an eye on Iceaxe’s blog for more interviews, from machinima luminaries such as Roger Burlong-Strange and Dave Lloyd.
