First Person Shooter Game Brought to Life by British Filmmakers

The London based film company, Realm Pictures, brought every video game/film nerd's wet dream to life. This past August, they created a first person shooter film that allowed random strangers they found on the internet to control the actions of the main character.

Yeah. You heard me. Realm Pictures specializes in fantasy-like films, photography and visual fx, so they are no stranger to creating interesting content that pushes the bounds of reality. With a camera strapped on to a helmet, and some tricky computer work, Director David Reynolds and his team were able to live stream an actor wandering through a church yard and fighting zombies.

But here comes the cool part. Reynolds was able to live stream the video to Chatroulette, a website that allows you to talk and video chat with random strangers. And those strangers got to control what the actor did, just like a real video game. With multiple locations, a handful of hidden weapons and items, a horde of zombies and a demonic final boss, players were able to choose their own paths by giving the actor commands, and hopefully make it through to the end, where the team of filmmakers was waiting for them in their control room. Here's the awesome video:

But how did they do it?!

It wasn't as easy as setting up an intricate obstacle course and flooding it with actors in zombie makeup. Reynolds orchestrated something very innovative technologically, that could really change both the gaming and film world. By strapping one of the zombies with a wireless router, they were able to live stream HDMI from the camera on the actor's helmet back to the control room, where Reynolds and his team controlled the website, and visual and sound effects. Reynolds also provided the voice of the shooter, so he would be able to react and communicate with the strangers. They created a behind-the-scenes video, which was even more interesting than the actual film.

And their accents, am I right ladies?

Currently, Realm Pictures are starting to produce their first feature film, so a sequel won't be in the immediate future. But, Reynolds stated "our fanciful conversations about what 'level 2' could bring are now becoming a reality real quick!", so don't cry yourselves to sleep just yet. 

This level of audience participation is pretty groundbreaking. It takes the concept of "Choose Your Own Adventure" games and films to the next level, getting rid of the preplanned paths and allowing the "gamers" to decide whatever they wanted in a controlled environment. Though video games almost look like films nowadays, with graphics getting more realistic by the second, this is truly a new way to combine the two mediums. If developed and expanded, this kind of gameplay may catch on, and hopefully Realm Pictures will be the leading pioneer to this new frontier.

Storytelling in Sword Art Online

My tastes in entertainment have changed a lot in the past year. There was a time in my life (a rough, rough time) when my preference in television was sitcoms like Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. My interests have definitely broadened since then, and I’ve recently begun to take an interest in Anime. 

Since I began watching anime last semester, the most recent one I binged on has been my clear favorite. That show is Sword Art Online, a 25 episode show based off of a novel series written by Reki Kawahara. Sword Art Online is the story of two MMORPG players named Kirito and Asuna. Set in the year 2022, the show takes place in a virtual reality world in which players put on “nerve gear” that literally puts them into the game. The creator of this MMO ends up trapping the players in the game, and they have to play it to completion in order to escape back into the real world. Kirito and Asuna are two of the game’s strongest and best players, and they fight through the 100 levels to challenge the creator of the game, who is the final boss and the ticket back into the real world. In the two and a half or so years that they spend stuck in the game, Kirito and Asuna fall in love, and decide to fight to the end so that they can be together in the real world. When they finally do complete the game however, one of the creators of the nerve gear keeps Asuna trapped in the state of virtual reality and brings her into a new game that he has created. Kirito then must play this new game to defeat the deranged creator of Alfheim Online. It is an exciting, fast-moving story that kept me enthralled the entire time.

I watched this entire series in two days (roughly 30 hours). Having grown up a fan of Harry Potter, Runescape, Eragon, and other fantasy-fiction books/games, Sword Art Online was right up my alley. I couldn’t get enough of it, and I think that is due to quality of storytelling. Now I’ve never seen myself as much of a writer, whether it be for television/movies, short stories, or anything else. This is because my storytelling skills are lacking; I can have an interest idea, but I really suck at expressing it in an entertaining way. I liked this series so much because the story was so relatable to my childhood interests. It had the right balance of action, character development, and general humor/entertainment to keep me hungry for more the entire way through. I know that as I try out my talents in writing this summer (which I think will be fun, hopefully it doesn’t turn out a mess),I will look to Sword Art Online as a guide for developing the plot and characters in an interesting way.

Violence in Media

Let us stop portraying the media consumed by a murderers as the cause for their crimes.

I was sitting in my family room with my Dad, discussing the Newtown mass shooting. I brought up the rampant scapegoating being condoned by the mainstream media with my father and he agreed, while adding "except that one game... what's it called?"

I guessed "Grand Theft Auto". That and Mortal Kombat are the two games that have been getting panned by the media for years for allegedly creating psychotic killers despite the fact that millions of people play them and they are just fine.

He said "Yes. That's the one where you shoot cops and rape prostitutes, right?" My Dad has never played the game, and based on what the media has communicated to him about the game, that's literally what he believes the game is about.

To set the record straight, the Grand Theft Auto series consists of loosely connected open-world games set against a sprawling story in the criminal underworld, more easily compared to Goodfellas than "raping prostitutes". You are given the ability to explore the game's world, always a parody of a major American city, at your leisure. If you want, yes, you can shoot a police officer with a bazooka. But where the media seems to stem away from the truth is that you are not rewarded by this or given "points" (I heard that once). Rockstar, the game's developer and publisher, spends millions of dollars making the best story they can tell in these games, all of which are critically lauded for their intricacy, plot, and humor. But my Dad, because of the media, believed it was about "shooting cops and raping prostitutes".

Likewise, since the culprit of the 2011 Norway mass shooting, Anders Brevik, mentioned that he prepared by playing Call of Duty, the media exploded, condemning its existence and essentially identifying it as a motivation in the cases of other murders.

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the highest sold video game properties of all time, with millions upon millions playing. Out of all of those people, literally a handful of people end up being mass murderers. I believe that you could find a different commonality between the murderers that actually identifies with a smaller demographic that could prove as an even better scapegoat. Maybe they all belong to yacht clubs, and only 6 million U.S. citizens belong to yacht clubs. YACHT CLUBS CAUSE MURDER!

It comes down to personal responsibility. If there is a violent game, it may desensitize your child a bit. I admit that I am somewhat desensitized to violence. But my parents did not neglect me growing up, and took the time to explain to me, I don't know, morality.

Blurring the Line

Over the past few months I have begun to rediscover my interest in video games. For several years I thought of them as childish and wanted no part of them. I have only recently looked at them as artwork, and that change in perpective was brought on by viewing the trailer for Assassin's Creed Revelations

I have never been so immersed in a trailer for a video game, at points I truly felt I was watching a film. The attention to and level of detail is astounding. This piece is phenomenal on every level, aside from the outstanding visuals that border on photorealism the music playing along with it is perfect. It captures the epic journey that is taking place within the brief length of the video.

The idea of video games as art is something that I ignored for far too long. I am excited to come back to the video game world with an entirely new perspective and re introduce myself to interactive art.

Let's Play

My friend Dan and I both love video games, and we’ve recently been pondering the idea of starting our own Let’s Play channel on Youtube. For those who don’t know, a Let’s Play is a series of videos that follow a player’s run through of a game, often including insightful or humorous commentary.

Our first mission is to figure out a way to capture footage; we considered capturing from a computer in a Park editing suite, but because we want to record multiple videos per week, we feel using a capture card may be more suitable. A well-known LPer going by the name NintendoCapriSun has a fairly affordable setup with a capture card that is a possibility: a Diamond VC500 with S-Video output.

This video shows NintendoCapriSun's setup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdQ395PdNn8

The second challenge with starting our Let’s Play is figuring out how to record clear audio for commentary. An obvious option would be to rent out a Zoom recorder from PPECS as it is a readily available and cheaper than buying another device; a Zoom H4n can run for about $270. After doing some research online, I found that many LPers record audio using a USB microphone, such as a Logitech desktop mic. While more expensive than the Logitech, a high quality alternative would be the Blue Yeti USB microphone.

Once we get set up, our goal is to produce four simultaneous LPs: a main game, a side game, a co-op game and a versus game. While this may seem daunting, many LPers record multiple LPs at once. For example, the Game Grumps produce daily videos, normally rotating between a series of three to four games. Additionally, the famous LPer Chuggaaconroy has a main LP on his own channel and a cooperative side LP on a collaborative channel. 

Dan and I decided that Super Mario Sunshine would be an entertaining main game, but we still have to decide on our side game, co-op game and versus game. If anyone has suggestions on games to play or ways to capture footage and audio, we would be very appreciative!

Video Game Graphics: Do They Matter?

Recently a whole slew of new video games have been released. Among them are Halo 4 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2. With these new releases i have been constantly overhearing conversations concerning things like how certain aspects of these games are but one thing always seems to be a serious topic within the discussion. Im talking of course about the graphics. It seems that graphics is one of the most important things to gamers these days. It makes sense. Why wouldn't you want to play a game that has the best graphics around.

While games like Halo and Call of Duty improve there graphics with each new release, there has a computer game released recently that challenges the idea that graphics are one of the most important parts of the game. The game i am referring to is called Minecraft. The concept surrounding this game is very simple. You are a character in an extremely blocky world, mining resources like coal and iron in order to build things. You can build anything from a house to a scale model of the starship enterprise. The graphics in this game are incredibly simple. Everything is made out of blocks and the coloring is very simple. There is no such thing as shading, all of the colors are basic and simple. The most interesting thing about this however is that this game is extremely popular. I found this very interesting because while it is fun to play (albeit extremely time consuming) the graphics look like something that would have been released 15 years ago. However Minecraft is extremely popular. Once released, all over the internet there were forums and screencaps popping up concerning the game and who could build the most ridiculous thing in there chosen world. I really like that this is as popular as it is. It has always bugged me when people get really serious about the graphics in there video games. I personally have never really cared. This shows that there are others out there like me who do not really care that much about graphics and are more concerned with the actual gameplay.

Wreck-It Ralph

Recently I saw Wreck-It Ralph, the new Disney movie that's an homage to gamers everywhere. Because I absolutely love video games, this movie was on my must see list pretty much the instant I heard of its existence and I'm here to say that it didn't disappoint.

The movie is about Ralph, a bad guy from the video game Fix-It Felix, which is basically Donkey Kong with different characters. He's tired of being a bad guy and he's tired of being treated with no respect by everyone around him, so one day he decides to leave his game so he can be a hero in another one. The movie is about what happens because of his actions.

The movie is a whole lot of fun, it's even more fun if you're a gamer because there are so many references to video games throughout the movie (obviously) but it's still enjoyable even if you aren't. John C. Reilly does a fantastic job as Ralph. He's funny, sympathetic and it really sounds like he's having a lot of fun in his part. I should also give recognition to Sarah Silverman who does an equally amazing job as Vanellope, who is a rambunctious kid from another video game that Ralph stumbles in to. These two together make for some great and funny moments throughout the movie.

Machinima and Other Content

Video games have been a huge part of my childhood and teenage years. Now, as a college student, I find myself playing them less and less (it's more of a time thing rather than an interest thing). Regardless, I still appreciate the value video games have when it comes to creativity and storytelling. One unique things video games can be used for is to create machinima.

We talked briefly about machinima in class. It is essentially using real-world filmmaking techniques and applying them to interactive virtual spaces, which in most cases is a video game engine. One could think of it as a hybrid between animation and traditional cinema.

The types of videos created using machinima vary from features to music videos. Yes, there is even an academy for machinima arts and an international machinima exposition. I personally don't know of any long-form machinima, but it most certainly is a legitimate form of art/filmmaking.

Some of the only machinima that I have watched is not even true machinima. There is a fantastic YouTuber, Captain Sparklez, who produces video game content as well as music videos about games such as Minecraft.

While some of his earlier work is done mostly through the actual game, some of his stuff (like the video above) does not use the physical video game engine at all to produce machinima content. The style and look is almost exactly like Minecraft, but is actually animation. I personally like it better.

The ability to tell stories through non-traditional ways is really interesting, and machinima is a great outlet. There are many popular series, such as Red v Blue (done using the Halo games). I am excited to see where this form of art can go.

More Zombie Stuff

Yeah, I know, another original post by me about zombies.

I'm fascinated by the Resident Evil series. I started liking Resident Evil when I started playing Resident Evil 4 for the Playstation 2. I loved the concept of the game, and just killing hundreds of zombies. This game made me start  watching the movies, which I liked just as much. I like how the games and movies are different, but similar at the same time. A lot of the movies were set in Raccoon City, like the games, and have a lot of the same concepts, such as the G-Virus and every other letter of the alphabet-Virus.

I also like how they incorporate some of the "special" zombies from the games into the movies. They keep the two separate by having different characters and having the movies go in a different direction in terms of story from the game. My favorite part of the movies and games is the story. I like the concept of an actual virus spreading instead of other zombie movies where the zombies just randomly pop up one day. I also like how the movies actually have endings and the characters have an objective. As much as I love Dawn of the Dead, there isn't really a point to it except survive. In Resident Evil there is a lot of betrayal, plot twists, an actual objective that they have to do, and many other things added to the story.

Pokémon: A Love Story

In class on Wednesday, I jokingly said I'd blog about Pokémon after I heard Arturo call it "nothing." At first the idea of blogging about it seemed silly, but I thought about it for a while and decided to just go for it.

Pokémon came to the great United States in 1998 via the Nintendo Gameboy. Released as two versions of the same game the handheld RPG swept the nation. Almost everybody — kindergartners to college students — were captivated by the Japanese wonder that was Pokémon. Nothing could be greater than exploring a world full of 150 unique creatures that you can raise as your own. I mean, who wouldn't want to be a ten-year old boy that gets to travel the world fighting with these awesome animal sidekicks? I'm as sure as Squirtle going to want to do that.

The following year, in 1999, an animated Pokémon television series made its way to the States. This too, captured the imaginations of people everywhere. The viewers followed Ash Ketchum as he attempted to become a Pokémon master. His adventures were humorous, and he makes friends along the way, finding them in both fellow trainers and in his Pokémon. Ash even made his way onto the big screen, with multiple movies. And to think this all started as a Japanese handheld game.

My personal story with Pokémon started with the TV show, then to the video game. I followed Ash's journey every Saturday morning when I was a child. I would struggle and cry as I had to leave for a soccer game before I found out whether or not he was able to get away from the evil Team Rocket. I would also cry when my Gameboy ran out of batteries and I couldn't play Pokémon Red any more. Car rides were so boring without my team of Charizard, Kadabra, Gyarados, Pidgeot, Nidoking, and Snorlax.

Childhood, so tough.

So what am I trying to get at here? I'm not trying to glorify a children's cartoon, and I'm not simply complaining that a professor thought my favorite game is silly.

Pokémon is a simple idea: a world is inhabited by "animals" that you can capture and raise as your own. We, as people, cling to this because it is both familiar and unfamiliar. We marvel at how absurd some of these creatures are, wishing we could have them as our own. We also see some of them as things we have here in our world: as birds, as fish, as plants, etc. Each of us take the Pokémon and give it a personality, allowing us to be a part of that world.

Something else I find amazing about Pokémon is its cultural impact. Starting 15 years ago in Japan, it has since morphed into Nintendo's second most popular franchise, only behind Mario. There are 16 seasons of the TV series, 14 films, dozens of video games, and a card game. The fanbase must be in the billions. Everything stemmed from the original video game. That's crazy. And I am glad I could be a part in the beginning of something so huge. I love it.

Bioshock

I know that in an earlier post I discussed video games, but now I'm just going to focus on one. There are many many great games that are out there and there are many games that I absolutely love but there is one in particular that holds a special place in my heart. That one would be Bioshock.

You play as Jack, a nonspeaking protagonist who is the only survivor of a plane that crash lands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Surrounded by water, the only thing nearby is a seemingly abandoned lighthouse. Upon entering it however you realize it's not quite what it seems to be. After a couple minutes of exploration you come across a bathysphere which when entered, takes you down into an underwater city; the city of Rapture. From here, the story begins.

Upon first glance this just seems like another first-person shooter. However very quickly you realize it's much more than that. The game isn't about mindlessly killing every bad guy it throws at you but instead it's about what's going to happen next. You become very interested in the world of Rapture and you become interested into  why this once great city completely fell apart. Each step of the journey is more interesting than the last.

By far the most engaging part of this game is its story. You really do wonder what happened to the city and to it's now deranged citizens. You wonder why you happened to be the only survivor of the plane crash that happened to land right by the city. The game brings up many questions but all of which are answered. Also this game probably has the best twist in any video game that I've played.

Halo 4

My schedule this semester is tough to describe, but on Monday through Wednesday I have about an hour to myself until 10PM. So in that hour there’s a forty percent chance that I’m playing Halo 3 on Xbox live. I’m hoping I can stop anytime I want, but I think it’s getting me hooked again. The last time I played this game would have been junior year of high school. After two years of not playing, as one can imagine, I was quite rusty. Was I specifically bad? No, but compared to how good I was one could say there was a lot of room for improvement.

I used to be amazing, the record on my old account was winning 881 out of 1009 games. Online you play against people that have the same "skill rank" on a scale from 1-50, 50 being the highest. The way you rank up is by continuously and consecutively winning games. Consequently if you lose, you rank down. To become a 50 you need to win roughly sixty games in a row. I would play with my best friend from home and I had a 50 in Team Doubles. In other playlists I had 48, 46, 42, 38 and 20 in a playlist I did not play much. So I enjoyed being able to not do homework in high school and constantly win games a majority of the time I played.  

So now the year is 2012, the year the world is supposedly going to end. And even though Halo 4 is coming out I feel as though the Halo franchise is officially over. A gameplay trailer of Halo 4 came out and it is no longer Halo. It lost many aspects of it that made Halo, well Halo. Throughout all of its life there was no ability to sprint in Halo, but they added it to this edition. On top of that they added gravity to sniper shots, to make it more realistic, but the thing about Halo was that there was nothing realistic about it in the first place. The main character is a six/seven foot tall man that can jump at least ten feet in the air. There are aliens, lasers, flying ships, you can get shot over fourteen times and still live, regenerate health quickly and you can flip tanks over with your bare hands.

On the release of Halo 3 they grossed over $300 million and millions of people played on Xbox live in the first few days. It had a lot to live up to the Legends of Halo, and Halo 2’s Xbox live experience, but they did deliver. My concern is if Halo 4 will be able to live up to the greatness of its predecessors. This is the first “Halo” game being made by a company other than Bungie. This will be made by 343 Industries. I hope that this franchise will continue to be great, but I am quite skeptical of if they have it in them to deliver a solid product.

LA Noire: First Video Game At Tribeca Film Festival

Speaking of Anniversaries...

I remember seeing that March 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the Blizzard gaming company (back then, it was called Silicon & Synapse). I didn't watch the entire video, but I thought it was interesting if your in the gaming culture and like computers. I think Arturo mentioned working in games at one point. Funny how in twenty years, the company went from some young college kids making computer games to one of the biggest gaming companies in the world responsible for such titles as World of Warcraft and Diablo.

Golden Doorknob

I'm working with Corinne and Matt on the Golden Doorknob project. Our idea as of right now is a live-action video game. I guess the general plot is that Waluigi locks Peach in a room and takes the doorknob away, so mario can't get to her. Mario has to chase Waluigi down in order to save Peach, but he has to go through different games (i.e. Pac-Man, Wii Tennis, and Tron) in order to do so. It's a little bit more complicated than that and there's going to be a real world and a game world, so we need to distinguish between the two. Anyway, we were talking about it and we think the biggest obstacle we are going to face is in post. If you guys have any suggestions of effects or filters to give it more of a video game look (sort of like Scott Pilgrim), we would love your input. Thanks!

3-Act Structure

In my media aesthetics and analysis class, we just got a reading about narrative structure, with the classic 3-act structure of a story having a beginning, middle, and end. Then, I saw an analysis of the 3-act structure as it is used today in video games (I put the video in the link).
But, I've recently been a bit frustrated by this concept. Media has changed so much since the oral stories of ancient times, and yet, the 3-act structure still exists in storytelling, though the order is sometimes rearranged. Why? Is the concept of everything having a start and end embedded in the human psyche, or can we get past it? Can anyone name a film, TV show, game, whatever that DOESN'T use the 3-Act structure? I can't, and I'm not even sure how to make a story without omitting the elements of start/end or adding anything else. Does anyone else find it scary that we as humans are restricted to understanding the world around us by how things start and end and we ultimately cannot comprehend the universe being infinite in time as well as space? I know, it’s weird to think this, but really…can anyone think of a story of any medium that didn’t use the 3-act structure somehow? I’d like to know.

BTW, I’m Face, a TVR major.

The Oneiric Universes

Among the chatter about these issues, an article by Séverine Fiévet published last month in the French magazine LE MONDE talks about the virtual approach to treat children with difficulties.

The psychoanalyst Michael Stora will open a private clinic (this month) in Paris (I wonder what the cost will be) where the therapy happens via a video game. He contends that by playing a better communication is established with the therapist.

With three full-time people, including one child psychiatrist, and fifteen psychologists, trained with the video game, the clinic will treat children and teenagers with psychological difficulties, with family or school problems or situations. The young patients will be received in a different kind of environment, with a giant screen, access to the Internet and to all the game consoles available on the market.

Stora says: "The unconscious is becoming visible. We are now close to the oneiric universes."