Activision acquires Budcat for 'new game in the Guitar Hero franchise' originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Activision Publishing has announced today that it has gobbled up Iowa-based developer Budcat Creations. 

Budcat has a reasonably long history with Activision, having worked on PlayStation 2 ports of a number of games in the Guitar Hero franchise, including III, Aerosmith, and World Tour. We can only hope Budcat hasn't been doomed to a sweatshop-like life of working on Guitar Hero ports; apparently the studio is currently working on -- you guessed it -- a new game in the Guitar Hero series. 

The talent to build original titles is there -- Budcat was also responsible for the excellent original Wii title, Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy. Only time will tell if Activision lets the studio off the leash.

This past weekend saw the Machinima Filmfest 2008 here in New York City. Most regular readers of GameSetWatch more than likely know what the word machinima means, but for those who do not, it's basically a blanket term for filmmaking that's directly related to video games.

For the most part, it's a term given to the fruits and labors of amateur filmmakers who use video game engines to tell their own stories. For years now, those spearheading the movement -- as well as critics looking from afar -- have heralded the future of storytelling via this form. Meanwhile, others have needed some further convincing that it isn't just a niche effort and nothing more.

I suppose I'm part of the latter group. I was first exposed to machinima via a festival at the Museum of Moving Images, five or so years ago. To put it bluntly, virtually everything I saw left me in a state of utter boredom and confusion.

As I saw it, two things were holding the medium back:

- Inaccessibility: quite a few movies were based upon the games whose technology they utilized, spoke only to players of those games while leaving everyone else out in the cold.

- Over-infatuation with the form: everything else seemed more concerned and satisfied with the act of using game tech to make a movie than with the actual tale itself.

I figured back then that it would take some time for things to mature, before we finally got something of substance that could be approached by the rest of the world.

Five years later, it would seem that things are at least heading in the right direction. The festival consisted of two basic components; first and foremost, the movies, of course. All the Mackie Award nominees were projected on the big screen.

The selection is indicative of how far things have come. Quite a few of the nominees were entertaining even for those unfamiliar with the source material. You don't have to be a die-hard Halo fan to enjoy This Spartan Life, although it doesn't hurt to be one either. It was the other part of the festival, the panels, which provided the most insight into where things are and where machinima might be headed.

Interfacing Virtual Actors

The first panel I caught saw each speaker touching upon the concept of game technology as being in essence "live theater...enabling creative decisions in real-time, in the moment.” In that sense, machinima can be best described as digital puppetry.

Each person provided his own viewpoint, as well as technical solution to the struggle of getting virtual beings to look, act, and feel real. Perhaps the two most interesting examples, simply due to their bold-faced differences, were provided by Armando Troisi and John C. Martin.

Troisi, the lead cinematic designer at BioWare, demonstrated a bit of the work that went into animating the principle characters in Mass Effect. The system is a extremely complex one that allows for a wide range of complex human-like emotions to be created and adjusted by the numerous artists behind the game.

As sophisticated as the underlining technology might be, it's hardly automatic; Troisi noted that everything must go through "the hands of God" -- the aforementioned artists who ultimately control the show.

Serving as a counterpoint was the animation suite from Martin's company, Reallusion; iClone simplifies the process for aspiring filmmakers who lack a certain degree of resources and technical know-how, when compared to BioWare's experience for example, by providing drag-and-drop tools that take the concept of puppets on a stage to a far more literal level.

The real proof in the pudding was watching Martin animate a video game-like character realistically using the WASD keys. Traditionally, even the simple act of creating a walking animation has been a struggle for many users. Here, it remains quick and dirty, nothing close to resembling BioWare's final product.

But it works, and is immediately accessible by using a visual language that every gamer, even the most casual ones, can understand. In a Q&A session, most participants agreed that "reality is overrated" and that photorealism is simply a stylistic choice. As was also noted, "the actors in real movies are real, but they can't help it -- they're real!"

Machinima & Art

Up next was a panel on "Machinima and Art" which demonstrated how, for better or worse, the artsy-fartsy world knows that machinima exists. In fact, from the few examples that were shown, machinima might be the new video art of the 21st century.

One example, by French art collective Les Riches Douaniers, is a recorded clip of the rider from Shadow of the Colossus, recorded and manipulated to be even more solemn and barren. The piece was originally projected on a city wall, and its audio employed the sounds of the traffic nearby, which also proved to be a different approach from the traditional hacking of a game's engine to create an end product.

Then there was Annie Ok's use of Second Life. Two pieces were presented, one of her avatar doing an interpretive dance set to a black background -- the second of a series of films that explores her virtual self. The other was part of a mixed reality project in which a designer jeans sweatshop was set up in Second Life, with Ok as its documentarian.

It's odd that many of the trappings of the initial wave of machinima artists were evident here, specifically the obsession of the form to an almost narcissistic degree. But at least the pioneers didn't see a need to pile on superfluous tech with needless integration of Flickr and blogs.

But then again, the fine arts have always been about personal expression. People either get it, or they don't -- or they do and still think it’s dumb. The audience here appeared to be split 50/50, either completely engrossed (many appeared to be no strangers to the New York art scene) or totally bored to death (everyone else, or the "normal" people).

Grassroots Machinima

As such, the next panel, "Grassroots Machinima", which was about bringing machinima "to the people", was a breath of fresh air. All of the artists on stage for that particular hour were high school students or had just entered college. There were two young guys who simply loved movies and video games, and once they realized that the two could be merged, the creative juices simply flowed.

While not exactly original, one of the two dudes' homage to Kill Bill was earnest and lacking pretense. Gone are the days when kids are running around their backyards, recreating their favorite film scenes -- especially given that backyards are a dying commodity in themselves.

The rest of the kids, mostly girls, were part of an after-school program called Global Kids, for which they created movies in Second Life about pressing social issues.

Each of the kids hailed from New York City, and many did not have access to video games, let alone computers and the internet at home, which also meant that they had no idea that stuff like Red Vs. Blue (one of the more popular examples of machinima) existed before theit project began.

Where Do We Go From Here?

One of the final topics of the day centered around the state of machinima. Assembled was a trio of perhaps the most commercially successfully machinima creators today, including Chris Burke, the mind behind This Spartan Life; Frank Dellario of The Ill Clan; and Douglas Gayeton, creator of Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey.

The three passed along helpful advice to those that are serious about machinima by talking about their own difficulties, primarily when it came to dealing with other people's intellectual properties. Gayeton chose Second Life from the get-go to avoid such hassles ("Think IP all the way" was his motto), while Dellario used the Torque Engine because he wanted to be able to purchase a license and work with its authors in order to help deal with technical hurdles.

On the other hand, Burke's use of the Halo engine was something he couldn't keep a secret for long, due to the almost instant smash success of his series. "You can't hide when Marty [O'Donnell], the composer of Halo, wants to be on your show," he noted.

Gayeton detailed how his show, which at one point caused a bidding war between MTV, Sundance, and HBO, with the last network winning out, basically wrote itself. One HBO executive said, "You just explained what online lives are to me." When explaining how he managed to keep all ownership over his work, including DVD rights, Gayeton simply pointed out how anything otherwise would be like someone buying the rights to Eddie Murphy's likeness from Murphy. Gayeton's persona in Second Life, despite appearing artificial, was still very much himself.

That was simply one example of how machinima is rewriting entertainment laws and will continue to do so. If anything, the one clear message that was delivered by the festival, but accentuated in this particular panel, was that machinima is growing more accepted, perhaps thanks to the growth of online worlds.

Dellario, who does frequent work for hire, noted that machinima "is no longer a novelty, it's an actual production approach. It's changed the very definition of animation." He further suggested that "the gatekeepers of traditional animation just don't get it," due to how traditional content production such as animation takes far more pre-planning, execution, and post-production.

And so This Spartan Life's Burke had this one final piece of advice for all those eager to get their feet wet: "Don't sell yourself short. Whatever it is, try bringing [your creativity] to another audience."

Welcome to the land of the rising hotness in apparel, the land of the robotic games bloggers armed with road-worn laptops and rented cell phones and funny money with holes in it. They're strapped into their figurative fighter planes, ready to collide with the world's gaming capital, Tokyo, for God and Country and Internet. 

That's what I'm going to imagine when I rock my new Destructoid Kamikaze T-shirt, now available on SplitReason. Just short of sixteen bones buys you what I think is probably our best-looking shirt yet, and we have you to thank for its do-wanty goodness. 

Our Commander General asked the Destructoid community for their input on our Tokyo Game Show 2008 shirt. He took that feedback and relayed it to the poor, under-aged sweatshop workers, whose stomachs grumble from the undercooked gruel they're forced to eat because of us. Pat yourself on the back, right next to that sweet-ass Destructoid logo on the back of this new shirt.

We're not done with you yet, though. We want to make more shirts, so we're looking for your ideas for new ones. Please post your ideas in the comments below.  

[Update: Um, where are your comments? How are we going to know who give away the free t-shirts to if you don't comment? One hundred sounds like a good round number, doesn't it? So does two hundred. Maybe three?]

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• 12,669 new signups bringing the total to 13,232,610 signups.
• A peak concurrency of 61,300 at 2:10PM, and a minimum concurrency of 33,658 at 12:20AM. Median concurrency for the day was 50,279.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.96 (lower is better).
• Subsystem failures and partial failures from multiple causes seem to be averaging about two hours apart this week. Thanks to Prospero Linden for reading, and providing better information than the official blog.
• Shoshana Epsilon's exhibition opened at the Avatrait gallery. We're making a note here: huge success.
• ARC. Everyone's talking about it.
• Virtual sweatshop -- come and be cheap labor.
• The SpaceNavigator mouse was big last year. This looks bigger.

Continue reading Second Life Daily News

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

• 12,669 new signups bringing the total to 13,232,610 signups.
• A peak concurrency of 61,300 at 2:10PM, and a minimum concurrency of 33,658 at 12:20AM. Median concurrency for the day was 50,279.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.96 (lower is better).
• Subsystem failures and partial failures from multiple causes seem to be averaging about two hours apart this week. Thanks to Prospero Linden for reading, and providing better information than the official blog.
• Shoshana Epsilon's exhibition opened at the Avatrait gallery. We're making a note here: huge success.
• ARC. Everyone's talking about it.
• Virtual sweatshop -- come and be cheap labor.
• The SpaceNavigator mouse was big last year. This looks bigger.

Continue reading Second Life Daily News

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments