We're off on the road to Googlezon!

Hot on the heels of my previous post, is this great Flash short by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson called "EPIC", which prognosticates the trends of media convergence, and its cause and effect within the media industry itself. Very insightful and definitely provocative.

Enough about merging mediums, what about merging industries?

For the past two and a half years I've been closely watching a rather interesting event - the crossover of creative industry.

Just last week, Nintendo announced its forming of an animation studio for feature production. This, of course, is a new twist to recent news items - mostly around how Hollywood and its children industries have gravitated towards the gaming industry, knowing that a portion of their audience has sided with interactive entertainment as part of their pasttime appetite. Various entertainment corporations have created their own "games division" - some being fairly successful, others not so. While that trend is somewhat old news (and has also fluctuated over the past five years), I've kept an eye on the other end of the spectrum - the games industry exploring its boundaries.

Undeniably, the games industry has become a powerful force in the last 20 years. With this, we've seen game developers and publishers become large corporate machines, that have evolved their identity over the course of time, shifting their business models as well.

In particular is Electronic Arts. A small studio back in the plastic-bag computer games of the 80s, they quickly jumped ahead with classic games such as M.U.L.E. and SimCity. As EA evolved, so did its business, branching into different brands and showing off a slow progression of the corporations' trajectory. In addition, several name iterations of EA appeared -- EA Games, EA Studios, EA Entertainment, etc. - painting a picture of how the company is growing. Last month, EA developed its own record label, partnering with an small publisher Cherry Lane Music - and extending its reach. While this isn't a move to compete with larger music labels such as the Sonys and UMGs of the world, it allows EA to operate on its own without needing to pay heed (and $$$) to music rights and top name talent.

Understandably, this is EA - the largest game publisher in the world. But I believe its a telltale sign of the entertainment industry, which is why the Nintendo move is of note as well. Each see clearly see that they are developing an entity that encompasses a growing audience - and one that will only expand in the future.

So, what does this all have to do with Machinima? Machinima, in its definition, represents the how and why these businesses are coming together. Filmmaking bleeding into animation, which in turn, bleeds into interactive development - and all the variations in between. Thus, we see game publishers forming animation studios, movie studios developing game divisions, etc. I guess this is why I believe in Machinima so much - its evident that as an artform it represents the crossover of entertainment creation. Of course, the creation of entertainment is ultimately where the foundation of these corporations exist. While, I don't believe Machinima will replace currently existing creative techniques, it is interesting to note how the industries are shifting/merging in parallel to the mediums.

Expect more events in the next year to further this process. I anticipate we'll see additional partnerships (if not outright mergers and purchases) between film/broadcast/games/animation studios/software developers - one only needs to consider Alias' purchase of Kaydara earlier this year. It will be interesting to see what transpires. Will 2005 will be the year we see SoftImage partner with Valve to intergrate the Source engine with XSI? Or even larger, a possible partnership between EA and Universal Studios? Stay tuned.

Half-Life 2 & Machinima

To start, I'll mention my latest freetimekiller - Half-Life 2. I haven't carved out time to play a game since the DOOM 3 release, but I managed to steal some hours this weekend to play Half-Life 2. Simply said, what a wonderful beast. While you can read the numerous "what a fantastic game!" reviews - mine would be no different, so in order to keep things efficient I'll leave it at that. However, I will say that the one item I'm impressed with the most is the environments and the atmospheres they create. In playing the game, you're given a variety of locales - be it squirming through ventilation ducts or racing along a desolate shoreline with a modified dune buggy - each location gives you a "you are there" feeling. Its Valve's excellent attention to detail that makes this possible (not to mention a kick-ass engine).

While I could easily while away the hours trying to complete HL2, I wouldn't do my creative yearnings justice if I didn't focus some on HL2's Machinima capabilities. After coming across one more yet beautifully made map, I decided to call up the console and test out HL2's demo recording. I was glad to see that it was both intact and working.

What impressed me the most, though, was a new utility Valve included called "DemoUI." DemoUI is an interface for demo playback and editing. Yep, you read that right, folks - editing. While this doesn't give us a Keygrip2 for the Source engine (this is one Machinima filmmaker who would love to see that!) it does give you the ability to post-produce your demo files. This includes adding fades, changing FOV (zooming), parsing commands during playback, changing playback speed, etc. Also of note - DemoUI includes "DemoSmoother" which allows you to modify the recorded camera (aka first-person) paths in a demo file.

All of this isn't documented yet in the latest SDK, but word from on high (Yahn) is that it will be at some later date. In the meanwhile, I've started putting together some HL2 demo recording tutorials, which I will post once they're in some sort of legible form.

One final note: its great to see Valve embrace the demo recording feature and add to its functionality. Clearly, they see the advantages of demo recording and know how useful it is for Machinima-related projects. A standing ovation to Valve on this. I personally hope that other game developers follow their lead and implement similar demo tools in their 3D engine technology.