For those playing along at home

From the "Wow, that's WoW" dept.: this past Wednesday's South Park, "Make Love, Not Warcraft" (Ep. 1008) featured World of Warcraft. The MMORPG serves not only as the plot keystone (the SP boys confront a PvP player who has killed all other characters on their server), but also as a production platform. That's right, Machinima - and in both applications of the word. Often during my presentations, I speak of how Machinima is both production approach as well as genre - providing both method and context. This episode of South Park shows off both. Comedy Central (South Park's mothership) even marketed the episode with the tagline: "When South Park meets World of Warcraft, the boys go beyond your average machinima." Nice.

It gets even better. Apparently, our resident Machinima artists-turned-Blizzard-employees, Terran Gregory and Tristan Pope, were part of the South Park production, helping Trey Parker and Matt Stone machinimize the South Park episode. Kudos to Blizzard for recognizing not only how to market outside traditional means, but also embracing Machinima as a way to extend their product.

Colliding Worlds

Speaking of worlds colliding, a great little article surfaced this week about a great big person, George Lucas. (well, "big" in the sense of who he is, not how he is). In the piece, George reflects on where filmic entertainment is headed. Given ILM's development of ZVis and George's comments, I'd say it leans a bit in favor of Machinima. Then again, I'm both preacher and choir.

P.S. This week I've dusted off my director's cap and started production of a new Machinima episodic. More details to come as our production moves along.