Machinima, real-time filmmaking, virtual production and VR. Four veteran machinimators share news, new films & filmmakers, and discuss the past, present and future of machinima.
Ricky Grove 00:12
Welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima with coffee this time, caffeinated. I'm Ricky Grove. I'm here with my pals, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine. And Hi, I'm Phil Rice.
Ricky Grove 00:28
Remember him from last I still?
Phil Rice 00:30
I still am. Yeah,
Ricky Grove 00:32
we're starting our September Movie Reviews. But first, we're going to do just a quick rundown of a little bit of news. Phil, have you got something for us?
Phil Rice 00:42
Yeah, I've been a little paying a little bit more attention to Twitter lately. There's, I kind of went through and took advantage of some of the features in there lists and communities and that kind of thing, which helps tune the feed to be stuff that that's, you know, that your, say you're interested in. And so I've gotten a lot of posts fly by my face this week. Regarding AI, and the developments there, particularly with regard to AI, artwork. And, more specifically AI generated video, there is some, it's not really leaping forward, you know, like, I think the biggest thing was that whatever the name of the AI generated video, the big one is starts with an R and now I've lost it like an idiot, but the way what replay or runway, runway, thank you replay. Now you can generate instead of 14 second videos, it's like 18 seconds, and like everyone's just setting off fireworks, just excited about. But there are some really incredible things people are starting to do with it. On the artistic side of things, you know, I mean, I think ultimately, where this thing is going to find its pocket is I think it's going to put the stock video business out of business, you know, because if you could just put in a prompt, and have it generate, you know, stock footage of Skylines, or landscapes or explosions or whatever. You know, that's, that's, that's the practical application. But there's people that are doing some really interesting artistic stuff with it. And what I'll try and do is get some links, we can put in the the show description here. But yeah, some some really interesting stuff going on leonardo.ai, which is generated things. That's my favourite. Me too. I've I've worked some with mid journey. But this this one has a full on app. And it's just, it's just a, it's a different point of access to essentially the same technologies mid journey, maybe not all the same features. But it's wonderful to work with, there's all different types of rendering engines that you can pick and I like it a lot. I'm using it for concept art, for productions I'm working on and it's there is still a free version of it. So that's probably the looming cloud over all this is eventually none of this is going to be free anymore. You can still have free access, it's limited of course, but limited free access to these tools. I hope it stays that way for a long time. But but all of them have a paid upgrade option to either get higher quality renders or faster, you know you're you're higher in the queue. And there's a lot of people putting money into which is great. But if you don't have a you know, a budget for that kind of thing. It's kind of like if you if you signed up for every possible AI generation tool that offers a sign up, you know, chat GPT and Leonardo and my journey, it would be like it's kind of like everyone's streaming services profiles nowadays you know, you don't you've got politics and Hulu and Disney plus and one show on Paramount Plus, I've got to see it's just all that is in such flux right now the same is true for AI tools. So it'll be interesting to watch. But there's there's, there's some beautiful stuff being made on the artistic side, that maybe doesn't get as much attention as the people who are just in it to figure out how to make a buck. So that's worth keeping an eye on. I'll also make sure one other thing because Damien is way too humble. To mention it we were just brainstorming of what's everyone gonna mention? And the obvious news? Is Damien's series hitting a million views? Yeah. Is that what it views on the series or is it a million subscribers? I know a millions involved but what's the details on this?
Damien Valentine 04:44
So what I did is halfway through the book, I edited those individual videos into a movie. Nearly two hours long. That's the right video that's got a million views.
Phil Rice 04:54
Oh man. Amazing.
Ricky Grove 04:56
Congratulations. Yeah. Well done.
Damien Valentine 05:01
still not quite sure how to feel about it, because it's not something I expected. I just started off as a little test video.
Ricky Grove 05:08
Yeah. Good. Thank you. Tracy, I think you had some news, didn't you? Oh, it
Tracy Harwood 05:18
was going? Well, I was going to sort of mention that we've, we've been covering some of the AI tools for a little while on the blog. And I've got about, I owe you about 30 updates on different tools that have come out of which Runway is one that lots of folks are using, but I think there are some tools that will enable you to sort of populate them with your own datasets, and then generate your own content. Like that, which I think is, you know, I My gut feeling is, that's a much better route to go with this stuff. If you've got the right sort of frameworks, but there's everything from you know, 2d to 3d image story generation, to creating worlds to creating games, to, you know, creating characters, interactive characters, and, and all of that sort of stuff, which I think it's just a fantastic set of developments for anybody that wants to, to create, I think you really just kind of have to do your research and find the tools that work best with whatever workflow you want to develop. Because it's such, you know, as Phil said, there's so many different tools, it's such a vast area now it's really, you make whatever whatever of it that you can that works for you. But I think, you know, in our in our machinima world and from our, from our background and perspective on this thing, there's one thing I will say, which is that, you know, however, people are trying to sort of say this tool is for that part of the virtual production process, the one thing we've learned over the years is that all these tools conflate that process in order to create new workflows. And I think what we're up against here is this workflow is continually evolving, and bits are gonna get chopped out. And different bits are going to be added in over a course of a period of time. So I don't think it's a one size fits all, I think it's whoever's left standing in the world of AI generation and however they converge into either into a an organisation that you know, because eventually these things will start to be bought out by each other. So whoever's left standing, or however you want to use it, and whatever new tool sets are coming through, think it's whatever you want to do with it really,
Phil Rice 07:44
Americans or American entrepreneurs. Go ahead. I was just gonna say that's a that's a really good observation, Tracy, because yeah, but this thing is very much in flux. And I guess a cautionary note would be, don't invest too much into how to do it through one particular tool, try to, if you're if you're diving into this, and you want to get something out of this, learn as much as you can about the general processes in general knowledge, because, yeah, this or that particular vendor, these are not going to be around, you know, not all of them. Right? Tracey's right? And it's kind of like a big battle royale right now. And a lot of these are going to get absorbed and merged and just plumb taken away. Yep. So yeah, in general knowledge is what's going to be what's valuable general knowledge about interacting with some an engine like chat GPT just learning how prompting works. That is, that is a major, major skill set going forward. For this for this century. I think that written communication, it already was one of the most important tools for a job skill set in in the world, it's going to become even more important, because the people who are really getting the most out of these things are not the ones who are the most, let's say talented digital artists. They are the best communicators. They know how to communicate to these AIs to get a result out of it and there's a whole there's a whole industry of that cropping up of people selling Hey, I've discovered these prompts and they're selling them as bundles those are all over the place. Yeah, I advice would be learned that skill yourself. Rather than buying these, you know, packets of you know, prompting what works is going to is continually changing. What worked a year ago in the older version of chat GPT is not effective in chat GPT for for example. So yeah, that general knowledge and it's the knowledge base really is about communication is about word choice. And and whether you're working with your own probably If that model, which is really technically challenging to do right now, by the way, that's not always going to be that way. But if you're going to set up your own model and feed it with your own stuff, there's a lot of technical expertise required for that. I don't think that'll always be the case, someone's going to someone's going to Windows this thing, you know, and take, instead of having to type at a command prompt, like in the days of DOS, Bill Gates, or whoever comes along, and creates this user interface, and all of a sudden, boom, it's accessible to the entire world, with a much lower technical knowledge set required. That's what's gonna happen with AI. But the more you can learn about how it works, and how to interact with it, I think the more valuable it's going to be. In almost every job and every industry, it's going to be involved in some way.
Ricky Grove 10:51
Yeah, well, American business has always had a nose for money. And when profit pops up in a new technology, they run like crazy to invest. So I think it's going to be driven primarily by that. And you're right. However, there's a looming Colossus and that's the legal decision upon whether what's copyright and what isn't. Now the there was a ruling this last week by about the Library of Congress, because it was Library of Congress said that they couldn't copyright a particular AI generated art. And the man who generated it's appealed, and that appeal was decided in favour of the Library of Congress. So at this point, AI generated Art cannot be copyrighted, not 100%. There are some, there are some exceptions that are carved out. So it's not absolute. But that's the first step, the big step is going to be whether it's a violation of artists copyright to use it in the database, which I'm not sure it is. But we'll see. We'll see how that turns out, that's going to be a big thing. Personally, I am not really good at prompts. And I don't like long elaborate prompts. Because it's like talking to Spock, you have to make everything literal, you know, you can't assume that Spock knows the context of what you're talking about. So you have to say every single thing. So I've been playing with stability doodle, which you do a sketch, and then you do a simple prompt, and then choose the way the forum you want it to come out in anime, cartoon photography, 3d model, low res model. And I've been experimenting with that on my iPad, because only takes one or two minutes to come up with just something off, you know, off the top of your head and rising up out of a lake with the fingers in flames, you know? And then you draw a little stupid illustration to that. And then it does it and it iterates three different versions of it and you choose the one year one. I have really been enjoying it. i It's really
Phil Rice 13:03
good at it. Yes, yes. exceptionally good. Yeah.
Ricky Grove 13:07
And I even tried some abstract art, meaning lines in prisms and circles and things like that, and then saying abstract art bah, bah, bah, blah, blah. And that's come up come out interesting. Now the last thing I want to say is that I think the application for machinima relating this to Machinima is good, because for one thing, there's a workflow using something like Reallusion's Character Creator, you can do backgrounds create the backgrounds AI generated, and then use the character just gotta make sure you blend them, composite them correctly. You can also get ideas for characters by learning AI generated prompts, and coming up with interesting characters and then using that as a basis to design them in character creator. So there's a lot of application for machinima, especially those who want to do creative stuff. But it is fascinating and I'm, I'm really, really interested to see how the future goes with it. Now, I have one last piece of information I'm going to give you, you know, I'm just impassioned about Elden ring. While there's a mod that was just released by a team that did a mod for Dark Souls three, which is part of the from software series that led up to Eldon ring, and it's called the convergence mod, and it takes Eldon ring, and it fixes a lot of quality of life stuff. For example, one of the things you have to do in the vanilla version of Elden ring is when you you're out gathering materials in order to craft things that you can use. Well, whenever you see something you have to go up, click a button to collect it. Well in the mod, it automatically picks them up. So it saves you time it's created In 27, new starting classes with about 100 new spells a high and about 10 new bosses to play completely reoriented certain areas that were sticky and goofy. And I'm loving. And I'm about three quarters of the way of a playthrough. Now, and I'm loving it. So we'll put a link to the to the free download right now because it's alpha. And it's not that hard. I was worried that because the Elven ring is good through Steam, right. And steam has a pretty strong policy about using mods. However, if you go offline, you can instal the mod and play offline, and there's no problem. If you want to go back online, it's all you have to do is delete the folder. That's it. You don't have to do anything else and you can go back online, so it's not a real danger to play it. I highly recommend it. It's a lot of fun. Okay, so that's our a little bit of news today. Hey, you told me you didn't have anything, dude.
Damien Valentine 16:09
I said the Ghostbusters thing. All right, go ahead. So a friend of mine is really into the old Ghostbusters films. And he's really excited because they're making a new one. And he posted this video on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. And what they're doing is because emptying the streets so they can use it the streets of New York at Syracuse for filming purposes is very expensive and time consuming. And if you want it to be the certain time of day, you've only got a very limited amount of time to do it. What they've been doing is the they've been turning to Unreal, and the real time animation to do all those kinds of street shots. So there's a there is a test video of the Ghostbusters car. It's called navigating through busy New York streets, the marshmallow man's there. And the basically the card goes up and writes to the marshmallow and you explodes. And that's their test video. And they released it for the public to have a look at. And the second half of this video is showing how they made it. So they start talking about unreal. And they've got a guy in a motion capture suits, which is it's not one of those ones his balls on that you'd expect anymore. It's like the ones that people have for the home kits that we've been seeing. Yeah, do videos. So that guy like that he was doing the marshmallow man stuff. And then he was I think he's doing some of the pedestrian stuff. And I think what they were using, they didn't specify because obviously there's copyright issues there. But I think they're using the matrix city that we were talking about. So you start with the environment. But more is that the Ghostbusters chi and and even though they race is just a test version of it. They're using this technology to produce the actual footage in this film, which is going to be released sometime next year. So I'm excited. Yeah. about it. And when my friend posted a comment saying, This is what I do for St. Empire, except they've got more money.
Ricky Grove 18:08
Well, that's great. That sounds like a lot of fun.
Damien Valentine 18:10
Yeah, I say.
Ricky Grove 18:13
So. So we're all done. Right? And I can move on? Yeah. Great. So this is the first of a series of reviewed movie reviews that we generally do. And we're going to start off with my pick. Prep to preface my pick one of the signal events in my life in terms of my creative. The way I think about creative things and how to create them was the original Twin Peaks TV series. I was a young actor, relatively young in my early 30s, in Hollywood and I had made friends with a screenwriter named Robin Green who went on to who was very famous writer for Rolling Stone. By the way, I didn't know that when I met her and went on to write for the sopranos, one of the lead writers in that and we had become friends and we watched every episode, I think it was Friday night. We would get together Friday night, get a pizza or something and watch the episode. And it was just mind bending. The creativity and the combination of satire and black humour and just sheer strangeness was I had never seen anything like it on television ever before. So while I was going through a searching for something to pick this week, I came across a demo video of Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks into the dark, and it's a game version of it somewhat of a low poly version of it put together and I just think it is terrific. Now it's not a complete story. It's a it's a advertisement in a way that shows what you can do in the game. There's, it's really the thing that's most that I like most about is that it captures the the feeling of that sense of strangeness and ominous pneus that you get it leaves you with a feeling. And doing that I can forgive any technical things like for example, it has sort of an old fashioned thing of where the cue, you play the character, like Cooper, and you go and you talk to somebody, and then the dialogue is in a little bottom portion of the screen, the bottom quarter of the screen, and it has the original persons from the TV series image on it, which I thought was a mistake. I think they should have used the image from the game rather than the original series, but tiny little thing. And sometimes the the graphics are poor in places and it makes it hard to to you pop out believing what's going on. But overall, I enjoyed it immensely. I hate to say but I forgotten who made it. You remember? I'm sure you know,
Tracy Harwood 21:10
Tracy, blue rose team.
Ricky Grove 21:13
blue rose team. Well, it's a free game. The demo is out. Now you can download the demo. We'll have a link to it. I can't wait to play it. I will actually take time off from Elden ring to do it. So that's how so that's how serious I am.
Damien Valentine 21:32
About this game. Hey, while you Wilkie down with Ricky. I don't know, though.
Ricky Grove 21:37
So hey, what are your What are your thoughts about this?
Phil Rice 21:41
I enjoyed this for a lot of the same reasons you did Ricky. My first exposure to the Twin Peaks universe was actually the movie The first movie fire walk with me fire walk with me. Yeah, I had I had never seen the TV show when it was on. But a friend of mine in college introduced me to the movie and it had had the same effect on me that I think the TV show did on you. It's just like, I've never seen anything like this. This is this is weird, of course, then. Then we go down a whole Lynch rabbit hole, you know, like this, you gotta see blue velvet. And then it's like, a whole new level of weird, right? So and yeah, this this this demo, and I assume the game too will it does it captures that distinctly David Lynch strangeness, that kind of just, it kind of gives you the creeps, but not in the same way that like a really effective horror movie might, you know, it's different. It's, it's, it makes your hair stand on at points. You know, I'm talking about just Twin Peaks in general. But you also like you, I'm riveted by it. Like, I can't take my eyes off the screen, because I have no idea what's going to happen next. There's not many movies or TV shows or, you know, visual stories that can do that. To someone who's watched a lot of them, you know, it's hard to surprise us. We're jaded by the very experience of having watched so many movies. And yeah, this, this world that he's created is a very unpredictable universe. I liked the retro look, I'm kind of partial to it, it. The low poly look reminds me a little bit of like Quake two or that era, which is where I really, really got into gaming heavier than ever. It's interesting, though, because there are elements of this. It reminds me a little bit of a game, a demo for a game or a movie made in a game, Ricky that you picked maybe about a year ago, that was deliberately retro looking. I think it was this guy was flying a spacecraft through some very low poly universe while talking about something that had happened with his wife brand new boyfriend or Yeah,
Ricky Grove 23:58
right. So good.
Phil Rice 24:00
And that too had a sense of okay, this is sculpted to look retro. But there's things in it that it's like, well, wow, a retro game couldn't do that. And the thing that stood out to me with this was the character animation. The character animation is very precise the feet. There's no sliding the feet on the floor, which is which very common, we didn't even think about it. In the late 90s. The movements are very, you know that that was clearly done with modern tools. And yet it's this blocky, almost half life look to some of the characters. Right. But I like that I don't, it'll be interesting to see. I think there's more of a taste out there for that than people think they they assume that it's only old fogies like me and Ricky that that will relate to that, but I don't know you'll look at a game like of course, I found an excuse to bring it up again, but Project Zomboid, which looks like an early version Have the Sims one graphics, it's still being actively developed today. It's got this huge fan base people playing it. And it's not because it's pretty, it's not a pretty looking game at all. So. And there's all kinds of indie games like that that are out there that are not going for cinematic realism. And yet, because the gameplay is engaging enough, it's finding its audience. So I think this, this game has got a good chance of doing really well. And I don't know, I may, I may, I may pick up the game. Just just, I want to see more of this. It's cool. It's very it's Tracy mentioned before the show that there's a there's a nostalgia thread that runs through some of that. And that's definitely true for this one, but not in a cheesy way. But just those just those iconic red curtains in the room. It's tough. It's just and the weird jaggedy floor, it's in the thumb. Yeah, it just takes me back to that the unforgettable first time I've ever seen someone do that type of scenes, literally, that Twin Peaks delivered, you know, the whole backwards thing was just brilliant. And, you know, it's been imitated so often now that sometimes people forget where that came from. But when he did it, nobody had ever done that. It was it was creepy. And it was weird. And it was in the era of when backmasking was all the all the satanic rumours about backmasking were at their peak. And here, he uses it in this artistic way, and leverages that creepiness that the culture has infused all of us with when hearing that backpass talk. Oh, it's just just wonderful. That's just one example. So and of course, Kyle McLaughlin's character. He was just just brilliantly weird. In that story and too many things to name. I could go on for an hour. Yeah, I love it. I'm glad you picked this. I didn't I didn't know about this game. And I'm glad. Glad you let us know about it.
Tracy Harwood 26:59
Cool. I'm gonna boy, boy, do you want me to go? Or do you want to go?
Ricky Grove 27:02
Sure. Go ahead. Well, me? Yeah. Yes, you Tracy. So
Tracy Harwood 27:10
I have to say in the 90s, I was steeped in workI stuff and this whole thing passed me by. So I've come at this with not the same nostalgia for it that you guys have. And certainly not the experience of in fact, I've never even watched this. The original Twin Peaks. So So I come at this with a clean slate. So bear with me. I had to do the background side of this as well.
Phil Rice 27:34
So big centuries, because I think this is one of the only television shows in the last 40 years that wasn't first made on BBC television. And then America copied this one original actually. You wouldn't have
Tracy Harwood 27:49
seen it. Yeah, well, I did. While I was actually in the States during that period of time. However, anyway, 1990s it was launched 1990 Read, as far as I can see classic TV series by Mark frost. And David Lynch originally premiered in 1990. So it's pretty old. It's been designed, though, as an early Sony PlayStation One game, this kind of what they call this fat, fat controller thing. So it was designed for the or in theory designed to be played with that DVD player, which wasn't ironically, actually launched until the mid 1990s. I think it was launched in December 94. So you've got the homage to the series. But for for a retro gaming period. That was a little bit later. Now. I didn't know about the films or not not. I don't know what the dates of the films were. But so there's that sort of early 90s, early night. So it's all about the same sort of time. But the but the game. PlayStation was a little bit later. And these guys, there's been created by a guy called Lucas Gruber, and John Manzoni who are French game developers behind this indie studio blue rose team, and they're based in Montpellier in Toulouse. Now, John has previously worked for did X art, and has produced or has been on the production team for a game called Road 96, which launched a couple of years ago, and it has a kind of similar retro ish, kind of adventure style to it as you've got in this, I think. And then the the blue rose team basically said that they've created this entirely in their spare time, having grown up being hugely influenced by the the Twin Peaks series as clearly lots of folks have been. It's a full game that's in development, and as I understand it, their intention is to release it as as a free game and as an unofficial tribute to the original series. So not the film's I think, but the series. And as obviously a style of it is this sort of survival horror game reminiscent of Silent Hill and Resident Evil. And as I understand, it also includes a lot of footage from the show, which, which is interesting, because quite a few of the folks that I've found reviewing it are purposefully not including screencaps of the content of this demo in their reviews. Now, this first demo apparently covers the events, the Special Agent Cooper, and his arrival at Twin Peaks and his first encounter with Laura Palmer and the Black Lodge. So it's that kind of part of the the beginning part of it. And design standard has been designed to specifically recreate the unique atmosphere of the show from, from the various sort of comments. And, you know, from those, I think, what, what you can see is that, for many people, it appears to achieve what it set out to do. But what's interesting here is that it's been primarily promoted by word of mouth online, you know, a couple of French creators hitting an american market primarily from what I can see of it. And it's been picked up already by such game review sites as polygon, and also the horror games community, which is huge. And I'm sure, Ricky, that's one that you're tapped into, as well, with Lisa, and whatnot. And so far as I understand it, it's been downloaded around 11,000 times. Only, having been launched a couple of weeks ago, literally, as we sit here and talk about what's great, which is astonishing, I think, and some of the reviews of it have been viewed in the in the 10s of 1000s of times, so 20 40,000 times, so it's obviously tapped into a really big market for it for it's interesting, I suppose. I have to say, I'm a little surprised that it has got such a large audience. Given that I think what it is, is kind of a quite niche conflation of these two markets, really one for these 1990s TV show and the other for the PS X game. So it's clearly tapping into some, some form of nostalgic community that transcends different fan based content, like like you said, Phil, you know, it was reminiscent of Quake two for you as well. Now, I saw that due to its popularity, they've been asked to stream a live play through for it for for their various fans. But what they've said is it's likely to be a problem because they've used both the music of Angela, is it battle Amenti. Yes. And Julie roses voice from the original series, which they explain is absolutely endemic to their creation in the game format that they've done. And therefore what they're saying is that they're unsure how the streaming service is going to deal with the IP issues. And I guess that's always going to be one of the challenges with this kind of project. And it's clearly something that others have picked up on too. And that's probably why some of the folks the big you know, the the bigger name folks that are reviewing this are also not including specific screencaps from the gameplay in or the film, or the or the TV series in their reviews of it, which I do think is a very interesting thing. However, I think what it's doing is something different, it's clearly an example of transformative use of the material. And we've seen, you know, we've covered I certainly covered on the blog, some of the issues to do with transformative use of content and how that's acceptable to, you know, under copyright law. So I think they're probably in the clear with this can you know, considering that they can claim this kind of transformative use. As I said, I never really got into Twin Peaks. I remember hearing very, very sort of folks talk about it, but I never have watched it at all. It's a horror genre. It's never been something that has ticked any of my boxes isn't in any way at all really beyond the sort of early hammer, Hammer stuff in the 1970s I didn't get much beyond that sort of stuff, and the alien totally freaked me out. So that's, you know, this, this was not would not be something I would choose to go and sit and watch. But what you've got in this and the way that this is presented is is really what I would say is all the 90s feels in its presentation the screen size, which kind of intriguingly changes throughout the video presentation in this in this trailer for it. The you know the pixelation, the character movement, which are all on point, I think for the data aesthetic that is clearly being aimed at here and Give you an example of that kind of aesthetic. Do you remember the the bit where Laura Palmer's hair is be is, is being ordered, it's sort of laid out the back of her head on this on this Gurney or whatever. And her hair is actually part of the sheet. Because of course, in those days, they didn't have meshes. So you know, sort of that and various kind of low poly assets and, and the text on the screen and the way that you can kind of move through it are all on point for creating recreating the feeling of a 90s game. I think it's been described in the in the various media channels that have picked up on it as the game the show should have made but never did. Despite the fact that the show was apparently in that show has also inspired numerous other games, I think, including ones called Deadly Premonition, Alan Wake, and Kentucky Route Zero, I don't know if you've ever
Ricky Grove 36:04
the last two I've played. And yeah, that's definitely true.
Tracy Harwood 36:09
Okay, and then, of course, the music in the video is from the show. But beyond that, I'm afraid I kind of struggle to comment. It's dated looking, it's retro style is clearly appealing to this target audience. And I suspect it's absolutely tapping into a, you know, a core of of a fans that are very much demanding this kind of content. And I think it's that retro movement that's so fascinating. And in terms of what you're showing us here, Ricky is it's a it's a great pick from that point of view. Another one, and it feels absolutely right with the other one as well. That kind of retro pick, retro game style is seems to be very fashionable at the moment, for whatever reason. And maybe it's because what we've got is a generation of people that have reached a certain age, when they're looking for, you know, some some things that take them back to some things that they knew that the current generation perhaps doesn't know so well. So that, you know, they may be looking for some bragging rights or something against a generation that's soaring away with tick tock about which we know, next to nothing. But you know, I think, from that point of view, we're probably likely to see a whole lot more of these kinds of transformations. And that kind of led me to think well, what other kinds of dated TV shows particularly TV shows might we see this kind of treatment being given to and then I was thinking, Well, you know, haven't seen much made with mash or with Dad's Army, or indeed with us aura, Hammer Horror spectaculars that we all remember. So I guess we've got a way to go with this kind of thing, in terms of the future of retro style. content such as this anyway.
Ricky Grove 38:01
So you think a person who has never seen Twin Peaks and doesn't know anything about David Lynch? wouldn't find this, they would find this uninteresting?
Tracy Harwood 38:11
Well, I didn't understand what was going on. I have to watch. I had to watch a few little video video clips of the early parts of Twin Peaks to even get a handle on what was going on in the video. I didn't understand what that was. I knew what
Phil Rice 38:27
let me make that easier for you, Tracy, if you're if you were to sit down and watch Twin Peaks, you wouldn't know what was going on either. That's a part of its charm.
Tracy Harwood 38:37
Yeah, but to be horrified. I don't think that's the sort of bit that probably doesn't cut it for me. But
Phil Rice 38:45
I watched all of it and I'm still not 100% Sure I know what's going on. It's it's it's a like freaky said it's mind bending. It really is. A couple things came to my mind when you were covering stuff there. One is, it makes me wonder if they've got that much IP from, you know, first of all, the battle Amenti soundtrack is definitely a copyrighted work. The TV show itself, the the network's and creators that are very protective of that IP. So it makes me wonder, well, what arrangement did they make to be able to include it in the game at all? Because that is a much more, even if it's smaller scale, that's a much more egregious copyright situation to include the actual files for the music and these video clips and distribute it for money. They had to have made some kind of arrangement for that. So it's very interesting that that what's that?
Tracy Harwood 39:43
They haven't? No, then they and they openly say that they haven't there is no there is no official relationship whatsoever between what they have created here and the original so I, you know, there could be
Phil Rice 39:57
a gamble, you know? Yeah, it could it could it'd be that the only reason the game is allowed to be is because the right or wrong person hasn't noticed yet. That's very scary, I would think, well, I, I've invested into development of this.
Tracy Harwood 40:11
And I think, you know, when you're talking about 10s of 1000s of people downloading it and promoting it, you know, it's not gonna notice, yeah, of course,
Phil Rice 40:20
download it while you can. And they very well may go. Like, for example, if it's completely up to David Lynch himself, it would not shock me at all, at all, if he just said, great, you know, but usually, the creator and writer isn't the one making those calls, it's somebody at a desk somewhere in a legal department. So I certainly hope for the best form on that. The other thing that I thought about too, was this, this question of the appeal of, of these retro games? It is an interesting one, you know, how in the world do we explain the persistence of a game like Minecraft, you know, which was built with a very deliberate, primitive look, even when it was built. And that's, what, way more than a decade ago, and it's still one of the most popular games in the world, you've got a there's so many others. And what I can't help but wonder is, if any of the reason for there being a market for that is economic, related in that, you know, people who are, let's say, firmly middle class, can afford the latest NVIDIA card to play Elden ring or the latest Rockstar Games thing or whatever. But there's a whole lot of people who don't have those kinds of resources, who are still using older computers or just can't, you know, can only afford inexpensive computers, and those can run Roblox and Minecraft, and Project Zomboid. And probably this, so I can't help but wonder if, if that's a part of it is, is that there's a whole segment of the gaming community, let's say that if all games were at Eldon ring level, there would be far fewer gamers, you know, because it requires a graphics card that well I think nowadays you can get for several $100. But when when there was the NVIDIA crisis, it was well over 1000 Just for the card. Yeah, probably another 800 to 1000 for the PC to support that card. And so I wonder, it'd be interesting to see a demographic study of, because not everywhere in the world, I think it's mostly in the West, where there's a significant audience of people who have that kind of disposable income like me, like you like, like us. But there's a lot of people who wouldn't, let's say qualify for that, in terms of being able to afford that hardware. And these games are appealing for them because it can run on it. I mean, write this in Minecraft, and Roblox it can run on anything. It can run on X, Windows XP machines with old Intel pre core processors, you know, it's, it's amazing. So, yeah, I wonder if that's part of it.
Ricky Grove 43:19
You also make me think that perhaps another reason why it's be it's appealing is that it's story based, instead of fighting base. A lot of very AAA games are all about fighting, get your sword, get your gun, get your RE gun, get your, your device, your tank, whatever in fight. Well, maybe I think there's a lot of people who are just not interested in that, and they want to follow a story. And this demo is not about fighting. It's about trying to unravel the strange murder mystery. And that may be part of the appeal as well.
Phil Rice 44:00
I agree. Yeah. 80s and 90s. A lot of games were much more emphasis on story. I mean, there was a whole genre in the 80s interactive fiction, which was just text, and it was some of the richest storytelling you can imagine. It was like being being slipped into a novel. It was wonderful. And yeah, the 90s same thing. The whole adventure game. genre was huge. King's Quest and things like that. It made PC gaming stand out from if you go to the coin arcade, the coin arcade was alive shoot 'em ups and mindless moving of pixels. You could get that there, but the PC could do something that's that engages you on an intellectual level. Yeah. And yeah, you're right Ricky. That's that's evolved and changed over the years maybe, frankly, in software is probably responsible for a large part of that, right. I don't think any one of their games has a decent story to it. It's really just about how to blow crap up
Ricky Grove 44:59
mindless shoot. looting and killing,
Phil Rice 45:00
I remember on, but doesn't scratch the same itch like this.
Ricky Grove 45:05
I remember mist was the first game that I played that was based on eerie atmospheres and, and games and puzzles and odd characters and making moral choices and everything. So I think that's part of the appeal as well. Yeah. Damian, why don't you close this out with your comments on the Twin Peaks demo,
Damien Valentine 45:28
I got to try and follow this discussion. I was actually quite entertained by your timing of this. Because recently, I mentioned to one of my friends was talking about the show, Twin Peaks. And I said, I haven't actually seen it. So she insisted that I have to watch it. So we're three episodes into it. So it's given me enough to get a feel for the series. Oh,
Ricky Grove 45:51
my God, you're
Phil Rice 45:53
it's way you know exactly what's going on now. Right? Yeah. I
Damien Valentine 45:57
says, You remember
Ricky Grove 45:58
in Alice in Wonderland will before she goes into the down the rabbit hole, your your before you go down the rabbit hole.
Damien Valentine 46:08
Good. I'm looking can't wait. I'm looking forward to this journey. And it's already getting a little bit weird. But she did warn me it gets really it goes really far. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Yeah. But just those three episodes kind of gave me a feel for what's going on here in this video. So I understood the context and all that. And when I watched I thought, this is someone who's obviously a fan of the TV show, and was a fan of sort of mid 90s video games and decided to make a trailer a fake trailer for a game, it doesn't exist. So I didn't realise until after watched it. Now they've actually made the game as well. Because I thought, well, it kind of makes sense. If they were going to make a video game, based on the show, it would be when the show launched, it'd be several years later, because you got the development time, but also the time for the series to really take off and gain popularity and say, let's make a video game out of this. So I felt like that was that was right. And the retro style works with that feeling. And I did like going back to that retro style video game as well, it kind of brought back memories of other games I've played around them. And, you know, we've been talking about the appeal of these retro sell graphics is just that nostalgia of it is. And because the bits are missing, because the graphical quality isn't there, he kind of encourages to use your animation, your imagination, fill in the gaps. Good point, you get some really stunning looking video games now. But everything's done for you. There's nothing wrong with that. It looks great. And it's really fun to watch and all that. But sometimes, if you have the bits missing, it forces you to imagine the rest of it yourself. And I think there's appeal for that as well, because it is good exercise for the brain, in a way. And I think that's part of the appeal for art. I certainly play a lot of retro games because of that. And and I think this this kind of works with that as well. I mean, if they wanted to I'm sure they could have made photorealistic characters that look exactly like the actors from the show. And all the environments would be photorealistic. If you feel like they're really there, or if they really put a lot into it, they could have people thinking, is this lost footage from the TV show that was never shown. But no, they have the retro style. I think that's a good choice, because it works really well for all of this. So it's a good pick.
Ricky Grove 48:35
That's great. Thank you. Well, I urge anybody who hasn't seen the original Twin Peaks TV series to do so it is quite an experience even today. There have been a season two and then recently released recently, last two years ago, season three, which David Lynch jumped back then and directed all the episodes. So season two is not so hot, because it had multiple directors, season three was all David Lynch. And it goes right back to the strange and eerie stuff that you had in the season one in fact, there's one episode of it that has an atomic explosion that was recreated as part of the
Ricky Grove 49:19
episode that was just absolutely mind boggling. So we'll have a link to where you can find out about it and also a link to the demo. If you have comments about the Machinima that we picked this week, that Twin Peaks into the dark, please let us know at talk at completely machinima.com CHECK OUR BLOG that Tracy has been maintaining religiously and thank you for that at completely machinima.com. And that's it for this episode. Thank you for watching. We'll be back next week with Phil's pick which is really, really good. So stick with us for next week and we'll see you soon. Bye bye everybody.