Regardless of where you stand on the Vimeo decision to excise “gameplay videos” from their site, one thing’s for sure: it has made nearly everyone concerned take a moment to evaluate other options. Are there any other video sharing resources that compare favorably to Vimeo? Particularly in two key areas: allow posting of gameplay videos, and even more relevant, have options to host videos in high definition?

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After examining some other options, the next Talk the Machinima Talk audio conference is set to take place once again in Second Life, this month at a brand new location: a new private island owned by Fleef Fimicoloud and Stormy Harker!

Plus, we’ve picked a time which should be friendly for both North American and European participants.

Info on start time and location available here:
http://z-studios.com/conference/

And here are some links relevant to planned topics for discussion, with the understanding that the floor is always open to other subjects:

• Machinima Film Festival 2008
• NVISION ‘08
• Machinima at The Cambridge Film Festival 2008
• Shattered Keyboard on the Vimeo “gameplay videos” decision
• Machinima For Dummies on the Vimeo “gameplay videos” decision
• The Ill Clan’s recent article on 4:3 encoding

We could even talk some Securom if ya like!

EDIT: This Vimeo thing is definitely the hot issue of the week. Here are a couple more references:

• The Official Vimeo Blog Announcement
• Eric Rice weighs in on Vimeo decision
• Kotaku reports on it (as their comment thread evolves it might serve as a decent pulse of gamer response
• WeGame makes a very smart play in response

If you know the creators of the classic Quake film Blahbalicious (Mackey ‘Avatar’ McCandlish and Brian ‘Wendigo’ Hess), can you please put them in touch with me?

Or if you by chance ARE Mackey or Brian, please drop me a line via email (top right corner of this page) or via the comments here.

If Ben Grussi, the Social CPU of Old School Machinima, doesn’t have current email addresses for you (which he doesn’t), that means you’ve done a better job at hiding than your average Witness Protection program.

I need to chat with you about Blahbalicious. If you’re out there, or if any of you out there are in touch with either of them, please put us in touch.

Thanks!

Here we examine a scene transition from Male Restroom Etiquette as an example of using extra details to reward your more attentive viewers.

Intro music is “Impulse” by Processor, from their album “Are You For Real?”, available at Magnatune.com

Todd Stallkamp, machinimator-turned-pro working for Electronic Arts, told me to expect this awhile ago, and at last it’s here. The trailer for the upcoming The Sims 3 currently being showcased at E3 2008. Produced months before the game’s full camera controls have even been coded, this sharply edited piece has Todd’s fingerprints all over it, showing off what appears to be larger scale “sets” and outdoor environments.

If you’ve played The Sims 2, you know that things are fairly compartmentalized into residential and commercial lots of relatively small size. It looks as though one of The Sims 3’s improvements will be a bit more of a seamless experience for neighborhoods as the emphasis shifts a bit from micro toward macro.

Congratulations and well done, Todd!

I was startled when reviewing my TubeMogul report for the past week to see about 13,000 new views of Thresh vs. Billox (Highlight Reel) on YouTube. When I investigated further, I discovered that WeGame.com had named the video among its Top 10 Frag Videos, spanning all games as far as I can tell. TvB came in at #9, and is easily the oldest video of the bunch (TvB turns 10 years old this October); I’m honored that it made the cut.