Defender
Kephren, the Director and Producer of the hit series Borg War, has been making a magnificent defense of machinima’s viability as a medium against some of its most hostile detractors: CGI animators.
… the popularity of Borg War must truly be a little bit scary, since it suggests that the public doesn’t care all that much about [CGI animators’] standards of quality. They just want a good story with characters they like.
Good stuff. Starting point to follow this interesting debate is in this thread at the Machinima.com forums, but be sure to also check the LWG3D thread Kephren refers to.
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Does the public not care? Or do Star Trek fans not care?
I’m not minimizing Kephrens work, but its hard to discuss the popularity of fan fiction. With an established audience base, Star Trek mach is hardly the litmus test on how to guage what works in regards to machinima (and its CGI quality).
What I take from the ‘idea’ of borg war, is that this is an exploitable avenue for game/production companies.
Comment by todnyc — October 21, 2006 @ 1:15 pm
Good point about fan fiction, but I don’t think it’s a hard and fast rule. One machinimator I know has made several films in the Star Wars universe, and others have tried Star Trek machinima too… basically a level playing field with Kephren as far as tools / visual go, yet his is a hit and theirs were not. So there’s definitely something else at work besides fan loyalty… and it’s not CG effects. I think even within the confines of a fanbase world, good story draws the crowd. The already familiar characters help too, I’m sure.
Comment by overman — October 21, 2006 @ 2:36 pm
Personally, I think that Borg War got a big jump from the pre-existing fan base. However, that’s a doubled-edged sword. If the fan base thinks a film sucks, they’ll make that opinion known.
The way that I measure the effectiveness of the story line is by noting, over a period of time, how many people go from EP1 to EP2 and on to EP3, and so forth.
The logic here is that a fan will check anything out once, but if they don’t like it, they’ll just tune out. I’ve tracked BW in this way both during the draft period and during the official release on M.com.
On an average week (now that a several episodes are out) EP1 to EP2 stickiness is at about 55%, with about 65% from EP2 to EP3, and 100% after that. In other words, if somebody watches EP1 and EP2, they’ll probably keep watching.
Overall, the problem with measuring BW as machinima isn’t so much the fan base, but the conscious imitation of the format and “feel” of a ST episode. From a cinematic perspective there’s nothing really “new” about Borg War; it’s more like an exercise in trying to imitate the mainstream than something really original, like Bloodspell.
Comment by Kephren — October 21, 2006 @ 11:14 pm