Monday, November 14, 2011

Hooyeah, Monetized.

Well, those few of you who followed my blog...they've found I've put ads on there.  It's the least intrusive means I can think of to raise revenue.  Just visit the site and see the ad.  I'm not going to prostitute myself to put adware or spyware on people's site (in fact I think that's probably against the rules of the ad agencies so if they violate that through my site, tell me, and tell Google, because someone's breaking the rules and I hate the douches who screw with the software on other people's computers).

That said, I'm not going to just go out and prostitute myself.  I believe in hits for content.  Now...at most, I may use YouTube as a hosting service and run hits through my blog in order to observe intellectual property rights...if I get money I'd rather have it be through my editing and voice work...and hopefully I can give a boost to ID Software...who made some good stuff through trust and sharing...I mean Doom 1 and Quake 1 started the same way, you got a whole ep for free...if you liked the game, you paid for the rest, but only if you liked it.  And I like Quake.  And I like to do Kane's Mind.  In fact, when I was in grad school, when I wanted to put myself full onto studying but had a yen for gaming, I set up a quake 3 server.  Smalltime (only through a DSL, didn't get many takers...and I had some good third party maps...), but I wanted to promo some awesomeness.  (And ID made Q3A hybrid, so I ran it on my Mac G4 dual back in that day...hoo man that thing was hot).

If I get really desperate for income, I am going to put up a full announcement.  YouTube will be hosting my vids, but the access will be through my site.  At least that will be the case until I can run some independent hosting much like Ross Scott does with Accursed Farms.  (I think.  I don't know what he uses outside of Machinima.com.)  YouTube gave me some wider permissions, so I can experiment a bit more.

On Kane's Mind...when people started liking my work, I decided to commit to completing the game.  I had ideas to do a "point five" season (ID did hint at the end of Quake IV that Kane had additional orders).  But here is what I will tell you.  I started this.  People liked it.  So I will see this season through to the end.

Can I guarantee another season or another series?  I don't know.  Honestly.  Like the Bungie reps were with me when I was at the Halo: Reach launch, they gave me an honest answer at the time.  "We don't know."  (343 industries, BTW, was formed of trusted Bungie people.  The spirit, we all hope, is still there.)

Possibilities for a future series?  Well assuming I don't get medical residency and it eats up all my time (which would be a big issue unless I can rig something to let technology help me...and if I do surgery as a specialty, I guarantee nothing...)...

Kane's Mind Legacy...Kane's grandfather, from Doom 3.
Clarke's Mind...Dead Space 1.  Not WolfgamerX, I am not going to be Ben Stein on valium.
BJ's Mind...Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Jet's Mind...Tron 2.0.  And at least in this one, where the fourth wall breaks down, there are reasons for it...awareness of being in a video game?  The character is in a damn computer!!!

Kick me back some comments!

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Let's Brony up this Shizzle!

Oookay.  When it came to the whole My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic phenomenon and the resultant "Brony" trend, I was largely in the dark until, thanks to my account on I can has cheezburger, I ran into a video on the front page:



I thought it was great.

I'd since worked with the Master Minds, working on two Out Of Our Minds videos with them.  When I found out that a couple of the Master Minds were Bronies (figure it out yourself which ones, they're self-admitted), I had to investigate.  What, in a cartoon based on a toy series geared towards seven year old girls, gets heterosexual men so interested?

So, I watched season one beginning to end.

You know what? It IS fun to watch. Lauren Faust created something that was not a little girl's tea party or slumber party. Frankly if I had a daughter I'd love if she watched this. It's not preachy, it's fun to watch, well animated, well-voiced, and ponies go batshit insane and cause mayhem. It inspired a physics presentation, for crying out loud. It's fun.

So frankly, yeah.  I'm not going to go so uber-brony as to preach it, but yeah, I like what Faust has done.  And in fact, the material has given me some stuff that I have used to create some Team Fortress 2 dubs.  Yes, TF2 dubs.  I actually found those amusing with some "America's Funniest Home Videos" clips, and even with "Saving Private Ryan."  Like with a Minds series, when done well, it's awesome.  I tried my hand at TF2 dubs using My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.  The first attempt went like this:



When I moved back to CA, I had only limited time to record for Kane's Mind.  In the meantime, I found some material to create another MLP:FIM TF2 dub:



When season 2 came out, and the first two episodes ran along the same lines as the first, I had to admit...first, Demospike didn't have enough lines.  Second, I had more material in terms of sound clips.  End result:



Now...I am not abandoning Kane's mind.  If anyone is still actually following my blog (granted I'm so not well known that I'm lucky if anyone is), then I have to let people know...I started this project, people like it, I want to see it to the conclusion of the game.  I don't know whether there's going to be a follow-up project.  As I said, I'm working on entering the medical profession.  Time will be sparse on that score.  However, I have found that I wouldn't be the first doctor with a machinima.  And yeah, it helps that I have a life outside of med school.

So, on my blog, I must post what people have already seen through my YouTube account:



I must apologize for not providing even a heads-up sooner.  Life happens.  Enjoy.  I'm already working on the next two episodes.

Enjoy!