Ricky Grove 00:45
We're back. Yep. You thought you got rid of us in 2023. But no, we're here again with the And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast for 2024 Hey guys, I'm here with my pals Phil Rice, Damian Valentine and Tracy Harwood. I'm Ricky Grove. I'll be your emcee here for this particular episode, for January 2024. I do want to thank all of our listeners for your support and your comments on our film picks. When we first started out, it was basically no comments. No, nothing, Phil tried to come up with some comments on his own. But that in which was humorous, but we're so glad that you're supporting the station. I mean, the podcast, and makes us very happy. So thank you. Quick note. And I hope you all had a great holiday season. One of the things I got, which I was really excited about was a dedicated game laptop. I did quite a bit of research to come up with this because I couldn't afford an expensive one. And I didn't want to go with a cheap one. So the mid range was usually the best. That's the sub $1,000 one and I could afford that. So after a great deal of research, including some excellent advice from a YouTuber Jarrods Tech, je r r o d s Tech, I purchased an Asus t u f f 15. And it's a dedicated game laptop, where I'll be doing some machinima work, and also playing games. And of course, it plays Elden Ring perfectly. I'm looking to work my way through the Half Life series again, and try some new games. I'll be letting you know how it works. In fact, I'm actually streaming all of this on the laptop right now. It's just great. Everything works fine. And just terrific. Asus is a really good company now for that. Okay, so on to my film pick. Now, as you all know, I've been talking about Eldon Ring and playing Elden Ring ad nauseam. It's become a joke on the show, I pass 2000 hours playing the game, which is pretty extraordinary. Now, ask yourself, how can you replay a game because obviously it takes 60 hours, something like that to complete the game. So obviously, a lot of it's replaying part of it is is that there are 10 to 12 starting classes, each of them have different skills. So you can try combinations of different skills and create different builds what they call builds. And because the From Software games are so hard, and they are very hard. In fact, I think my first playthrough it took me probably 40 plus times to beat the final boss. It's the kind of thing where they actually have rage videos Elden Ring rage videos where people are taking the keyboard and smashing their heads into it because it's so rageful. But I decided that I wanted to share with you this week the community of content creators who use machinima to guide people in playing Elden Ring guides. Now I think you can break those down into three major variations. The first variation is the complete play through, their episodic guides to every part of the game. Probably the big star of this is a guy named Fighting Cowboy. He is a master that kind of content because he plays smartly. He doesn't do a lot of tricks and his comments are funny and very smart. He gives you tips and insights. He was the very first guy I went to to do a playthrough because truly the games are so hard you really need guides and help to get through it. The second type of video is the weapon type video. They take an entire weapon type like curved sword shield straight sword staves, thrusting swords, and the creator will take each weapon and then discuss its qualities and then show how effective or ineffective it is either in Player versus Player or Player versus the game. They call it PvP or PvE. To content creators Monk and Yui are very good at this type of video. Up in particular, because he has such a sarcastic wit is very, very enjoyable. And then the final type is called the build guide. This is probably the most popular type of video that the creator machinima creator will play through the entire game with a specific build. The setup has shown the progression of how to build the video and then all of the major boss fights using that build. Nizar GG Thingfishy by this actual facts for life UEs Sax Slave Gail, and Casual GG and Sel are my favourites of the build guides. But those are just my favourites, there's probably maybe three dozen people who do that on a regular basis. These are the hardest types of videos to produce, because they require a full game through game capture, which can be extensive. I mean, once you get going on that you've got, what 100 gigabytes, 200 gigabytes of space, and then you have to go through it all. It's almost like creating a documentary film in a way, then you have to do the editing the graphics. And then usually they do a voiceover comedy, commentary over that. So all of that takes an extraordinary amount of time. And we're highlighting one today. These are by no means the only kinds of machinima for Elden ring. There's the lore video, also, which talks about the background history of the game. And then there's interestingly enough, there's the math video. A guy named Crite is an expert at this where a mathematical breakdown of certain type of game mechanics and weapons is explained in detail. And I mean, detail. These fellows know what they're talking about. And they're very useful, but they can be really hard to understand because they're really basically going through the math, and other type of game content for this. And it's the last one I'll talk about. There's a lot of them is the no hit and challenge run. The no hit run is where you play through the entire game without getting getting hit once by anything in the game. That is an absolutely astonishing feat. And there's nobody better than a guy named Gino Machino. He often keeps a running chat going on with hundreds of people who will he will comment what He's a Canadian guy. He will comment while he's playing. He will also ask questions about what to do at a certain place, and the chat community will give him the answer. So they're very exciting to see. He did the most astonishing video. There are seven games that From Software created in the Dark Soul series. He did a no hit run of every single game in order. Now the the challenge that challenge of being not hit by anything for seven full game is just beyond my ability to comprehend. It's extraordinary. Well anyway, that's the introduction to it and I want to talk about my choice. Nizar GG is my favourite of them. He's a machinima filmmaker. He's got 181 subscribers. He is focuses on Elden ring, but he also does Baldurs Gate Hogwarts let it legacy Valheim, cyberpunk and of course, you know big ol Eldon Ring. He has over 453 videos. There are so many to choose from. I chose a I think a good example of his style. He tends to do build guides, but he will also branch out into skill videos and best weapons. I have dozens of dozens of videos that Nizar created and have played through the entire game with. What I like and admire. about his work as his creative creativity, his narration and his video editing skills. He has a slightly tongue in cheek voice over a little bit on the sarcastic times sometimes scatological and his builds are excellent. He frequently will use Elden Ring lore to create a background and a name for his specific kind of bill. So we actually creates not just a build but a character. For example, he's got the Grim Reaper bill, the death mage, the evil spirit build. One of my favourites of his videos is how to beat Eldon Ring as a weird mysterious alien which I thought was actually a really great video. Oh, my choice for the video that I want that is an exemplar of is The Strongest DEX Build You Will Ever See. How to get OP early now OP is short for overpowered. Dexterity builds are very fast and fun to play. I love his dramatic opening and fun narration. The build is just aces. It's just perfect. If you follow his build, you'll play through the entire game and have a great deal of fun. So before I bring it over to you, I wanted to mention just briefly, another build creator that I love a lot of Thingfishy. He's got over 43,000 subscribers 85 videos, his skill is being able to combine great builds with incredibly good production values. His editing is excellent, his voiceovers are low key. His use of music is very funny. Unlike Nizar who has some somewhat, you know, somewhat large Thingfishy is a low key, much more low key. He's a very high level player, though. And sometimes it's hard to recreate his builds, because he's so good. My choice was the How to Make a 20 Best Strength Build. So that's my introduction to this particular video. I hope you guys like it. And I'm really anxious to hear what you have to say. Yeah, I,

Damien Valentine 12:16
I watched both of the videos. And it's interesting to see the contrast the two different styles of the people making them are going to talk more about the strongest DEX build because that was the main focus. So it's very entertaining. And it shows a lot of the game world as well. So I know it played Eldon Ring. So this is a great way to just to see parts of the game than if I was going to buy the game, which I keep thinking about it. Because anytime you talk about I get intrigued. I thought, I know that's a very challenging kind of game. So watching videos like this is a great way to think well, I don't want to be discouraged playing it, because I want to enjoy the experience even though Exactly. So some of this is very helpful to get the most out of playing the game. And you're right this a lot of it takes a lot of time. Because not just the production of the video, these people have to learn the game so well to actually know what they're talking about. I mean, you could put together a video and talk absolute rubbish, and then it's all wrong. But watching this, you get the idea that both of these videos actually, they know exactly what they're talking about. And what they're presenting is meant to be very helpful to people who want to learn more about the game and to do better at the game. I think both of them do excellent job to that. So it's very well both very well put together and very entertaining.

Ricky Grove 13:42
I debated with myself, excuse me, I debated with myself whether I should choose an Elden Ring build guide type of video because I said really machinima and I thought Yes, it is, um, their recording gameplay. I would put this in a subset of Let's Play. Maybe. I don't

Tracy Harwood 14:05
Yeah, I agree with you. And I when I was looking at these, I was thinking I see these as slightly different to but to two picks that are actually doing something a little bit different. The first one the strongest DEX build. To me this was both a Let's Play and a masterclass in building a character for sort of playing and finishing the game. And I thought it was it was showing a really interesting approach to the to the to the build with the point of sort of, you know, generating this kind of ultimate overpowering character which these are terms I haven't really kind of thought about so much, but I guess I should have done really. But what I liked about this first one is the way that you know he explored the character and the weapons, their strengths and weaknesses and the different combinations that he was showing as well as weaving into it the lore associated with how to maximise the impact of what he was doing through his progress across across the level or right across the game. And I kind of as I was thinking about it, I was thinking, My God, this guy must have spent 1000s this really interesting day, you, you say 2000 hours, but I bet this guy has spent many 1000s of hours in this game to achieve that. And I I particularly liked the way that he periodically showed his status, you know, those the health bars and whatnot, to justify the choices that he was making. I just, I was blown away by the, you know, the the amount of detail that he was putting into what he were he was doing. And I think what's interesting here is that it defers to some of the earlier approaches to building characters, which we kind of used to talk about, and we're, we're often really presented as, as hacks and mods to cheat the game code, in order to create this kind of imbalance of power that makes the characters last as long as possible in order to create machinima. But what you're seeing here isn't, or I don't think it's not cheating at all, but it's very much about the let's play side of doing it. Which as I thought that kind of, you know, differentiation from sort of the early days of creating machinima was was was an interesting sort of contrast. But clearly, what he's doing here is not, he's not, I mean, he's using machinima and AI, but he's not making it for machinima. He's making it to maximise his his impact in terms of the gameplay and and illustrate the experience that he's he's gotten in doing this. And there's clearly a need for this kind of guidance. Because I, you know, the more you kind of look at the comments that people make about Elden Ring, the more you realise how difficult it is, and how frustrated players are getting with it. So it's really no surprise that you see a lot of this kind of content emerge, these kinds of, you know, sort of less play master class speed run type examples that just, you know, give people a bit more hope on how to actually deliver it, but I wonder who the actual target audience for this is, given, given what it is. And given what the difficulty level of this game is, is actually, so it kind of made me question, well, is this a tutorial maybe for speed runners, perhaps. And to your point about the math side of it, I was kind of intrigued where this guy was putting a little bit of emphasis on the math side of it, too, which made me think that probably what we're talking about here is some kind of competitive environment for this particular game. I'm not sure if that exists or not, or whether it exists outside of bore but certainly you certainly you see a lot of games being played in in a speedrunning format, in contests kind of environments. So yeah, I was really kind of intrigued in in in what what he was doing and I guess, I guess what you would say or you could say is that it's it would be particularly useful if you were going to use Elden Ring as a storytelling environment to actually use these kinds of tutorial type things to get through the game. The other one the make the 20 best strength Thingfishy. Yes thing fishy. To me, this one was a better edited film. I liked this guy's style a lot more. It was more of a classic let's play style. That's the one I liked his voiceover more and I tell you for why because I also I guess the other guy was doing it from what you were saying but I just didn't speak up on the nuances of it. But this guy was kind of romanticising about the previous run through the game that he'd he'd enjoyed if you like so for example, he said something along the lines of I've done this 'boss before as the first boss of the game on a build guide that was deleted in the great save file corruption of the PS five era' which I thought was a really kind of you know, sort of charming way of illustrating just how much very charming charming is how I would I would describe well both of these actually but this the second guy I thought was was the more charming of the two. Yeah, so yeah, I guess those are my thoughts really. I mean, I hadn't really thought about the the the significance of creating these overpowering character builds and what that might mean for the machinima world as such, but without doubt without having to, you know, having great having folks show you how you might be able to do it, I daresay there'll be a lot of people that would drop out of this community, which would be a great shame because it's clearly, you know, the detail in it. And the, the extent of the characterization, and this and the story arcs if you like, is is pretty astonishing. So, yeah, really interesting. Really, really fascinating. Thank you.

Phil Rice 20:42
As strange as this will seem the video which I'll focus on the the first one, it's the it's the one I watched in full. It took my mind to Pac Man, I love the old arcade game, the stand up arcade game Pac Man. So we're talking, you know, early 1980s, there were there were people who, who made made a conquest of that game of figuring it out, there is a, there was a pattern or a series of patterns that you could follow. And because the game didn't have a whole lot of random number generation going on, you could you could, you could follow the same pattern. And, and dominate this game. But this is the 1980s. So there's no internet. There's no Usenet there's nothing like that. So they ended up publishing books. And there would be if there was a book, and I actually bought it. When I was when I was a teenager, that was basically this guide to Pac Man of what those someone had figured out all these patterns. And it was whoever the world champion Pac Man player was, whatever his name was, had had been involved in making this book and conveying that information to others, so that they could dominate this game. And that's a very simplistic example. But what it made me think about was, there's always been a challenge with difficult games. And then, you know, how do you how do you conquer those, you know, in Pac Man was not a difficult game, per se. I mean, I guess it was if if it was really important to you to eat as many dots as you could. But I'm talking about difficult intellectually. So now you're looking at stuff like Infocomm, you know, who made Zork, which was among the simpler of their games, and then they made some that were like, genuine, interactive novels, and just mind blowing stuff, I mean, Suspended comes to mind, in suspended, it's this interactive text, adventure, you are an AI. This is the 1980s. By the way, when you are an AI, who, the only way you have interacting with the world is this series of robots that you can send commands to and control. But each robot is limited to a specific function and therefore a specific sensory array that's devoted to that function that they have. So like, there's, if you need to hear something, you have to have that robot in the room that has the hearing, because no other robots have that. And only one of them can see. And another one can interact and intellect. I mean, just crazy, a crazy, complicated game. There's another called a Mind Forever Voyage, which is honestly, I feel like it's a masterpiece of literature that's never been on paper. In this one, you are participating in an experiment where you're you're becoming an AI basically, you're you're taking on the role, you're running a simulation of a world in the future. And there's this whole dynamic going on that's like something out of Game of Thrones if it were sitting in the future, you know, there's this religious faction that's, that's, that's gonna go fanatical and take over society and the radical right wing radical left wing and all these dynamics going on. And the only way to help with games like that, was they started publishing a series of books called Invisible clues, where it was like a question answer format, and you had the little highlighter marker you remember what the this the invisible ink would get revealed? If you wanted you wanted answers to how to do this or how to solve this. You could reveal it gradually and thereby come to conquer it. So pre internet it was really weird to try I help people cope with complex games. And I think that there was also there was a ceiling on how complicated a game could be. And not just make everybody say, Forget it. You know, you just couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't have done something of this complexity not, I'm not talking about because of the computing ability. I'm talking purely in terms of the kind of complexity that it takes to play a game like Elden Ring. Or if you've ever dabbled with Project Zomboid, unbelievably complex game, and very, very unforgiving and difficult. There's only one way to play and it's hard core, you die. That's it, you're done. You lose it all. Vintage story is like this, this weird Minecraft, uber Minecraft thing that's got ultimately just incredibly complicated crafting recipes to achieve these different Stone Age to Bronze Age technologies, just how in the world could that have ever been done? If there wasn't a way for people to share information, the way that the maker of this video does. And it makes me wonder, is the is the Let's Play Video age where someone can this guy basically has made a training course for Elden Ring. I mean, it's a training course, that like in a different world, slightly different market, he could charge money for it. There's enough people that want to know this information from someone who has mastered the game, that they would probably pay a little money for this in practice. In fact, he may get support through Patreon or something like that, who knows? If so good for him. But it makes me wonder are they are the game developers getting more and more daring and willing to create something really complex because they know what we the users can do? Like? Can you imagine Ricky if they tried to publish a user a comprehensive user manual for Elden Ring?

Ricky Grove 27:07
It'd be impossible volumes, many map volume 1000s

Phil Rice 27:10
and 1000s of pages and nobody would. And even then navigating that would be difficult. Video is so effective at doing that, and especially in this where he can, like you mentioned that he can actually demonstrate what he's doing. Yeah, this one's much more than a Let's Play, I think because, you know, like, Damian, I've never played this game. But I felt more educated about the game, from this video that I think from anything else I've experienced. Because, you know, there's the old cliche that I think is BS, but you know, those who can't do teach, not in this case, this is somebody who can do and teaches and in fact, the best teachers are those who do. Yep, in my opinion, I think that that this is a silly phrase that someone came up with as some kind of put down, however, many decades ago, and it doesn't hold water, when someone really does know their stuff. And then has the skills required to convey that information in a way that's understandable. To me who's never ever played the game. I'm not entertaining, and entertaining, it's engaging and entertaining. And I still don't have any interest in playing the game. But I was very entertained and interested in this video, because I really respect the achievement that is Eldon Ring. I like that games, that some game developers are really forging new ground in terms of storytelling. You know, because there's been there's been absolutely amazing, masterful, maybe never to be exceeded things done in the world of written literature. There's been amazing things done in cinema. Games never gets the credit in the wider world as those other two mediums, and this game, I think, blows that out of the water like it should, when it's done like this, that because of that interactive element, and then there's this whole kind of meta world that that emerges around a game like this where the players themselves are learning things in some cases things even the developers didn't know you know, those happy accidents of the way things happen and stuff. What didn't what an amazing time to be involved in, in games and creating games when when you're able to do stuff like this. So yeah, all of that is what lifted more so than any aspect of is this the most interesting machinima pick we've ever had. No, no, no, it's doesn't have any narrative elements that really, that's what really livens me up, you know, no, but recognising this for what it is, it's amazing. And it builds on a game that I think is an amazing achievement. And so what I respect most about this video in the maker of this video, is that he not only has the skill to have mastered a notoriously difficult game to master, but then he also has the skill because the two don't always go hand in hand, he also has the skill to convey it to condense. You know that, that's the most impressive skill here to me is, there's so much information that the game Elden Ring throws at you. There's all kinds of choices that have to be made about what's important enough to mention and what's not. And then how to synthesise that and condense it and distil it and refine it. The mind that can do that is is really impressive. And and then on top of that, he knows how to edit video too. You know, so yeah, and use graphically. Yeah, yeah, it's

Ricky Grove 31:08
a really graphics in the video. Yeah.

Phil Rice 31:11
It's it's, it's, it's it's quite the flex. I don't think the guy intends it is a flex, but it is quite a flex. It's pretty impressive. And so yeah, I'm glad you shared it with us, Ricky.

Damien Valentine 31:22
I just wanted to add a little bit extra to my piece. This is absolutely machinima. We've seen lots of experimental films, and we've seen lots of narrative films, regardless of whether comedy or drama. This is a documentary. It's a document. Oh, yeah, the game. And absolutely, counts as machinima I mean, if you're doing live action, you see live action movies, you see reality TV, you see, comedy shows, you see the news. It's all live action video, or documentaries. And this is no different. I

Phil Rice 31:52
actually, the word documentary came into my mind, Damian, but I hesitated to use it. Because it's been so long since I've seen an actual documentary that is as thorough as this. You know, so much the world of of documentary filmmakers has kind of been overrun by agenda driven filmmaking I'm out to make a point. I'm out to sell, sell an idea sell an ideology. It's, it's, this is what documentary should be, you know. And yeah, it's just I know enough about laundering to know how complicated this game is. And, and to know that I probably don't have the patience to invest in mastering it manually, from diving into it. So this, this is the best education that someone like me could get about this. And I can only imagine how much more valuable it is, to someone who's playing the game, especially early on and just trying to get their bearings. Like he like he titles, the series, Ultimate Warrior guide. It really is. It's, it's living up to that ultimate word, in terms of its thoroughness, and its clarity. And it's just just well produced. And the fact that, Ricky, you mentioned that there's dozens of people doing this stuff. It's, that's amazing.

Ricky Grove 33:22
Yeah, I think you're wise not to try to play Elden Ring, because if it caught your fancy, pretty much everything else that you're doing is gonna go on hold. Yeah. So you're, you're very wise to do that. Because it's such interesting. Well, those are, those are marvellous comments. Thank you. And that little background on the history of learning difficult games is very interesting and useful. I didn't know half of those games. But you're right, you use these guides. And I think the the user base is broader than what you were suggesting, Tracy, I think beginners can use one of these guides, just as well. Do you think then also veteran players who are looking to play the game in a different way, you know, can use these as well. And, and you can use them in different ways. You can watch the whole video and then write down the pieces. You can put the your laptop next to where you're playing the game, play it through and then play that section of it. You know, there's all kinds of different ways to do it. But the fact that Eldon Ring has such an extraordinary range of possibilities, and places and characters is a tribute to how good the game actually is. I think no doubt and when well worth the 2000 hours I played in it, you know it even now I'm starting a new build and I'm so excited about it. It's so much fun, you know, and then you develop your own little bits and pieces that you discovered that none of the other guys have mentioned, that are just your little things, your little shortcuts, you know, it's so exciting. Very interesting. Well, I'm glad you guys liked it. You're right, it doesn't quite have the drama that a, you know, a fully detailed, dramatic presentation would or the humour. But for what they are, as you pointed out, Phil, they're really excellent. And I would highly advise you to use Nizar GG, or Thingfishy as your guide. We'll put a link to the these two gentlemen, and a few others on our show notes for it. Also, if you have comments, and you'd like to let us know, or tell us that we don't know what we're talking about, or that you agree, send your comments to talk at completely machinima.com. And also our main site completey machinima.com. We'll have all of our show notes. Thank you, Tracy for doing that. We have a list of links and all kinds of things there. Well, thank you, guys, for talking about this and being patient with me talking about Elden Ring all the time. I really liked that. So Happy New Year to everybody. And that's it for the show this week. Stay tuned for next week show which is a pretty good one. So we'll be back next week. We'll see you now. Bye bye bye.