Phil Rice 00:44
Hello and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. I'm here with my co host. My name is Phil rice. I'm here with my co hosts. I never forget I'm here with my co hosts, Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine.

01:02
Hello, Rick and bro.

Tracy Harwood 01:03
He's drunk.

Phil Rice 01:04
He just doesn't want to. He just doesn't have time for your nonsense. How's that? So he'll be back later on this week. The pick is my film pick, and this film is called lethal company mini series pilot by a YouTuber named GibbsonTV. That's Gibson with two b's. Lethal company is, well, actually the plot of the game. Lethal company kind of underlies the plot of this, this film. So I'll explain what that game is. It's, it's one of these squad based multiplayer games. That's kind of a trend right now. There's been quite an uptick in, um, another one might in the same category would be hell divers, I think, or hell divers too. And basically it's, it's the idea of them is, you know, friends, multiplayer, playing cooperatively, generally speaking, and with voice interaction within the game, typically voice interaction with proximity for immersion purposes. So if the player is far away from you, you in the game, you can't hear them like you can when they're close, and so it gives this nice immersive factor. And a lot of these games have a combination of, I would say, high action and jump scares are common, and just generally a sense of kind of fun spooky nonsense, you know, but just an excuse to get together and have a good time. So typically, lethal lethal companies, story is pretty basic, because that's all you really need when the story isn't really the point. So the plot of the game is you and your squad are basically on a you work for a company as kind of subcontractors. And you salvage stuff from different destinations in space, you're salvaging junk and selling it back to the company for money. And there's an added element that the company has some pretty demanding rules that you must comply with in terms of productivity. And if you don't meet those, they will terminate your employment and or you so there's, there's a pressure to not just, you know, go with the flow or whatever you have to meet a certain margin, but these places that you're sent to, that you're dispatched to, to retrieve South salvage of varying value from are inhabited by nasty things, nasty beasts and creatures of of with various abilities and and generally pretty, pretty, pretty much on the scary side, I discovered this game from the sounds of screaming from my son's bedroom last last summer, where he was playing this with his friends, and they were just having a riotous time. So this film is very much seated within that that story, in fact, I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of innovation outside of the lines of that story I just outlined for you in this other than maybe in just the way that some of these scenes were captured. But in this pilot, they're really introducing you to that world, and to some degree, to the the four characters that are playing this and ultimately, what they've done in this film is a dramatization of what the gameplay really does amount to. They're just, you know, they're, they're playing it out as as fictional characters, instead of playing as themselves. I'm very curious to to because I don't know how the idea. Where this came about, but I would have to think it was probably from some friends playing this game together, just having a great time with it and thinking this would be fun to tell us a story we can work in some interesting confrontations and situations and a joke here and there. So what stood out to me about this so there's nothing really that grabbed me in particular more than this, and that is, again, the theme for this month that we've seen in multiple films, kind of a flagrant disregard for the rules. Now, maybe not quite as exotically so as we saw, or we'll see in Damien's pick the Marsden Christmas chaos, but there are certain, there's a language of cinematography, and there's a certain, there's a way you're quote, unquote, supposed to do things. And whoever made this film just didn't really pay much mind to that. They just decided to tell the story in the way that they wanted to. And so the result is little bit disjointed at points. And it kind of jumps from in time and from scene to scene in some very unconventional ways. And I could not be happier than about it like it's it's strangely refreshing. It would drive, you know, someone who, who is an adherent to, oh, I can't remember the the author's name. He wrote a book called story. It's Robert something or other. Ricky would remember it because he hates the book, because he feels like that. All of Hollywood kind of fell into lockstep with those conventions, and now it's just blah. And he's right, but someone who's an adherent to that and to the the proper way of of telling a story would be really off put by some of the decisions made with this film. And I just I found it very refreshing, and loved it. And I'm not sure I don't love it to the sense of, oh, I want to emulate that in my work. I've got a way that I do things and everyone does but it just felt really free like thinking about it from the director's point of view of just and they just didn't. They either knew the rule and broke it on purpose, or they just didn't know and just there's, there's something kind of fresh to the way that the story is told, that a lot of which is rooted in that, in the fact that conventions came second, and the way that they wanted to portray their story and characters came first. And there's something to be learned from that, I think, for everyone. So I'm very curious. I didn't give away anything really about the plot of the film. In particular, if you know the plot of the game, like I just described, you know most of what you need to know, but I won't give any anything that might be spoiler ish about specific characters, but I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure it makes me want to play the game, because I'm not really a jump scare guy, but I suppose if I were in there with with people that I knew it would be, maybe that's, oh, I just thought of that we could do an episode with the four of us in there. Oh, my god, yeah, okay, put a pin in that. We'll come back to it. But, yeah, what did you What did you guys think of this film?

Damien Valentine 08:16
I know it's just the roughness of jumping around and the first time I ever thought, oh, look, it didn't take me out of it in a way that ruined my experience of watching it. I just had a moment of, well, that's different, right? Like, just go with it. Yeah, it works. It's still easy to watch. I don't know if it's deliberate choice or an accidental one. Yeah, I don't need either way. It doesn't really matter. This film is perfectly watchable. I thought the characters all interested. The characters all just wearing these orange suits and helmets, and so you never see their faces or anything. You just hear them talking. And you know that works for this. And each one's got very distinctive voice. So you know which one you listen to. They've got a name tag as well, but it's not always visible, because the right thing is really tiny. But you when you see a character on the screen, you know instantly who it is, which one you're listening to or watching. It's kind of creepy. My understanding is the game was inspired by the Alien films the company that exploits the workers and says right against these dangerous creatures. And I can see why the game is very popular. It's one that I've wanted to play, but not got a chance to do it yet, but I think it'd be a lot of fun. I can see why it would work as a fun game, and I can see why this video was made based on or inspired by experiences of people playing it. So unlike you, Phil, this made me want to play it more.

Phil Rice 09:35
That's great.

Damien Valentine 09:36
I don't know much too much about the game itself. Well, I know it's the first position you have to collect stuff, but I don't know any of the law or the the missions, or anything else about it, which I think if, again, like this, that's the way to go into it fresh, is don't know what to expect, because if you do, it ruins a little bit of the those jump scare moments that are waiting for you. But yeah, this is a. Excellent film. I thought it's me well done. And like you said, it did ignore the conventional film making rules, not completely. There are some very familiar moments in it. It's not like my Christmas pic, where they didn't care about any of the rules at all. That's right, it's it's very cinematic, but in the director's own way, which I think that's the way to describe it. I'll be interested to see what else they do is this, yeah, it's a mini series pilot, so obviously there's an intention here to make more of it, which I'm intrigued to watch as well. And I'm sure that will also make me want to play the game even more

Tracy Harwood 10:36
well. I've got a few more comments on this. I mean, I did absolutely, really enjoy this, but I I am minded to make some other observations about it. I think. I mean, what I will start by saying is it's clearly a bit of an underlying joke here is that the game is Roblox based. And, you know, one would assume that this might be the unreal version of it, but it isn't. This has been made in blender. And Gibson, the film's creator is basically an indie animator who's made this, believe it or not, in his high school gap year. He's about 19, and he's probably going into a degree. I imagine that's what he's doing. But importantly, he's already got a huge amount of experience in 3d animation techniques related to blender, and that, I would say, probably also includes a mocap workflow. I mean, what a talented guy for such a young age to be so competent at working with these kind of tools. Now, I did actually look the game up because, like you, I Well, you obviously had heard of it, but I certainly hadn't. It's actually been created by an indie creator studio called zikas, and was early access released only last October, october 2023 on Steam. By November last year, it was reported to have about 100,000 concurrent players, and it hit the global top seller list, which I've got to say is some achievement, apparently, largely that was attributed by social media flaming, on which this film is, no doubt building, because obviously, you know, we're talking April for this film of the following year, or earlier this year, and then by January this year, the game itself had apparently sold more than 10 million copies of the game, which I think is absolutely outstanding for a one man game developer, zikas, and it's won a heap of awards, including golden joysticks Award, which it won just this November gone, and where it actually achieved the best early access game. So it's a fantastic success story for its creator. Now, in terms of this game inspired pilot, because I don't necessarily think I would call this a machinima as such. I think it's a really fun expression of the relationship that you see between the characters in the game with a very interesting plot and and I think what you can see, evidently in this is is great storytelling capability in what's his name, Gibson, in Gibson's ability to sort of create this, this, this film. But I don't think the point of it is actually to explain cinematically the concept of the game. I think instead, what he's done is just drawn a few ideas in the true sense of being inspired by it, for example. I think the device of the quota to encourage them to keep exploring is interesting and certainly rounds out the plot. But maybe one aspect of how this story will unfold will be how the characters can break that mechanic to survive a little bit lost in space ish or Star Trek like maybe, or maybe that message from dad is something significant, because it certainly doesn't go anywhere in this in this particular film. I think for me, there are a couple of aspects that are probably what you might describe as anachronisms, like, like the characters costumes are a little bit too squeaky clean and very similar, and the face masks and their Helm, you know, in their helmets and whatnot, they're just too Flat and also very similar, which is not at all to detract from the quality of the of the model, which, by the way, was created by somebody called dot flare. I think in some ways, how it's been used in this film is it reminded me very much of those very early red versus blue, you know, the first series. Characters that they kind of created, where the the emotion and behavior is inferred only through the kind of obscured, kind of visors and the quality of the voice acting. And actually, I think here, what there is, is a lot of effort that's gone into the voice acting itself. But I did think when I was listening to it and, you know, and watching it, that in places that script was a little bit wooden, and a couple of the male voices, I thought were just far too similar, you know, they just had the same tone and resonance, and maybe they were just, you know, if they were, if they were, maybe just varied a little bit, and they were a little bit less stilted that might have given them more variation. And have to say that didn't bother me quite so much when I was watching it, until I read on a Reddit that Gibson actually the, actually the voice, the only voice in this that wasn't AI generated was Sigurd the intern, and that was his own voice. So all the others for AI generated, which then made me think, Well, that explains why there is such similarity in the voices for me. And probably when I was watching it, I actually thought, You know what? I'm a little bit disappointed in that too, because I like to think that there is at least an opportunity for collaboration among creators to do these kinds of projects, rather than being purely based on a profit motive. Although, of course, I totally get that creators need to make a living too. So that, that I thought was one thing that I really felt I needed to comment on that however, with AI, it doesn't necessarily mean that the voice actors need to be perfect in pitch or tone, of course, because you can use AI to tidy that up and modify it, and that then means that there are more creators in the mix. And you're going to ask me why that's important. Well, I think it's important because actually, when you look at this guy's channel, there are a lot of films on here, and he's clearly quite committed to creating content, but I actually think you've got to have fun with this too. And if this is a job and a living, which it clearly is, then you've also got to find a way to enjoy yourself in the process and bounce some ideas with others, and that, in turn, leads you to push yourself to make better work in future. And I think this could be better. I think in some of his posts about the film, Gibson talks a little bit about his method of creating the videos, and which, in this particular case, he says involves doing the animation before the voice acting and and then he says, actually, in future, he might do it the other way around, because he thinks that might work better for him. I'm not sure if you guys have got observations about that, but I would guess a lot would depend on the quality of the script and whether you think you can create the animation to fit what's going on. Now this guy has clearly got the animation chopped, so I think probably either way would work for him, but for some, it's probably something that an animator can do only if they know their skill set really well. And if you remember, when we reviewed Prazinberg Ridge, which was made in Unreal five, that film's creator, Martin Bell at the time, said the animation filter he used was because he didn't have the chops to do the animation in the way that he wanted, and that, in turn, absolutely no doubt, influenced how he scripted the story. But overall, it was the interplay between the animation and the story that realized the end result. And I think it's also worth remembering that certainly,

Tracy Harwood 18:38
you know, we talked to a lot of folks that do things separately. But the beauty of machinima, and I do mean machinima, is that you can see what's going on at the same time as performing it. Hence the innovations that we saw in the Mandalorian which were so useful to the actors as performers, because it's all about real time. And of course, it cuts down a lot of the time in making, in the making process, because it's a simultaneous workflow. But then that puts a really huge emphasis on the storytelling abilities of the Creator. And I guess it's the difference between using animation as a 3d world in which to create and perform a story, or scripting an animation. My gut feeling here is that the Creator is doing more of the latter, which is probably why, in places, this animation feels a little bit too choppy through the editing. I think he would benefit by taking more of a machinima approach to it. And which brings me to the music, which I think is, you know, it's great, it's loud, it's upbeat. And when I looked at some of the information about the game, clearly it's a suspense and horror game. So the music here is clearly aiming to amplify the kind of Teflon nature of these characters, rather than reflect the original game. And that may also explain why the creatures are really quite vanilla. I didn't I didn't think they lived up to the. To the animation, I agree. And I think, you know, the style in that world, they just kind of jumped out. They weren't anything like the main characters, which was a, you know, deliberate or not, that just was something that I think could have been done slightly better. I mean, that first creature, for example, looked like something out of Ghostbusters, maybe with the, you know, the detection mechanism, I suppose, being a little bit alien, like, it's interesting to hear you say that it was, you know, the game was inspired by alien. But later on, there's this kind of tree, this angry looking tree, which was, to me, more tree beard, like from Lord of the Rings, yeah, like an end, yes, yeah, but, but you don't hear it stomping and that grazing monster well that maybe that could have come out of Avatar. I don't know. There was lots and lots of different sort of references I kind of picked up there, all of which leads me to another little point about another type of anachronism, because in places there is no ambient sound, and in other places, there is quite a lot more. And yet, the helmets are never removed, which begs the question, what or whose perspective of soundscape and Foley design is being represented here? I think that needs a little bit more work, in my view, in terms of the animation and storytelling. Gibson, I think, has definitely got those skills. I do think since having a look through his channel, he might think about how the projects that he picks develop the storytelling skill set, rather than riff riffing purely off other types of content. And there's lots of that in there. You know, he's he's used GTA, he's Spider Man, he's matrix and so on. There's lots and lots of stuff there where he's pulling from that IP, but there's not really a lot that I would describe as original. And of course, originality and content and authorship is basically the hardest part these days. And let's not forget why Machinima is so successful as an approach for a lot of animators in the past, it's because they didn't have the skills that Gibson has as a as a clearly gifted blender artist. And I think clearly without those skills, you're almost certainly not going to make it as a filmmaker. And instead, what seems to be the main emphasis with the skills development strategy is actually not about storytelling, but about finding a workflow. I think that's a mistake on this young man's part. Personally, I would say, to make it these days, there needs to be much more of a team with you. I think you can very easily get fed up with projects we've seen that time and again. And you know, some you will clearly have a lot of success with, but others you know, you may fall short of what you know, what you intended, and that will be a disappointment and a disincentive to carry on with it, with a career. And I think it would definitely be worth pursuing that kind of camaraderie, with the with the with the filmmaking approach, in order to think about how story can can be developed, and to have fun with it at the same time. And I'm thinking here, you know what we see going on with the Star Citizen community, and the way they make Machinima is is really very interesting, perhaps not to that level of community involvement, but certainly the community is incredibly important, and I think this guy would benefit from taking more of that kind of approach. And I'm really only being hyper critical here because I think this is indeed absolutely excellent overall. It's a great pilot, albeit not without a few things that I think can probably relatively easily be addressed and with a little more attention to some filmmaking details, rather than purely a focus on the animation itself, which is where I think this guy is going. I'm absolutely looking forward to seeing how the series develops. I think it's a great pick for us to talk about Phil and I especially think it's a particularly good film to wind up for our reviews of 2024 because it's an excellent example of how games and filmmaking have become intertwined. It's very exciting to think what we'll see next year. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's basically my comments. I know that's going to come over really critical, and I'd really welcome your views on some of the observations I've made, but I feel it kind of needed that, that sort of level of input from from my perspective,

Damien Valentine 24:26
well, I'm going to respond to my observations about the sound, having the recording and then doing the because I ease the motion capture suit. So I do that as well with my work. I find what I was doing before was I just memorized the script, and then I'd act out and listen to it in my head as I was doing it, and I'd often sometimes miss things or not get the timing quite right between characters. So what I do now is I wait until I've got the recordings dialog of every single character in that scene I'll edit together. A rough audio version, and even if it's slightly off, it's fine, but I will play that each time I run through the motion capture sequence so I can make sure the timing is right, but the interactions between each character so that you know when you've got even if you've got a character just sitting down and looking around like the pilot or something, and they're talking about what they're seeing, you need to have the reactions to be to match what they're saying. Or if you got two or more characters interacting, if they're talking, you need to have, well, maybe one says something really offensive to another one, the one who's listening to that, needs to respond at the exact moment that the thing is said, or if they're just having a friendly chat, even just even if they're not that animated that much, they still need to have that timing between them. So it's worth having the recordings first and putting a little bit of time into getting that rough dialog. You can play it on your phone as you're doing the dialog quite easily. And if you go there, you can just press play again and again and again. It'll just you can play as many times you like, for as many characters as you like, as many takes you're doing for each character. But that would be my advice to anyone doing motion capture, get the dialog in first, because it will really increase your performance. Or whoever the performance of everybody is wearing the suit, having that to listen to as they're doing it.

Phil Rice 26:24
Because, agree 100% that's the way to do it. Agree 100% yes, yeah. I mean, either way, you got to visualize something while you're you're doing it. It's much easier when you're constructing your Audio Timeline. It's much easier to me, to visualize or to imagine what's going on visually while you're you, while your ears are fed the actual thing. And it's absolutely true, and I'm, I'm fairly certain that even going way back in time, and you know, traditional animation, the sound comes first before it before the animations are drawn or cells are done, or whatever sound always does come first. So yeah, that's the way to do it. For sure, it's not only practical to do so for all the reasons you outlined, but that also, if you're curious, am I doing this the right way? Well, that's the way it's done, yeah, because it just works better. Couple of interviews

Damien Valentine 27:20
I've heard with professional voice actors, and they've been talking about animated part. About animated projects, and they say, Yeah, I recorded this thing about two or three years ago, and I've been waiting to see it just takes that long to, oh, sure, yeah, sure.

Tracy Harwood 27:31
So no other comments then,

Phil Rice 27:32
well, let me see one thing that. So we talked about that. There's kind of some rule breaking that's that's kind of been my theme for this month, and yeah with this film in particular, what's interesting is viewed in a certain way this film can almost be looked at as like a a rough demo reel, because it's like he's trying different things at different points in the movie. There's, there's one scene in the middle of this film where just all of a sudden, in the midst of the whole film, just all of a sudden, it's one of those where it's the, what's the name of that camera that's actually affixed to the body. The effect is used in Hollywood sometimes, where it's this really weird effect, and the rig is actually this, this thing that it's hard to see in the camera here, but extends the camera out. It's the frame is attached to the torso of the person, and so the camera is following every turn and movement. There's another version that attaches to the head, and just all of a sudden, there's like, a three second scene where he did that, and it was executed really well, but like, it doesn't really make any stylistic sense to have inserted it in that particular spot. There's another one where, you know, you've got a character that's facing the camera talking to someone in their foreground, and you see someone kind of blur early, appear in their background and stuff. It's like a classic shot setup that you've seen in Hollywood before. And it's almost this sense when you see these different little, let's call them vignettes, of there is a continuity to the story, but it's like he's trying all these different things. And you telling me that he's a young man who's really just, you know? I mean, he may be more experienced than I am with Blender, but he he's kind of getting his feet wet in terms of filmmaking that, yeah, that's what you do. You try things. And some people will do that where they they release a 62nd film, just trying a technique. And here it's like, it's like, 40 of those, you know, assembled into a film. So it may be that the film has kind of, that some of his filmmaking right now has dual purpose. It's, it's a matter of, I want to see if I can pull this off, this effect that I've seen, or that that I want to achieve. And so that may explain some of the the disjointedness. I'm going to go ahead and give him a pass on the leaning on other people's IP. Because I, I think almost without exception, I can think of two exceptions, Dami, not Tom jantal and Friedrich Kirschner, who, who did not everyone else that I could think of off the top of my head, began by having a story that was either directly pulled from the game they were playing, or was integrated into that fictional world somehow, or was riffing on that, you know, even even apartment hunting, you know, the 1997 quake one film right by the IL clan, Paul Marino and Frank Dellario and their crew. Okay, so there's nothing about that story that's leaning on the story of Quake one. There's a good reason for that. There is no story of value in quick one. But, yeah, this the riffing was, you've got this set, the first map of the game Quake, and they just, they re envisioned what these areas are actually for. So the bridge leading up to this fortress is the outside of the apartment, and then this area right in the middle with this machinery that's the inside of the apartment, and there's the stereo system. And then this, this big pool of water that's in a cave somewhere in that same map is the pool. So they were riffing on someone else's IP, but it allowed them to to focus on and essentially run an experiment for all of us to get to view of how, how can we do this puppeteering thing? Because a lot of theirs was live, puppeteered movements of these very limited characters with axes, you know, just that's, that's, that's a very simple example of it. And they were people who already had skill and known talent, like tested and true talent in the area of writing and performing, but even they when they first began, it's a little bit of leaning on that, because you're kind of getting some stuff out of the way to focus on this. And then you can see the the next major film that they made in that storyline. They completely re textured pretty much everything within quick two to make the Lenny and Larry the second episode. So at that point they had the puppeteering and the performance part down, and they even practiced it live at events and things like that. So when it came time to do it in that second film, well, now they can retran they can transform the whole engine, right? My story begins similar way. I mean, I started out recaming Death Match videos, and then my first film was about a supposed Space Marine who had come home and has PTSD and is a psycho, you know, and his family's all mixed up in the head, but it's very much leaning on the quake two IP, and what pitiful story that game had as kind of a crutch, you know, but then it became a point where, all right, so now I can move away from that. So I think most people in machinima, especially young people, they're gonna start that way, yeah, and they're gonna start by imitating other forms as well. So you see a lot of people recreating movie trailers or recreating scenes from movies. Remember the A Few Good Men scene that was done in in source, I believe, right, in half life, two, yeah, things like that, because it's a way to get to get started, to work on just a subset of the skills until you perfect them, and then you can work on this other stuff that's much stuff that's much harder. So I think that one could easily look at what's being done here as as that, that it's, it's, you know, he's, he's got these skills in Blender clearly, right? But there's maybe other areas that are not there. And so he's, he's, yeah, leaning on the IP of these games that you're right. He's touched on various engines. And is, you know, very much they look like gaming videos, even if they're not machinima. They are definitely rooted in the video gaming world. And I think it's very, almost inevitable, if not just fully likely, he'll move away from that as as he as he grows. But you know, he's, he's 19, he's got, he's got time, many good years ahead have been my hope. Oh, well, yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't feel like criticizing that, and I don't. I'm not saying you were criticizing it, but you were just pointing it out, and I think that's okay if you stay there. Well, frankly, that problem will solve itself, because he'll just get bored to death and not want to do this anymore if he stays there. But most people don't. Most people use that as kind of a launching point and either move on to more sophisticated adaptations. Yeah, of other people's IP which are absolutely vital. I mean, look, look at what, look what Damian has done with with Heir to the Empire. It filled this void of a story from a world that is beloved by millions, that everyone wanted to be properly told, and no one was doing it. And somehow, had you had the foresight to go ahead and just commit yourself to that and see it through, beginning to end over a span of years, and you're going to finish it before Hollywood finally gets around to actually trying to do something with that. IP. I mean, how awesome is that? Yeah, you can see it in the comments from your fans on those videos, if so many of them are just man, it is so cool to see this story on the screen. So I'm not poo pooing working on, you know, adaptations at all. They're vital, they're huge, they're, they're, they're important, but at least, you know, at least make it a story that's that's good and worth telling. And frankly, most video games don't have that half life two does. I guess there's interesting story there, for sure, there, and some games do have it, but lethal company, yeah, early. I want to, I want to close with one other observation, and this is just more general about these games. So you've got, I think it started with among us. Do you remember among us? We've mentioned it briefly on the show. It's not one that that machinima would ever be made in. It's a 2d game. I think it probably was developed in Unity or something like that. But it's this 2d game that the emphasis on it is, is that it's largely a co op type of game. You know, you're you're all in there. And the point is not just to everybody, shoot everybody until only one person is alive. You know, it's not what's that? What's that epic game that's Fortnite. It's not Fortnite. It's not free for all. It's not Battle Royale. For so many decades, that's what the most memorable multiplayer gaming was. Is death match. Is get in there and see who, who has the quickest trigger and the most accurate aim, and they're the winner, right? And it seems like there's this

Phil Rice 37:09
trend of growing adoption of games that have a very different approach to multiplayer, one that that actually there was always a co op mode in the Doom games, the original Doom games, but it just, it just never picked up in the same kind of popularity that death match was. And so in Quake that that mode wasn't really a thing where you're playing together, collaborating for a common goal. There's been a real surge of those types of games, and we've seen some of them in some of the films that that have come across our desk here. There's, there's the one with the dwarves and the space mining and all that that gave me how to pick from deep

Damien Valentine 37:49
rock galactic right? That's a really fun game to play. And

Phil Rice 37:53
hell divers and this lethal company. And, oh, there's, there's numerous ones. There's one that I'm I'm hoping to cover in in some point, either on my own channel, or maybe someone will make a film with it, and it'll be interesting here. It's called a abiotic factor, and this is basically, it's a game that is, it feels like it's an homage to the world of half life. One, the story of half life. One, you know, the the scientists in the lab are experimenting with this portal, and then bad stuff comes through and yada yada yada. So this is a survival crafting horror Co Op multiplayer game by an indie developer. It's the most fun that I've had playing a game in 10 years. I kid you not. It is so fun. And it's Co Op like there is no death match mode. There would be no sense to going in there and playing where you, you know, kill the other players. If there's anybody else in there with you, you're all trying to survive against this environment and these, these NPC creatures and and collaborate together and stuff. It's an interesting trend. I don't know what it means. I'm not a sociologist or anything, so I I wouldn't even pretend to know what the meaning of it is. But It is noteworthy that those games are more and more popular, and when I was really into gaming in the late 90s, you got online to play death match, and maybe you were death matching as a team, but the objective was only to just shoot other players. And I don't know that that's, I'm sure that that's still a thing, right? But it's, it's, it seems like there's a real surge in the popularity of games that have this Co Op emphasis on playing together, on working together for an objective vintage story and Minecraft are really that's, that's a more popular way to play those games than just going. On there and turning it into a death patch arena that exists, but that's less interesting to people than hey, let's build something together. Hey, let's survive this, this harsh winter together. We can pool our resources. We can get stuff done twice as fast. So it's an interesting trend. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on it. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 40:18
I got this group of we used to play Star Wars. No surprise, there all the Star Wars games together, but it got to a point where Star Wars games were getting less and less frequent. So we moved on to other games. We still like playing as a group. So the last I think it started with left for dead, which is a source game, and you have four players, and you have to survive to a short campaign? Well, there's several different campaigns, but each one's about four or five missions, and you have to survive at the end. It takes about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and you've got hoards of zombies coming at you. And every time you play it, the game changes, but the overall map's the same, but different routes can be blocked off, where the zombies appears different, where weapons and health packs and everything that changes every single time you play. So you can't memorize, oh, there's a really good gun just around the corner here, or anything like that, right? But you have to work together. If one person decides to go off and by themselves, there's a good chance they're going to die or get caught by one of the really powerful zombies, and they'll be they can't break free themselves. The teammates have to rescue them, but if they're too far away, by the time you get to them, they're dead. But if they die, what happens is they respawn in a locked room and you see a little outline of them bang on the door, let me out. I'm in here. Save me so you can go and let them out, and then you got your team back. So we started playing games like that, and then we found out more and more games like the deep bot galactic that, the dwarf game that was, we spent a lot of time with that during the pandemic, which is probably not one of the reasons it took off so much as people could play together, right? And we recently been playing a game called, I think it's ale and tail, where it's you have to work together to run a tavern in a sort of fantasy world. So you have to, as you play it, you unlock different bits of the kitchen, different appliances, more food, different recipes you open. And then people come in a little cartoon bubble says what they want to order. So you have to get it to them in a speedy manner. And then you earn money and experience to unlock more and more stuff, and occasionally the bar gets attacked by zombies, and then all the customers run out see if the Oh, that's great. It's great fun. You

Phil Rice 42:28
tail and tail. It's called Yeah, and

Damien Valentine 42:30
you can hilarious bite each other, yeah. And when the customers leave, they'll leave their dirty plates, so you have to pick them up, go and wash them so they're ready for the to be used again. So we we had one person was in the kitchen preparing, and then the two of us were running between the placing the orders and getting the dirty stuff out and washing it and and then you can unlock owls in the game that will do some of that for you as well. So when you got really busy that beyond what the three of us could handle, they could help take the workload off, and we enjoy playing with that. And I think part of it is, if you've got a death match game, it's fun. There's nothing wrong with that. But if one person's really good, they're always going to win. Yeah, and that's no fun for everyone else. But if a game where you have to work, it's

Phil Rice 43:15
no fun for that person, either, the one who's really good, right? Maybe

Damien Valentine 43:19
the first week. Yeah, right, right, exactly. But, um, if one person's really good in a co op game, it doesn't matter that much, because you're all working together. And a game like the air and tail one, if someone's really good at getting the the recipe stuff together, that's fine, because they could do that bit. Or someone else who's really good at getting the food delivered really quickly is doing that. What I was doing is you can, there's plots of land outside. You can grow plants, you plant the seeds, and then a few minutes later, the rage be harvested, which you can then take into the kitchen to be used for food. So I was doing that because I was picked up how to do it really quickly. So, you know, we all find ways to to play it together, but it doesn't ruin it for anyone else. If someone is really good at one thing or

Phil Rice 44:03
Yeah, actually sounds interesting development. Go ahead, Tracy,

Tracy Harwood 44:06
I was gonna say that actually sounds too much like real life to me. Somebody in the garden, yeah? Well,

Damien Valentine 44:12
unlike real life, it only takes a few minutes to grow a full field. Oh, I

Phil Rice 44:16
see. Yeah. Like Steve, Steve, you're really good at filling out tax forms. You could do that? Well, we rake the leaves. No, it is interesting. And, you know, multiplayer that isn't just about slaughtering each other has it's always kind of been around. I mean, Warcraft had a lot of elements to that. Yes, it did. Yeah, there were battles and things like that, and raids, but you didn't that wasn't everything about the game. I think Ben grusi played, and maybe still plays it. And he like, he like, got all into farming. I think he spent most of his time just farming. So there's been, there's been games that aren't just about that. But I think what's what's new is kind of this, this social squad aspect of it that makes it a little bit more social. That's right. Because in a big thing, I don't know, it's just a different feel when there's, you know, dozens of players or whatever, and you may know somebody by their screen name or whatever, but when it's when it's a squad and you're playing with your mates, you know, and you know people by name, perhaps, and you get to talk to them with your voice. Yes, that's different and and there's a lot of indie developers that that are making games for that yeah as well. It seems like it's, it's a relatively Yeah, relatively new thing. And I think it's good. I think I think it's, it's a positive thing. So anyway, yeah, this the lethal company game made me think about that because I certainly that's been my observation, watching my son play games like that, and he played hell divers too, as well. My daughter enjoys Roblox, and a lot of the Roblox games are co heavily Co Op oriented as well, not just shoot them ups or death matches. So yeah, it's an interesting trend. Listeners, if you have an opinion about that, about what, what do you think that means, or what do you think of this lethal company movie, were we spot on? Were we off? Let us know. You can let us know in the comments here or by email, which is talk at completely machinima.com I am your host, Phil rice, and my bladder is full, so we are going to be taking a break. We'll sign off for this episode for now, my co hosts are Tracy Harwood and Damian Valentine. Have a great

Tracy Harwood 46:29
day. Happy New Year.

46:31
Bye.