The weekend is once again upon us. Its been a short and easy week for those of us in the states as this was only a four day week but that doesn't make the weekend any less sweeter for being here.

I will occupy just about every free second that I have working on my machinimas despite the fact that its beautiful outside and the pool in my neighborhood is now open.

This thing has to get done and I've been having so much fun finding creative ways to dispatch of enemies that I don't want to stop now. In the past couple of days I've done everything from severing limbs to blowing enemies into smithereens. Good times.

The only thing that might pull me away from animation is a new film from the director of "The Cell" called "The Fall". I think it opens today and looks to be an absolutely visually beautiful film. It's probably not unlike "The Cell" in that the story takes a backseat to insane visuals and brillaint costumes but considering how crazy the visuals are I think I'll still enjoy it.

I hope everyone has a safe, happy and entertaining weekend.

Countdown to 100

My 100th blog is quickly approaching and in typical Gamespot fashion I'm going to let my 100th blog be about you, my loyal readers. Between now and then I'll be placing a little reminder on every blog asking for any and all questions that you might have about me. No question is too weird or out of bounds. I will answer any and all questions so go ahead and start leaving them in the comment section or just drop them off to me in PM.

I will answer ALL questions posed to me no matter how odd or seemingly inappropriate so start asking!

Until next time... take care.

Laughlyn

Anyone who's been reading this blog long enough knows three things about me:

1) I'm angry and wordy!
2) I hate Halo 3!
3) I don't think Bioshock is anything more than a good game. It is not the second coming of Jesus manifested into video game form.

Recently, Tim Rogers of Actionbutton.net posted his opinions of Bioshock. (Read his full review HERE or check out Kotaku's cliff notes version HERE) After reading his review its good to know that I'm not alone on an island of sanity while everyone else drinks the messiah Kool-Aid on Bioshock.

His review mostly stems from the idea that just because things are well done that it doesn't make the game one of the greatest of all-time. All it simply means is that the game is done well and that we shouldn't get so excited about something that is more of an achievement in competence than it is in greatness.

Yes, I know it brought Ayn Rand into the conciousness of a generation that barely reads and blah, blah, blah but take the objectivism out of the game and what do you have? A shooter set in the 1930's in an underwater city with magic! Change the timeframe from the 1930's to the future and change the setting from an underwater city to Seatlle and you've got Shadowrun! What an achievement that game was!

Now, I know having someone reinforce my views on Bioshock isn't going to change the minds of the people who love it, that's not my point in all this. Wait... what the hell is my point? Come to think of it, I'm not even really sure of what my point is so much as its just a reassurance that I'm not crazy over here. Perhaps, its that I've been cut off from the world for so long working on my movie that I just felt this whole article was something bigger than it was... maybe, maybe not. Either way, I feel better and less crazy about my own views on Bioshock.

If you need a reference as to my feelings toward Bioshock just check out my review. Yes, I know I say the game is good and not great but an 8.0 on GS equates to great... that is an arbitrary adjective asigned to my score and not reflective of my feelings.

Thanks... now back to my office to spend hours working on things that only last a few seconds!

Laughlyn

I am a huge believer in loving a medium enough to get the most out of it. There probably isn't a "c!assic" movie that you could name that I haven't seen. There probably isn't a "c!assic" album that you could name that I haven't heard. It's just the way I am. I feel like it makes one more qualified to really judge something if you know as much about its history as possible.

While I'm really good with movies and music, I'm not so good with games. If I was to put up a list of "c!assic" games that I have never played there's a good chance that you might pass out. There's also a good chance that you wouldn't believe me and just sit there in front of your computer monitor and say, "There's no freaking way he hasn't played that! That games has been out forever! Everyone's played that!" So, rather than subject myself to that kind of well deserved ridicule I will simply talk about one game that I just bought in order to cross of the list of "Great Games Laughlyn Has Never Played".

This week's installment is Starcraft. That's right, I've never played Starcraft until today. At the time when it was really big I wasn't too much of an RTS fan and with the market at the time I didn't see the reason why Starcraft was such a big deal... it looked like every other RTS to me.

Now that I'm older and wiser I can say that I see what all the hype was about. I haven't played the online yet mostly out of fear of getting slaughtered but I will soon. The single player campaign is engrossing and procedes at a pace that doesn't make me feel lost. Looking back on it now, I can't believe I waited this long to play it. It is truly a game worthy of all the hype that has preceded it for all these years.

Are there any games that you never played until years later that made you wonder what the hell you were thinking to not play it at the time? I want to see if there's anything else out there that is worthy of the hype even though its old.

Laughlyn

As I mentioned in my last blog, I was very close to completing the opening sequence of my next machinima project titled, "Worth Dying For: The Betrayal". I promised to have the footage up by the weekend but with the 2 week vacation of one of my actors and another one in France I decided to step up production so that at least one of them could see it before they left.

So, below is a VERY ROUGH cut of the opening sequence to the movie. Before you watch it and pick it apart let me tell you what's already wrong with it.

1) There is no audio for the first minute as I'm still waiting on the voice work to come back from one of my actors.
2) The black and white portion of the sequence is way too long and needs to be shortened but I can't do that until I get the voice work back.
3) The shot where the "hero" is walking along the bridge is not my favorite and may change.
4) There is no music but it will have music once I get the voice work back and manage to get a real running time for the actual finished sequence.

So, with all that said, everyone take a look and get a good one because I'm only going to keep it up for about 24 hours so you guys can check it out then I'm taking it down so as not to be taken as a real representation of what the final film will be since it still needs work. I hope you enjoy it.

Laughlyn

What A Match

For some reason that I can't quite figure out people here in the US hate soccer. To me how you can be a fan of one type of sport yet think others are terrible just doesn't make any sense. Competition is competition no matter the rules of the game. With that said, I just got done watching what has to be one of the greatest soccer matches that I've seen in a long time, the Champions League Final.

Man U pulled it out over Chelsea on PK's (still a terrible way to decide something so important but I digress). Aside from attempting to get some work done today I was glued to the match and was glad that it was played at a time that was convenient for me here in the US.

For those of you who might hate soccer, give it a try. Watch a real match (with clubs from Europe or Latin America) and not the crap that they're trying to pass as soccer here in the states. If you were to watch it, you might find that you enjoy it. If it was such a horrendous game then why is it the most popular sport in the world, hands down? Not to be preachy but for real sports fans I feel like they're missing out by boycotting soccer for whatever reason.

Slowly But Surely

Like I said above, I spent the day watching the Champions League Final as well as getting some work done on my machinima. For the past month I have been working on one scene and one scene alone, the opening sequence, and I think I'm finally about 1/2 way finished with it. The good news is that once this sequence is finished it should be pretty smooth sailing after this since I always tend to make the opening sequences of my films exceptionally elaborate as a way of grabbing the audience.

So for everyone who was asking about release dates and stuff for the movies... right now I'm shooting for a Fall 2008 release of part 2 to the trilogy, titled, "Worth Dying For: The Betrayal" and a Winter/Spring 2009 release for the final chapter, "Worth Dying For: The Redemption". I know it seems far away but I've already accounted for my move as well as the fact that I'm only one man! And don't worry, as updates become available I'll be sure to pass them on to you guys, my friends at Gamespot, since I've really seen an interest in them!

If you're at all interested in checking out the first movie you can view it at my YouTube Channel HERE.

I hope to have the opening sequence done by this weekend to be uploaded to both YouTube and here to Gamespot so keep an eye out.

As always, thanks to everyone who has shown interest and an even greater thanks to anyone who's been involved. I couldn't have done it without you.

Laughlyn

I've never been the most politically correct person in the world. Its odd that someone who sits on the left end of the political spectrum like I do isn't uber sensitive considering my political alignments as well as my own status a minority group but its still true. I'm not too fond of the term *-American to describe a nationality. My friends are black or Chinese or Jewish or Indian (from the country of India) and I myself am Nicaraguan. I do make exceptions and I try to be as polite as possible... I do use Native Americans because calling them Indians is just factually inaccurate. I use the term "homosexual" mostly because I feel like it is the least venomous and carries with it the least amount of negative connotation unless you're some sort of fundamentalist Christian in which case they might as well be satanists.

The other night I was watching wrestling and as I'm listening to one of the great play-by-play men of all-time, regadless of sport, Jim Ross, call a match I hear something that catches my ear and instantly registers as something kind of odd. During the Shaun Michaels vs Chris Jericho match on Sunday night I hear Jim Ross use the words "Native-American Deathlock" and for some reason my head titled to the side like when you try and talk to a dog. Something about that struck me as weird. After a second I realized that it was the politically correct term for what was once known as the "Indian Deathlock". Now, I understand the decision to change the terminology but it just struck me as a little odd. What's to say that the move wasn't named after a deathlock used by people from the country of India? Is there any research into the origins of wrestling moves that one can look to clearly discover the lineage of certain holds? Once again, I have no problem with this, call it whatever you want... call it the Brooklyn Pretzel Lock for all I care, I just don't remember ever hearing the changing of the name of certain moves to go along with the times. Either way, good for Jim Ross.

Now this is where things really get weird. Tonight, I'm watching MSNBC election coverage and while discussing the election results in both West Virginia last week and Kentucky this week the anchors, Chris Mathews and Keith Olberman have no problem bringing up certain objective statistics for the states. They mention that West Virginia and Kentucky both rank in the bottom 10 of literacy rates in the nation. They both mention that 60% of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in both states have no problem admitting to a random stranger (an exit pollster) that race influenced their vote. What they're saying is that 60% of people asked if race was important to their vote said yes and because of that they voted for the white person.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and cast judgement on these people. Its obvious that because 1 in 5 of them can't read and more or less have never seen a person of a different ethnic background that in some sense perhaps they're scared, or uncomfortable or for whatever reason they would rather vote for a white person than a minority. I don't agree with it but that's what the objective statistics say and in not so subtle terms Olberman and Mathews are basically saying that the people of Kentucky and West Virginia are a bit racist. Not a big stretch to get to that conclusion but they stopped short of flat out saying it.

Later in the broadcast these same anchors who one minute had no problem hinting that Kentucky and West Virginia were backwoods, racist, hillbilly parts of the country admitting to needing to dumb down their metaphors to seem more inclusive. They stopped calling the political process a "chess match" and changed it to a "checkers match" so as to seem more inclusive.

So, in the name of political correctness, it is now inappropriate to use the word racist but ok to change the metaphor from "chess match" to "checkers match" in order to not offend the same people? Wait! What?

I understand the point of political correctness as a way of getting rid of words like the "n" word and words that are basically insensitive to things that people are that is not a choice ie race, sexual preference, ethnicity, things like that. When did it become a way of protecting things that people choose to be? Why is calling a group racist, or uneducated against political correctness?

Now, since when is it the responisbility of the news media to dumb down your broadcast so much so as not to offend people who are basically voting for the white person possibly solely because she is white? Do you think that by somehow appeasing them (unlike George W Bush, I know what that really means) they're every going to change their ways?

There's one thing I've learned about growing up as a minority in a redneck part of the country... racists love to be racist but hate to be called racists. Its the same way that fundamentalist Christians don't like to be called bigots for their stance of homosexual rights. They like to call it something else like "values" or "how I was raised" instead of what it is. Even if they hold their beliefs very strongly they don't like to be called some fitting of what their beliefs mean to the rest of the world.

Everyone has read my views on absolutism and perspective and they may seem to contradict what I'm saying here. If you hate minorities or homosexuals that's fine, I don't have a problem with that. Actually, I do have a problem with it, but I'm not going to tell you your views are wrong. My beliefs stem from the idea that we are ALL created equal and I don't discriminate based on belief structure. Believe what you want to believe but at least have the balls to stand up and say it. If you don't like black people say you're a racist. If you don't want to give homosexuals equal rights that everyone else is entitled to just because they don't sleep with people of the opposite sex then say you're a bigot or a homophobe. Don't run around calling your belief structure something more marketable like "values" or "upbringing".

What angers me even more is the fact that these people who will not call themselves what they really are are catered to because the networks are afraid of them. Chess is a complicated game and so is politics. To reduce it to checkers which is something any 4 year old can play doesn't do this great electoral process justice. It reduces it to its lowest common denominator. The process is great and is the model for so many others around the world. Its not meant to be simple. If it was then people wouldn't have fought and died for it. It would have existed naturally without any effort or sacrifice.

Call things what they are... not what we want to think of them as or what appeals to more people. If you don't then you're just lying to yourself and anyone else who is listening and that's not the point of being politcally correct. The term was to take the nastiness out of labels of certain groups of people. They were not meant as a marketing tool so as to be more acceptible to those who view us as labels.

I don't know if this makes a whole lot of sense to anyone except me but I just wanted to share. As always, thanks for taking the time to read this.

Laughlyn