RooksBailey

Join Date 02/2008

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Day of Darkness II

EVE Fan Film

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This is an incredible achievement:

Day of Darkness vid

Even though this is an EVE-based film, I find the story and the imagery remind me more of a typical game of Sins than EVE (how many planetary bombardments have you experienced in EVE?).

However, this video makes me very angry! Why? Because it forces me to ask myself - yet again - "Why are fan-made sci-fi flicks better than 99% of the junk coming out of Hollywood?!?"

I just don't get it! There was more vision and dead-serious passion shown in that short film than in the totality of sci-fi I have seen over the last decade (okay, maybe the opening movie of BG is the sole exception). Granted, four minutes allows you to skate by any plot development or dialogue, but if he had to, I bet the guy who made this movie would come up with something far more compelling than anything I've seen in years.

Someday I want to corral all the Hollywood directors into a room, strap them into a chair, pry open their eyes in a Clockwork Orange fashion, and force them to witness what real sci-fi looks like by making them watch some of these wonderful fan films!

BTW: Film details here.

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Eve always has generated absolutely awesome community videos. I sometimes suspect that it's due to the fact that it has no real quests as it is a sandbox game. It was Leaf... err sommat of NSN when they were part of PA in '04 was pulling out the most incredible videos, each one took the boundries of production to a whole new level. It was Bob/evolution, although heavy in propaganda, also moved the boundries on for user generated videos in MMOG's. I've played other MMOG's - and I'm not being a fanboi here - eve is about 2 -3 years ahead of what is come out of other MMOG's on the community produced videos. I have no idea how they do it. I'd hate to produce a player made video in eve - however good it was, there'd be one 10x better. Even the guys working for CCP making the advertising videos have previously commented they believe some community videos produced are better than the in house ones. The community mind you tells them that regualarily...

As for why the player generated stuff is so good. I think that's passion. Without sucking up to anyone - Stardock are effectively fanboi's producing games. Brad said he got into making computer games because he loved playing them so much. He's written games that interest him. He loves 4x games, so thats what he makes. That passion that "need" to produce what you want, and sod everyone else produces great thing. It's arrogant, and I like that - I call it confidence in myself =P You look at community produced content, its good because of that passion. You effectively produce it for yourself and not the boss.

I think the Holywood blockbuster is produced too much by managment meetings rather than rolling your sleaves up getting your hands dirty and being passionate. I've a few friends who work in the film. The guy who does graphics once said how can you really get passionate about having 6 months of your life and work being 6 seconds of film that gets cut and left on the cutting room floor? When making something by committee and checked against every approvial rating and audience testing - how can there be passion and soul left? But then the film industry is wierd, I mean how does Uwe Bow exist?

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Movies are almost always made for money, not to appease to any particular group of people. And when they do it becomes a "cult" movie for being different. For example A Scanner Darkly: wikipedia states

Having never been intended for mainstream audiences, the film opened in seventeen theaters and grossed $391,672 for a per-theater average of $23,039. The film saw some expansion in later weeks but did not earn back its $8.7 million production budget: it grossed $5.5 million in the U.S.A. and $2.1 million elsewhere"

So yeah, that's not a great incentive for producers and directors to make a 'real' science fiction movie.

BTW, I really like the "OH SHIT" look and size of that Carrier. Wish there were more games with these kind of huge ships.

EDIT: rewording

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Woot day of darkness 2 is freakin amazing. Eve is more of a thinking persons game. Like it alot more than wow. Plus the expanisons are free so i dont have to pay 50 bucks plus its free to download.

As far as scifi movies go eve could be a hit. Most ppl love to watch huge explosions ship battles what have you. Scifi movies that are just thinking ones just wont do well look at starwars. Think epic.

My main is Belesari amarr cya ingame

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I don't even think Hollywood knows what sci-fi is anymore. Take a look at Cameron's forthcoming $200 million dollar extravaganza, Avatar. Cameron describes it as a sci-fi epic...that takes place on a "jungle world". Jungle world? Since when are sci-fi epics based on jungle worlds?

Here's my point: when most sci-fi people think of sci-fi epics, they think of the type of content we so love in games such as GalCiv, Sins, EvE, etc. In other words, people living in space, getting around in space ships and, of course, epic fleet actions. "Jungle worlds" just don't make the cut. I find it very telling that "Tabula Rasa", a ground-based sci-fi MMO, failed while EvE just posted record profits.

Simply, people want space ships and fleet actions, not all this other stuff Hollywood is pumping out under the sci-fi label.

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The sci fi TV series, Lost, is based on a jungle island and is doing well.

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I don't really consider Lost sci-fi. I think the show may better qualify for the "New Wave" label of "speculative fiction".

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Yeah no offense to Lost - but I wouldn't class that as traditional Sci-Fi. I'd call Sci-Fi Star Wars/Star Trek/B5 etc. Even things like star gate, I'd say are on the edge. Unless there's a starship, I get really wobbly over calling it Science fiction. I'm a big fan of William Gibson, and eve more so of of Richard Morgan and his Takeshi Korvacs character, but I wouldn't really class them as Sci-Fi as there ain't enough spaceships. Yeah I know that doesn't make sense, but the very first star wars came out when I was 4, and it was the first film my mother took me to see. Sci-fi to me is, and always will be the first Star Wars film.

I've actually heard nothing about Cameron's new film. Just read 3 or 4 sentences on it, and could be completely wrong - kinda sounds like the first deathworld book from Harry Harrison. That had a spaceship in so is definately sci-fi =P

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