A decade ago I used to participate in, what was at the time, an unofficial professional wrestling group. We used youtube to show off the stuff that we recorded. While I haven't participated in any of this stuff for the past 10 years myself, a few people from that group went on to do stuff in a more official capacity. A few years ago, I decided to edit together some of that old footage and make a music video highlight package for a class project. That is what I would like to show here.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Creativity and New Media
One great use for new media is to advertise something that you do on the side. I want to use youtube to advertise my future video editing projects. I have a channel already set up with a few videos, but there's one that I want to show here.
HW Creativity
The introduction of new media to the world through avenues like YouTube has allowed every day people to show off their skills in various ways to giant audiences from around the world. Some people like to use it to record some sort of talent that they have like singing, dancing, or even some amateur acting. One of the ways that personally interests me the most, is the way that people show off their creativity through unique ways of editing videos.
The New York Times article "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of its Critters. But Why?" shows one of the earliest examples of unique video editing displays on YouTube, which is mashups. They are still popular to this day, but can sometimes dance around the legal grey area of copyright laws, but as the article states, sometimes companies are just willing to accept it as free publicity, just like Disney chose to. If an audience watches a mash up, it is only getting more eyeballs on their intellectual property because of the video, but the video is also not giving away something like a whole movie for free, then it is doing more good than harm for the company.
Other ways that people get creative with video editing is in regards to chronicling a news story. While there are some great political satire ones like Songify the news, this is not exclusive to political and regular news either. In regards to enthusiast news, there's a channel called CrowbCat that edits together strings of media coverage that tell a story of high profile, high budget video games that end up flopping in one way or another. From the beginnings of PR people talking up how great the game is going to be to news stories about how a game goes on a deep discount mere months after release because it was not selling well, CrowbCat uses video editing to paint an entertaining and generally amusing picture in regards to big critical and commercial failures in the video games industry.
The New York Times article "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of its Critters. But Why?" shows one of the earliest examples of unique video editing displays on YouTube, which is mashups. They are still popular to this day, but can sometimes dance around the legal grey area of copyright laws, but as the article states, sometimes companies are just willing to accept it as free publicity, just like Disney chose to. If an audience watches a mash up, it is only getting more eyeballs on their intellectual property because of the video, but the video is also not giving away something like a whole movie for free, then it is doing more good than harm for the company.
Other ways that people get creative with video editing is in regards to chronicling a news story. While there are some great political satire ones like Songify the news, this is not exclusive to political and regular news either. In regards to enthusiast news, there's a channel called CrowbCat that edits together strings of media coverage that tell a story of high profile, high budget video games that end up flopping in one way or another. From the beginnings of PR people talking up how great the game is going to be to news stories about how a game goes on a deep discount mere months after release because it was not selling well, CrowbCat uses video editing to paint an entertaining and generally amusing picture in regards to big critical and commercial failures in the video games industry.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds
A virtual world has a lot of uses, from providing a space for escapism from real life troubles, to allowing for training simulations for important tasks, to even assisting with mental therapy.
One such use was discussed in the Wall Street Journal article "Avatar II: The Hospital" which brought up a specific case of a medical facility using the virtual world of Second Life to train a staff on how to react to rapid response emergencies. This is an example of using the virtual world for a training situation. It goes without saying that having a way to practice important tasks in a situation where failure does not cost lives is a very useful thing, and this is something that people in both the medical and military fields have taken notice of, as they both use this to great effect. Whether it's simulations of combat scenarios in preparation for a military mission, or practicing high precision open heart surgery on a virtual heart, there are countless applications for this technology.
There are also unfortunately some downsides to virtual worlds. One is that they are always limited by the technology of the time, so things like the laws of physics, and 1:1 motion tracking have historically been limited, though in recent years, improvements in technology have made the virtualization of these a bit smoother. One big con that still strongly exists today is how these virtual worlds goad consumers into spending a large amount of money through micro-transactions. The New York Times article "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You" talked about how an average person was able to use the micro-transactions of Second Life to make their in-game avatar come off as a high class citizen. While it was mostly harmless in this specific instance, this has evolved throughout the years into ways to get people to spend absurd amounts of money on virtual goods that have no tangible value. This is currently running rampant in a lot of phone games, where they typically implement features behind very long timers and try to get you to pay real money to avoid the timers. This exploitation of people that overvalue digital goods is perhaps the biggest issue going with virtual worlds today, and will continue to be the biggest issue for the immediate future.
One such use was discussed in the Wall Street Journal article "Avatar II: The Hospital" which brought up a specific case of a medical facility using the virtual world of Second Life to train a staff on how to react to rapid response emergencies. This is an example of using the virtual world for a training situation. It goes without saying that having a way to practice important tasks in a situation where failure does not cost lives is a very useful thing, and this is something that people in both the medical and military fields have taken notice of, as they both use this to great effect. Whether it's simulations of combat scenarios in preparation for a military mission, or practicing high precision open heart surgery on a virtual heart, there are countless applications for this technology.
There are also unfortunately some downsides to virtual worlds. One is that they are always limited by the technology of the time, so things like the laws of physics, and 1:1 motion tracking have historically been limited, though in recent years, improvements in technology have made the virtualization of these a bit smoother. One big con that still strongly exists today is how these virtual worlds goad consumers into spending a large amount of money through micro-transactions. The New York Times article "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You" talked about how an average person was able to use the micro-transactions of Second Life to make their in-game avatar come off as a high class citizen. While it was mostly harmless in this specific instance, this has evolved throughout the years into ways to get people to spend absurd amounts of money on virtual goods that have no tangible value. This is currently running rampant in a lot of phone games, where they typically implement features behind very long timers and try to get you to pay real money to avoid the timers. This exploitation of people that overvalue digital goods is perhaps the biggest issue going with virtual worlds today, and will continue to be the biggest issue for the immediate future.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Blog about Twitter
The most interesting thing about twitter is how quickly conversations can move thanks to the limitation of the characters. This gives more incentive for viewers to look through more posts from various people rather than something like a long form blog on this site would, as they only need to take a few seconds to read what is posted.
When compared to a BlackBoard or an in-class discussion however, it can become quite difficult to talk in depth about a specific subject due to the character limitation, so it's a double edged sword. One good thing is that helps Twitter sometimes feel like an in-class discussion with various people commenting back and forth on a message chain. Messages on a BlackBoard discussion board are similar to Twitter in construction, but without the character limit, which also allows for more in depth discussions.
With all of this said, Twitter is currently the ultimate platform to have a quick discussion about several different topics, but it has also sometimes had a glaring negative effect on giving certain topics the gravity that they deserve.
When compared to a BlackBoard or an in-class discussion however, it can become quite difficult to talk in depth about a specific subject due to the character limitation, so it's a double edged sword. One good thing is that helps Twitter sometimes feel like an in-class discussion with various people commenting back and forth on a message chain. Messages on a BlackBoard discussion board are similar to Twitter in construction, but without the character limit, which also allows for more in depth discussions.
With all of this said, Twitter is currently the ultimate platform to have a quick discussion about several different topics, but it has also sometimes had a glaring negative effect on giving certain topics the gravity that they deserve.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Project Description - Crowdfunding and Video Games
For my research paper, I will be describing how crowdfunding has benefited video games. I will be discussing crowdfunding sites like kickstarter and indiegogo. I will also talk about about how this method of funding has helped revitalize genres of video games that were once considered dead, and also helped revive the careers of formerly prominent video game developers. Lastly, I will talk about the controversies involved around this type of funding, including failed projects and other projects that did not deliver on all of the promises that were made during their crowdfunding campaigns.
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