Machinima, Microsoft, and YouTube's Partner system

[wakagana]

I know most of you may not care, or even know what Machinima is, but its basically the art of creating visual entertainment with a pre-exsisting game, whether it be a comedy routine, or a music video it's a way for a person to express themselves while promoting the platform they're using to create said 'Machinima', so it's free advertisement for the game/company its self. (Machinima is also a channel on YouTube that is ruthlessly known to over-brand its self in every possible way it can in an attempt to make money. - *Personal view)

However...http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/new ... eir-games/

To sum the artical up, you're still allowed to make Machinima, but you can longer make revenue off of your creative talents as long as the games you are using are incorporated with Microsoft. From a personal standpoint. (I worked on Machinima for two and a half years before losing interest in that form of video editing due to the lack of traffic it was getting An example of my work ) I find this absolutely silly and ludicrous that they're smacking down people that make chump-change from YouTube adds who actually have put in a great deal of hard work just to get a subscriber/fan base going on YouTube. WHILE promoting the game unintentionally!

I've always wanted to eventually get a fanbase of subscribers for my lets plays and different machinima's so that my hard work could at least be rewarded. But if other companies follow with Microsoft's movement to do this, there will be no incentive to create because the chances of them making it big on YouTube with machinima.

I disagree with their motives. What do you guys think? I can understand that its agreeable to say that people shouldn't make money off of others works. But it's like taking a Shakespeare play and adding a little mix of personal influence to it to make it their own, just using the Shakespeare as a standpoint to build up from.

[HumbertTheHorse]

How irksome. This is Microsoft being the Microsoft they have been since day one. I'm sorry it effects you though hopefully less large companies won't follow suite anytime soon.

[Applegate]

There's a reason we used to spell it Micro$oft.

I usually use YouTube and Let's Plays to decide if I want to at all buy a game, and often won't if I can't find it there. I think that should be promoted rather than curbstomped.

[Greeny]

I have to side with Microsoft on this one.

If you want to creatively express yourself, you don't need the money. If you want to make money, you have to use content you actually have the rights to use. Games don't pop out of the void when Microsoft wills them into existance. Behind those games are artists, designers and programmers who worked hard for months on end to produce an intricate weave of assets comprising of complex code, 3d models, animations, sound, and I don't even know. I know it's not easy to produce a well edited movie clip. I've had some experience with editing and I know it's a lot of work. Not to mention voice acting.

But if you think your week of working hard on your own, maybe with a small gang of amateur voice actors, can compare to a year's hard work of the combined efforts of a hundred men and women? If you think you can take those assets, forged with the blood and sweat of probably underpaid game developers, and call the product your own? If you think you deserve to make money off of that?

Then, as much as I may despise corporations, I cannot agree with you.

[kkffoo]

This isn't a new principle, machinima made using microsoft games can't be used commercially. Actually there isn't a games company who allow you to use their assets in a commercial machinima.
Unless you are machinima.com, where presumably backroom deals have been done.
Thankfully there is now a good choice of programs from which you can make commercial machinima.
This doesn't save you from the music copyright trolls on youtube of course, who are curently going round sucking up any spare revenue on unclaimed videos, whether they own the music or not.
Microsoft are being quite reasonable in comparison.

[wakagana]

There's a reason we used to spell it Micro$oft.

I usually use YouTube and Let's Plays to decide if I want to at all buy a game, and often won't if I can't find it there. I think that should be promoted rather than curbstomped.

I think this also effects professional reviews of games, there are many channels that make in depth reviews of games and make revenue off of them due to the effort they put into giving reason to or not to buy games, and if they showed game play of said game, they wouldn't make any revenue off of the work they did.

Of course, the way you make revenue from YouTube seems completely fair and really shouldn't involve what your video is even about, because 90% of the time the Adds on the video have no relevance.

But if you think your week of working hard on your own, maybe with a small gang of amateur voice actors, can compare to a year's hard work of the combined efforts of a hundred men and women? If you think you can take those assets, forged with the blood and sweat of probably underpaid game developers, and call the product your own? If you think you deserve to make money off of that?

Then, as much as I may despise corporations, I cannot agree with you.

I think its more so that if the content is there then it is to be enjoyed by all audiences, and when it comes down to it the content is there regardless if people play it or not, the game is a finished product, unless there is downloadable content. In some cases I agree with you that the original creators should be entitled to the money they make via the game or original source of creation, but I feel like artistic ventures shouldn't be punished because they're using a stepping stone from previous creators. This of course shouldn't replace originality of creation at all, but it is still a form of art. Just my point of view I suppose, I can see where you're coming from though. :O

Unless you are machinima.com, where presumably backroom deals have been done.
Thankfully there is now a good choice of programs from which you can make commercial machinima.
This doesn't save you from the music copyright trolls on youtube of course, who are curently going round sucking up any spare revenue on unclaimed videos, whether they own the music or not.
Microsoft are being quite reasonable in comparison.

I've never had a personal experience, but I have several friends who work with them via World of Warcraft, some say its a wonderful organization, others say its a trashy-money grubbing industry.

And yes, making a music parody for a song and having them claim ownership of it, adding commercials, and generating revenue from it is always obnoxious.

[AxemRed]

I think this also effects professional reviews of games, there are many channels that make in depth reviews of games and make revenue off of them due to the effort they put into giving reason to or not to buy games, and if they showed game play of said game, they wouldn't make any revenue off of the work they did.

I think you're misunderstanding what's actually going on. Microsoft has a voluntary ruleset which, if you follow the rules, gives you an official OK to use their content. You can still use their content under fair use regardless of what they say.

[wakagana]

I think this also effects professional reviews of games, there are many channels that make in depth reviews of games and make revenue off of them due to the effort they put into giving reason to or not to buy games, and if they showed game play of said game, they wouldn't make any revenue off of the work they did.

I think you're misunderstanding what's actually going on. Microsoft has a voluntary ruleset which, if you follow the rules, gives you an official OK to use their content. You can still use their content under fair use regardless of what they say.

Yes, of course I understand this, but the issue is that people that may or may not rely on YouTube as their source (Or one) of their incomes are being pushed around, while people like RayWilliamJohnson and Tobuscus use internet video's that they don't even own to make thousands of dollars and no one pays it -ANY- attention. And yet when individuals try to do the same thing with games and or music made by companies/record labels they are punished and made out to be freeloaders to an extent.

I just think its a shame that companies are adding regulations to things that are passively helping them sell their product and making it more difficult for individual and freelance artists from getting anything, but I suppose that's just life. Can't always win :t

[LateWhiteRabbit]

But if you think your week of working hard on your own, maybe with a small gang of amateur voice actors, can compare to a year's hard work of the combined efforts of a hundred men and women? If you think you can take those assets, forged with the blood and sweat of probably underpaid game developers, and call the product your own? If you think you deserve to make money off of that?

Then, as much as I may despise corporations, I cannot agree with you.

I think its more so that if the content is there then it is to be enjoyed by all audiences, and when it comes down to it the content is there regardless if people play it or not, the game is a finished product, unless there is downloadable content. In some cases I agree with you that the original creators should be entitled to the money they make via the game or original source of creation, but I feel like artistic ventures shouldn't be punished because they're using a stepping stone from previous creators. This of course shouldn't replace originality of creation at all, but it is still a form of art. Just my point of view I suppose, I can see where you're coming from though. :O

But such work ISN'T using a "stepping stone" from previous creators. They are using the entire work of existing artists. Sampling or using ideas from an existing work of art is one thing, but taking an existing movie or game and essentially just re-dubbing and editing it doesn't count. I've got no problem with people making machinima from games for fun or as a creative exercise, but I'm with Microsoft on this one, you should NOT be allowed to make money off other people's work.

I've made art for games like those. Art that takes a week or more for one asset. And if someone were to come along and take all my assets, representing months of work, and just arrange them differently on screen and add an audio track, then make money off it? I'd be pissed. Artists have a right to continue to make money off their work, and just because you bought a poster from an artist doesn't give you the right to draw a mustache on it and then sell copies.

When making machinima, either you're doing it for creative reasons, or you're doing it because you love the work and want to promote and share ideas about it, both cases where you shouldn't need to make money. And Microsoft has said you can do that. You just can't use other artists' work to make a living for yourself. So your thread title is wrong. It should read, "Microsoft is protecting artists from machinima entrepreneurs."

[Obscura]

If machinima were allowed, I would have just used the Sims franchise to make a short VN. It has everything in place--sprites you can pose with different expressions, backgrounds, etc. I don't think you can even do this for a free game though.

I can certainly understand why it wouldn't fly for a commercial project--someone else did 95% of the work.

[wakagana]

But such work ISN'T using a "stepping stone" from previous creators. They are using the entire work of existing artists. Sampling or using ideas from an existing work of art is one thing, but taking an existing movie or game and essentially just re-dubbing and editing it doesn't count. I've got no problem with people making machinima from games for fun or as a creative exercise, but I'm with Microsoft on this one, you should NOT be allowed to make money off other people's work.

I've made art for games like those. Art that takes a week or more for one asset. And if someone were to come along and take all my assets, representing months of work, and just arrange them differently on screen and add an audio track, then make money off it? I'd be pissed. Artists have a right to continue to make money off their work, and just because you bought a poster from an artist doesn't give you the right to draw a mustache on it and then sell copies.

When making machinima, either you're doing it for creative reasons, or you're doing it because you love the work and want to promote and share ideas about it, both cases where you shouldn't need to make money. And Microsoft has said you can do that. You just can't use other artists' work to make a living for yourself. So your thread title is wrong. It should read, "Microsoft is protecting artists from machinima entrepreneurs."

I think I may be on the side of machinimators because I know how much effort it takes to actually create a visual showcase, I can totally see where you're coming from if its literally a simple little video that had almost no effort dumped into it and they just get free money off of it. But I know a multitude of people who are in the process of making a literal in-game/machinimated movie out of WoW, with their own voice actors, their own soundtrack, and the only thing they're using is the visuals from the game, which were created by hardworking people at Activision and Blizzard.

It may just be my view point, but I feel like taking away the chance to make a dismal amount of profit from something you're using as a base pallet is like making a movie and having to give all the money earned to the brand names and creators of each and every item in said movie.

I can agree to the extent it isn't valid to buy a poster, draw a mustache on it, call it your own and start selling it. But if the effort and talent is put into the revision and creativity added on is to the point where you could hardly tell the difference from the previous poster to the newer artists version, they should at least be -allowed- to have the opportunity to make revenue off of it.

This requires a great deal of effort. It's like making abstract art in a way, at least in my own eyes. It's like buying a wristwatch and making something out of the parts inside the watch and then trying to sell it and being told that the money you get is going into the watchmaker's pocket.

A good example of this is Vaanel

He basically takes models from WoW as a base pallet and makes alterations and changes to them to the extent where they might as well be original.

Because he uses WoW as a base for his art, should he be denied the ability to make pocket-change worth of revenue off of something that's practically original aside from the basic concepts of the models? I guess that's my question. But I totally understand the anger of being freeloaded on by people who put no effort into creating the art them selves. It's a slippery slope based on the 'effort' if anything.

[Anna]

Yes, of course I understand this, but the issue is that people that may or may not rely on YouTube as their source (Or one) of their incomes are being pushed around, while people like RayWilliamJohnson and Tobuscus use internet video's that they don't even own to make thousands of dollars and no one pays it -ANY- attention. And yet when individuals try to do the same thing with games and or music made by companies/record labels they are punished and made out to be freeloaders to an extent.

I just think its a shame that companies are adding regulations to things that are passively helping them sell their product and making it more difficult for individual and freelance artists from getting anything, but I suppose that's just life. Can't always win :t

Just because they get away with doing something that isn't right, doesn't mean you should get away with it too. I think none of the parties should be allowed to just take material like that and tweak it to make a profit, no matter how good the tweaking is :/.

For fun? Fine. For profit? No.

[kkffoo]

Even in the machinimators did more work than the original artists, they still wouldn't, by terms of the EULA, be able to use game assets in a commercial film.
There is as wide a range of effort and artistic input in machinima as anything else.

@Obscura, if you want to use the sims in a non commercial VN I doubt anyone would chase you down (no idea whether you'd get it on the games database for Renpy though)

There are plenty of machinima tools available which allow for commercial use though. It isn't necessary to use games.

[Sapphi]

I can understand that its agreeable to say that people shouldn't make money off of others works. But it's like taking a Shakespeare play and adding a little mix of personal influence to it to make it their own, just using the Shakespeare as a standpoint to build up from.

Aren't his works in the public domain, though?

I've always wanted to eventually get a fanbase of subscribers for my lets plays and different machinima's so that my hard work could at least be rewarded. But if other companies follow with Microsoft's movement to do this, there will be no incentive to create because the chances of them making it big on YouTube with machinima.

Incentive to create should not come from "chance of making it big". You can't complain about those big bad dirty capitalist corporations if your primary motive here is fame and money!

It may just be my view point, but I feel like taking away the chance to make a dismal amount of profit from something you're using as a base pallet is like making a movie and having to give all the money earned to the brand names and creators of each and every item in said movie.

I don't think that's quite the same. You can film real life for free... nobody has the IP rights to real life. A virtual environment created by programmers and artists is different.

I think I'm siding with Microsoft on this one... so they're putting in lots of work into the WoW video... so what? The "I'm doing this purely out of love for the franchise" excuse doesn't really fly when you bring money into it, because it's not just the visuals from the game they're using. They're also cashing in on the popularity of the franchise, without the proper consent from the developers, and that's not fair. I support creativity, but not leeching.

[wakagana]

You can film real life for free... nobody has the IP rights to real life.

So we think.

4749-dramatic-dean.gif (289.01 KiB) Viewed 1979 times

But in all seriousness I guess that was a bit of a durp explanation. Perhaps something more along the line of buying something, and ripping it up to shreds and making art out of it. Like, for example could you buy a magazine, rip it to shreds and then make a collage with it? How would ownership laws work with destroyed or tampered material? I know its way out of left wing, but I heard some stupid rumor by my friend from school who was talking about how to make something 'your own' it only had to be 20% or 33% different, but I have no idea what kind of measurement could even possibly be used in that sort've situation. They may have just been talking out of their butt, though. It's not a reliable source at all.

support creativity, but not leeching.

I suppose to an extent it is leeching, but it also raises traffic for the game its self, It's essentially free advertisement for the company. I've had numerous comment's on some of my videos asking "What game is this?" or "What are you using to create these videos?" In which I case I guide them on their way to purchasing the original content.

Also, what're peoples thoughts on the money generated being donated from the adds to charity? Does that change anything? Or is it still leeching because of YouTube's partnership system?