Documentary

[[NIUE] BIRRY WONG]

Next semester im making a 10-12 minute documentary for my television production paper. I think, since i have so many mates who are avid gamers, that im going to focus it around competitive gaming, be it arcade or PC or whatever. Im posting this, because since my target audience is essentially gonna be people our age, and who do have a fairly decent gaming background, i want to get opinions from you guys as to what content and stuff you would like to see in it.

currently im planning on filming at this years xlan, since i know a team of guys who are entering, and i was planning on getting other random footage aswell. what i want to know is what sort of stuff would you all like to find out, or see in a documentary like this. One of my mates suggested showing how much organisation goes into an event, and show just how competitive it is, which im liking. any thoughts?

ive already contacted the bbfc, and that topic that flux posted about their research has basically carried my research assignment that i have to hand in tomorrow. but yea. post away.

[fluxcore]

This sounds like a really neat project. Obviously when it comes to competitive gaming, FPSes are the current worldwide phenomenon, what with the WGL or XGames or whatever the hell they call themselves these days... you can extrapolate from the simple fact that even NZ has several largish gatherings for such tourneys that it's big news. There's always the Korean example of Starcraft, too... where they even had(have?) dedicated television stations for it. Online competition is also a fairly obvious topic, since it's so huge and global.

Personally I think Fighting games are just about the purest form of competitive gaming there is... just you and your opponent battling wits. However, since fgs are so niche, it would be hard to seriously focus on them, although a segment would be good... something brief about Evolution or whatnot, or maybe Super Battle Opera. Tekken is by far the biggest here in NZ, so maybe that would be the most fertile ground for footage (although from what I understand the tournament I ran last month was pretty much the only one for a year).

There was a documentary called Bang The Machine produced by some of the admins at Shoryuken, but it was never released and the masters were burnt in the 9/11 incident from what I understand. It talked about the OG SF scene, tournaments, and the players/personalities. Would love to see it.

I'll try to think about some stuff, will post when/if I come up with something.

Best of luck,
--flux

[Wugga]

It was never released?? (Bang The Machine) - I've had a trailer of that movie sitting on my desktop for the longest time, I was always hoping (since I'd foregone the hope that it might see a local release almost immediately) that it might show up on a torrent or something...
There's an interesting dichotomy in competitive gaming - FPSs are at a base level so easy to understand, but if you try to watch one on the spectator side of things, the best you can manage is to follow from the screen of one player and watch him shoot dudes - and unless it's one on one, you're only seeing a minority of the match. Try to show people more than one screen and they'll just be overwhelmed. Fighting games seem to offer the polar opposite - technically difficult to play well, but reasonably easy to understand 100% of the information going on in a given match - health bars, punching and kicking to the face and elsewhere, add commentary to give info on the technical side of things as far as what's going on, and it's all there on a silver platter for the spectator.
If you're going to Xlan, you could always interview me (or better yet, compete against me) - I've been up for interviews with worse premises, TV personalities like Jackie Clark who just wanna ask you "Sooo, you like videogames - are you some kind of weirdo/psycho?"

[fluxcore]

It was never released?? (Bang The Machine) - I've had a trailer of that movie sitting on my desktop for the longest time, I was always hoping (since I'd foregone the hope that it might see a local release almost immediately) that it might show up on a torrent or something...

Yeah, unfortunately not. It has been shown a couple of times at recent Evolution tournaments, but outside of that it's impossible to see. And I don't think I'll be spending thousands of dollars to do so.

There's an interesting dichotomy in competitive gaming - FPSs are at a base level so easy to understand, but if you try to watch one on the spectator side of things, the best you can manage is to follow from the screen of one player and watch him shoot dudes - and unless it's one on one, you're only seeing a minority of the match. Try to show people more than one screen and they'll just be overwhelmed. Fighting games seem to offer the polar opposite - technically difficult to play well, but reasonably easy to understand 100% of the information going on in a given match - health bars, punching and kicking to the face and elsewhere, add commentary to give info on the technical side of things as far as what's going on, and it's all there on a silver platter for the spectator.

Additionally, watching FPS matches generally gives me motion sickness... don't get that with fighting games The more I played them the worse it got, I guess just because my inner ear was expecting different movements?
You're quite right though, it is very difficult to get an 'overall' view of a FPS game. I also can't imagine commentary to help a great deal... "he's grabbing the items so the other guys can't. Now he's shooting at some place an enemy might be. Now he's waiting behind a pillar because he heard someone coming... now he's respawning..." Not saying there aren't mind games in FPSes, but really... so much of it is reactionary. It's skillful in that a 1v1 will show the better player coming first, but the skills are quite differently weighted than those used in fighting games. Obviously I'm biased though.

--flux

[[NIUE] BIRRY WONG]

TV personalities like Jackie Clark who just wanna ask you "Sooo, you like videogames - are you some kind of weirdo/psycho?"

ugh, i detest that woman. I was filming for maori TV's anzac day special, and she did NOTHING but hit on all the dudes that were like half her age. the only one that was more sleezy wa temuera morrison. who by the way, tried VERY VERY hard to get with not one, not two, but THREE of my friends.

anyway i appreciate the input guys. Im trying not to focus so much on the games themselves, because though they may be interesting to us, i would rather not try to explain the details and mechanics to the public. Its lame, but thats the way the general audience works >_<. i dont, as of yet, want to limit myself to a particular genre. I want to show that games potentially have every bit as big an influence on people as any other major sport. I want to show how they promote team spirit, competitiveness, and how they require every bit as much time and effort as it takes to get good at rugby or soccer or something.

but yea, everything helps. keep the posts comin'

[fluxcore]

ugh, i detest that woman.

Indeed... my friend's nickname for her was "fat bitch". She's also a terrible presenter, and just generally annoying.

anyway i appreciate the input guys. Im trying not to focus so much on the games themselves, because though they may be interesting to us, i would rather not try to explain the details and mechanics to the public. Its lame, but thats the way the general audience works >_<. i dont, as of yet, want to limit myself to a particular genre. I want to show that games potentially have every bit as big an influence on people as any other major sport. I want to show how they promote team spirit, competitiveness, and how they require every bit as much time and effort as it takes to get good at rugby or soccer or something.

Well yeah, the obvious choices for teamplay would be something like Team Fortress, CTF or (gah, I hate it...) CounterStrike. The difference between playing with random scrubs online and as part of a clan is like night and day - actual planned strategy is  crucial (and very fulfilling!). I guess WoW is similar, with the raids or whatever - for example LEEROYYYY

Ahem.

I guess then the best course would be interview with clans, players, and organisers of tournaments; why they do it and why they think it's important (because anyone who plays seriously doesn't just see it as 'fun' - some find it therapeutic, competitive, fulfilling, whatever)

--flux

[Wugga]

lol, oh man, I don't really have any ill feeling towards her (despite a vague attempt to shanghai the image of people who play videogames - as if we needed to be defamed), but I have to say I don't actually watch her very often at all, sooo... actually there was another one I did for Pacific Beat St... some sort of "magazine style show" they called it, had me play PGR3 for some reason... as if I know how to race. 

I think like any commentary for a sport, as long as it fits the material, it'll work (noone commentating rugby goes "he's passing to the left, he's passing to the left, he's passing to the left, he's running past the dude, he's sliding across the try line"), but to effectively convey the information visually they need to be able to pick ideal camera angles on key battles and just as important, track the action - the technology isn't really there, the best you can do in CS is go to a shitty locked third person view. Also, the maps in FPSs aren't quite made for a floating camera, since there'd be any number of obstacles getting in the way of viewing, and if you're indoors, forget about it, cross sectioning the playing field doesn't look right, no matter which way you slice it. This is probably why paintball isn't really a competitive spectator sport.

Team spirit eh... can't help you there.

[[NIUE] BIRRY WONG]

commentary? starting to deviate a bit but its interesting that you thought of that.

[samurai black]

why dont you have awesome commentary like in the ranbats.

[Wugga]

lol sorry, it was a chain of thought started a few posts back, I'm a sucker for getting the last word. I think it is relevant though - especially if you want to, as you claim, show them as potentially as influential as sport, since you'll see that the non-participant supporter is certainly one of the big things that mainstream sport has that videogames (mostly) lack, for a number of reasons, such as a medium to convey the events in a manner that explains (commentary) it to those who aren't in tune with it themselves.

[fluxcore]

We're just throwing ideas around here - I don't think any of us are going to be sad if you don't use them!

As for commentary, Wugga is of course right, no-one does commentary like that, but I can't really think of any 'meta-game' commentary you can do for FPS. Fighting games are at least interesting enough for most of the time (well, except for 3s and CvS2...) that you can even listen to Japanese commentary and be amused - whether 'amusement' is the kind of thing you want to get across with your documentary is another point of course.

You could also cover tutorial vids and combo vids or something - no different to watching training vids for cricket or golf or whatever, and the combo scene is quite interesting in that there are competitions for having the best vid and whatnot. Involves a lot of skill just for video editing, sound track, actually performing the combos etc...

--flux

[Wugga]

As for commentary, Wugga is of course right, no-one does commentary like that, but I can't really think of any 'meta-game' commentary you can do for FPS.

I can, but I'd agree that it's not as in depth as the psychological games in fighters - so much of it is stuff is directly relatable to the viewer (provided they don't suffer motion sickness  ) - point the gun at the dude, fire... but there is more to it than that, powerup timing, map knowledge, tracking your opponent, reading their movements, assessing both their and your status producing a fight or flight situation, blind firing - and this is all for one on one, go to team games and you've got group strategies in play which I won't get into because it brings me back to my earlier point that you can't effectively convey this visually. I remember a video of people showcasing technology for cameramen to interact with a virtual gamespace for the purpose of capturing the action, but after watching enough of it, I found that it seems to be merely a nice control mechanism that was essentially (as usual) just a third person camera locked to a player, which is still too limited to convey group tactics.

Command and Conquer 3 could be a breakthrough as far as the RTS genre goes, with its telestrating technology, so you can have someone actively viewing the field, commentating, and drawing little arrows and whatever on the field. I'm not big on RTSs though, so I don't think I'll be personally checking it out. 
I've watched some Family Fun Tournaments for Third Strike on Google Video, I found the commentator/s on those to be entertaining for the most part, if not exactly professional.