Category Archives: Gaming News

On Domination

Happy November, guys and gals.

Just wanted to stop in say it was great to see everyone’s comments on The Last Word. As I said before, I think Daniel did a spectacular job on it, and it shows. It’s a touching short, and something I’m particularly fond of.

Anyway, I promise there will be a couple of regular posts here in the next couple of weeks, including a range of topics that we still get asked a lot of questions about. I’ve been terribly busy with some other things going on personally, and that looks to clear up in the next week or two. But for now, enjoy another free track from the TLW soundtrack.

This one is the Domination Man’s theme from Episode 8 of TLW. You know, the one that plays during the entire cheesy GMod log fiasco and the zany antics surrounding that. I’m a big fan of what Jace did when he built this out for the soundtrack. I think you will be, too.

http://smoothfewfilms.com/extras/4_domination_man_cometh.mp3

One of the things people keep asking about is if there’s a way to still buy the soundtrack. Right now, the answer to that is no. Basically, sales had diminished over the last few months to where it was more expensive to keep the store going than it was to just take it down. If you hang around, we’ll just be releasing it every week for free from here on out.

In other news, who out there has played Black Ops? Thoughts? We reviewed it up on GamerSushi and I’ve been dying to play it.

Pardon Our Dust2Dust

I now bring to you guys the third track of the illustrious TLW soundtrack penned by sir Jace Ford, Dust2Dust. Many of you will remember that we released this tune under the name of Ambush at Bombsite B when Episode 4 of TLW first aired. Since then, Jace has done a little bit more to it, and I actually love the re-release more than the original, and that’s saying a lot.

Listen. Enjoy. Feel epic.

http://smoothfewfilms.com/extras/3_dust2dust.mp3

Right click and save as to save that to your demon machines.

I saw a pretty cool review of Web Zeroes the other day, and I thought I would pass it along. Definitely nice when people recognize the hard work that went into the show, and the spirit of its geekitude, something we really strove for during its production.

And continuing on that cool stuff vibe, I’ve got a couple of more links for you guys. One, for all of you old school PC gamers out there, we got a retro feature up on GamerSushi the other day about how to make a Myst movie that doesn’t suck. Two, I’ve done a piece on my blog about my ridiculous fan nerd love of Final Fantasy 7 and how it changed me as a gamer.

Attack those at your leisure.

Daniel + Bytejacker = Awesome

I was looking through the site the other day, and I can’t believe I forgot to post this back when it happened. One of the bonuses to being on Revision3 for a couple of seasons was the opportunity to meet some awesome folks in the same boat as us. This afforded us double rainbow like powers to create epic crossovers.

You already saw Daniel make an appearance on the Revision3 show Film Riot, where he demonstrated some of the audio techniques we used on Web Zeroes. But did you know that he also appeared on their indie video game show Bytejacker? Nerd and host Anthony Carboni did an episode where he toured the offices of Revision3, speaking with people from the other shows. One of those people included Daniel, who appeared as his character Ray from Web Zeroes. The results were hilarity and plaid. Daniel shows up at 3:57.

In other video game related news, today we posted an article over at GamerSushi about the top 30 upcoming games of 2010, and I love it. Go check it out. Got any you’re looking forward to?

More free soundtrack titles coming next week, plus hopefully some video/pics from Fantastic Fest.

The Question of What’s Next

Question blockMan, it’s been quiet around here lately, eh? Since Web Zeroes ended a few weeks ago, the wheels have been turning a bit slow around the SFF wagon, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped altogether. The biggest and most frequently asked question that we’ve seen in the last month or so has been: what’s next? I wanted to answer for that you guys as best as I could so you know that we haven’t hitched a ride on dragons out of the country or something.

The short of it is this: we’re not quite sure what’s next. That’s not for a lack of ideas at all. In fact, we actually have a surplus of them. The tricky part is narrowing it down, which will only come with time to weight out their pros and cons, and also time to chill out a bit. For real, we’re just starting to get used to having our weekends back for the first time in several years, and we’re going to enjoy that for a bit before we throw ourselves onto the content skillet again. It is a hot and buttery place. OK, that metaphor got kind of weird.

Anyway, the only thing I can really tell you is this. Our next ideas aren’t exactly small potatoes. They’re big. Orca fat, I guess you could say. Up until now, we’ve done everything without a budget and without a huge supply of time. Everything has been quick, free and dirty. The last episode of Web Zeroes is something we were able to throw a bunch of time at, and I think the effort really shows. As a result, we’re going to make sure that whatever we do next we tackle with both time and money. Just think: if we’ve pulled off the stuff we’ve done so far without a budget or ample time, it’s tough to imagine what we could do with just a little of both. Or a lot of both, which would be preferable.

And no, these do not include TLW. In conjunction with wanting to do our next project with the aforementioned time and money, we also want to be able to own it. TLW is the opposite of that, as we’ve discussed on many a fine occasion.

So, stay tuned. I promise more info is coming, along with regular updates. Some things that we’re hoping to have on the docket in the next few weeks include more lost TLW factoids, some Web Zeroes features and other cool things I can’t say just yet. In the meantime, check out GamerSushi, where we’ve got cool gaming news and podcasts.

In other machinima news, have you seen this Gears of War 3 trailer created by a variety of producers including The Duo Group, Treadster Media, Kootra and Sound Wizardry. I love it.

Discuss, gents.

Heads Up Displays

As I said last week, there will be no new episodes of Web Zeroes this week or next week. We’re trying to get everything together so we can release the last two episodes of the season back to back. This thing has truly been a grind this season, and… ah, screw it, just blame Nick’s beard. That’s usually what I do in situations like this, and I’ve found it works for me.

However, in the absence of a good and proper new Web Zeroes episode, I’ll be releasing another post concerning some more Lost TLW Factoids, including the whole deal with Ahmad’s chip as well as some other lesser known gems. I think any Leet World fans out there will want to come take a look at it for sure.

Last week, I posted a cool fan video that re-created The Office intro with Web Zeroes clips. This week, I bring another similar treat in the form of the Law and Order intro re-made with Web Zeroes. This was a big hit with us during filming over the weekend, and we stopped shooting just to watch it once we saw that it was out. Much thanks. Stuff like this that you fans do is such a treat for us. The idea that anyone would spend time paying tribute to something I work on still baffles me.

In other news, this is E3 week, and we are covering it over on GamerSushi, so you should check it out. Nick has been tweeting the press conferences from the GamerSushi account, and it’s an absolute riot. In addition, we’ve recapped the Microsoft press conference, as well as the Sony and Nintendo conferences. The Sony one includes some Portal 2 information. Head on over to the site and join the community, it’s a great place.

What are you guys looking forward to from E3? Left4Dead 3? Lol j/k.

Rebels in the System

HothWe now present to you Episode 23 of Web Zeroes, Strike Force. This episode features the rapidly progressing story of Alex’s job woes, along with the Techstrogen side of things, where Bobby King and the Hobo have figured out just how much power they have over the show. Naturally, they go batpoop insane about this, as they are wont to do.

There are just 2 more episodes to the season, and we are eager to be done with them. Both for the work involved, but also with some of the gags planned, particularly for the finale. Unfortunately, we’ve hit a snag in production, so we will be taking the next two weeks off to get those wrapped up and delivered back-to-back. I know it stinks, but we just couldn’t stay on target the way we wanted to. Like Luke did.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of this newest episode. Having the scenes at Alex’s work make for a nice break from the normal zaniness of the trio, and have added a nice new dynamic to the season I feel like. This episode and and the next were another pair written by the totally rad Jeff James, so give props to him. Also, Jace’s work is stellar yet again. He always manages to surprise me, and hearing how his style has grown since The Leet World is pretty cool.

Anyways, hit the jump to see the episode! Continue reading →

Back to the Well

Counter Strike: SourceAs I said last week, we’re going to be off from releasing new episodes of Web Zeroes until next Wednesday, May 19th. We’re still hard at work on the show, though, so it’s not a total break for us. There might also be some Halo Reach going on in the meantime, but really, can you blame us? I’m a Halo fanboy, what can I say?

In addition to the Halo Reach beta madness, I was wondering if you guys had seen the news about Counter-Strike: Source getting a new beta, a big update and some achievements? Pretty interesting timing for that. It makes me wonder if they’re getting ready to return to that old CS well for more multiplayer goodness. To be honest, if they ever did that, I would play the junk out of that game. The Counter-Strike series still remains the best multiplayer gaming experience I’ve had, so I’d be excited for a new one. Then again, this is all speculation on my part.

Confession: I spent an hour today going over the TLW TV Tropes page. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a very insightful breakdown of some of the major tropes, themes and characters of that show. I almost went back and watched a few episodes because of it. Almost.

Speaking of Leet World, sometimes I do the voices on set of Web Zeroes. Sometimes, the camera catches me doing this. See the example below…

These little behind the scenes snippets may start coming more regularly. Kthx.

A Late Spring Break

BeachThe horse picture has nothing to do with the post, but came up as one of the top results for “beach” on Google, which gave me a hearty lulz. So, there you have it.

As I mentioned last week, we are actually on something of a late Spring Break from releasing Web Zeroes for the next couple of weeks. That’s not to say we aren’t still working on the show, which we totally are. So it’s not really much of a real break. How lame is that? Regardless of the nature of the break’s lameness, the show will resume on its normal release format on May 19th, so hold on to your butts until that moment.

I say that things are “wild” all the time, so I’m trying to expand my vocabulary in that regard a bit, but it’s shocking that we’re half way through the second season. We’re looking forward to getting the rest of it shot and delivered. It gets way more meta. Some won’t like that, I don’t think, but we are fans of meta things. Hell, Chet was always Meta Guy in Leet World.

In other random SFF related news, you may have missed the fact that we run a pretty awesome video game Web site known as GamerSushi. We’ve got a cool community over there, so come swing by. We just released our first podcast, too, which features SFF dudes Nick, JJ and myself. Go check it out.

You also might have missed Daniel’s appearance on Film Riot, another Revision3 show about film production and techniques. We shoot Web Zeroes on a Canon 7D DSLR. If you’re unaware, DSLR filmmaking is kind of a hot topic right now, as it enables people to shoot high quality projects for a relatively low budget. Daniel gives a pretty cool breakdown of how we do our audio process for the show, so it’s a nice behind-the-scenes look at Web Zeroes, if you’re interested. Daniel appears at the 6:40 mark.

Web Zeroes Season 2 Launch Date

Hello friends, dudes and trolls. I thought I would give an update about the status of Season 2 of Web Zeroes. Last we spoke, I said we didn’t have an official release date nailed down yet, but we finally locked it up. The Season 2 premiere is going to release on Wednesday, March 24th. We’re pretty excited about this, and we hope you guys are, too.

There will be a brief hiatus on production as we go out of town this weekend to hang out in Austin for South By Southwest. We’ll be attending the live DiggNation filming on Saturday night at Stubb’s, so if any of you guys live in Austin, are of age and want to drop by, please do.

In other news, I saw this pretty slick Modern Warfare 2 machinima, created by YouTube user Michael Barnes. He’s done some Call of Duty 4 stuff as well as GTA 4 stuff, so I’d definitely recommend checking out the rest of his work as well. Anywho, give it a watch.

Web Zeroes Season 2 is Go

I know I said I’d update more, but my life is a bit of a mess right now, and I mean that in the absolute best way possible. Between work, writing for Web Zeroes, writing for GamerSushi, a powerful need to play Mass effect 2, doing some more personal writing, and my obsession with Lost’s final season, I’ve been a tad MIA lately.

However, the good news is that we started filming Season 2 of Web Zeroes last weekend, and so far, so good. I even brought some screenshots to prove it. I’m loving the look of the new footage we’ve shot on Daniel’s sexy new Canon 7D. It’s a great camera. Take a look and see for yourself.

Web Zeroes S201 Web Zeroes S201-2

We’re going to start on Episode 2 this weekend, and will keep hitting the grind until sometime during the Summer. The show starts in March, so it’s not too much longer before you guys will get to see what we’re working on.

In the meantime, who’s played Mass Effect 2? I kind of love it.