In terms of Web Zeroes, we are currently working on episodes 3 and 4 of the second season, doing our best to keep a steady pace without murdering ourselves. The show should debut in the next few weeks, though we haven’t quite nailed a date down with Revision3 just yet. This is part of the reason I’ve waited to update, simply because there wasn’t much news to give you guys. Also, it’s hard to show too many screenshots without spoiling some of the developments that we left hanging at the end of Season 1, so that makes it a tad difficult, too.

During my free time, I’ve found myself starting a fantasy novel of sorts. I’m not exactly sure why I’m sharing that, really, but it’s certainly interesting to me even if it’s not interesting to anyone else. One of the things the guys and I have talked about recently is that while we don’t miss the workload and the tedium that came from working on a machinima production like The Leet World, we do actually miss the ability to tell a ridiculous tale that really had no rules. While Web Zeroes is ultimately more rewarding to make, we wish that we had the budget to make a live action epic on par with the zaniness seen by our small corner of the Web. I suppose writing my own fantasy stories lets me get that out of my system. Who knows, maybe some day you can buy one. Or not.

Lately, I’ve been completely consumed by the final season of Lost on ABC. It really is a fantastic and wild show, and the engrossing mystery has had me enthralled for some time. In the final season, I’m finding myself both overjoyed and enraged by the way the questions refuse to be answered, yet trying to not worry and just appreciate the ride while it lasts. Honestly, I can’t imagine seeing anything else quite like this on TV ever again. However, it got me wondering about the mystery we wove on our own goofy Counter-Strike: Source show. Did you guys ever find yourselves frustrated by the way it unraveled?

More news on Web Zeroes coming very soon. In addition, some more “lost” info of Leet World will be revealed, as well as some old school outtakes. Hope you all are doing well, and thanks for being great fans.

I figured we’d have a fun discussion about it. However, since there are no doubt some of you who haven’t seen the episode yet, I’ll go ahead and put the rest of this post behind the jump. Beware. There be spoilers beyond these parts.

Even though The Leet World is a ridiculously over-the-top comedy/action/drama based in Counter-Strike: Source, we pay a lot of attention to our ridiculously over-the-top characters. One of our biggest commitments is to our characters and how they interact.

In terms of crafting these individuals, there’s a really awesome quote by the lore-master Joss Whedon about characters and danger which has always stuck with us:

In terms of not giving people what they want, I think it’s a mandate: Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need. What they want is for Sam and Diane to get together. [Whispers.] Don’t give it to them. Trust me. [Normal voice.] You know? People want the easy path, a happy resolution, but in the end, they’re more interested in… No one’s going to go see the story of Othello going to get a peaceful divorce. People want the tragedy. They need things to go wrong, they need the tension. In my characters, there’s a core of trust and love that I’m very committed to. These guys would die for each other, and it’s very beautiful. But at the same time, you can’t keep that safety. Things have to go wrong, bad things have to happen.

Our characters put themselves in constant danger. But it’s not real danger unless something goes wrong.

The death of Ahmad the Noobito was birthed back when we fully plotted out the three season arc for The Leet World near the beginning of the first season. Every character in our show has at least some small path that they travel, some bigger than others, and we knew that we wanted to do something different with Ahmad to keep him from becoming, frankly, Caboose from Red Vs Blue. Not that we dislike that character, it’s just that without some major journey like what Ahmad went through, the comparisons were going to be easy. So we came up with a story for him.

One of our goals for the show was to create interesting and compelling characters. But with Ahmad, our goals were slightly different. We really wanted to see if we could take the audience from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of how they felt about a character. Could we make the audience hate him in Season 1 with the hax storyline, etc, and then over the course of the next year have them fall in love with him again as the “noobito”? And for those same reasons that they would have fallen in love with him (his innocence and loyalty), could he give his life to save his friends? I think it makes for a pretty compelling arc.

Seeing as how friendship is one of the main themes of TLW, Ahmad was really the perfect man for the job. He completely embodies the idea of camaraderie, and managed to do so with both his life and his death.

It’s been an interesting ride for sure, and we’re not quite done dealing with the fallout from his heroic act. It definitely affects and influences the characters moving forward in some interesting ways. And you never know, there just might be more danger waiting around the corner…

Anywho, chime in and tell us your thoughts on Ahmad. Have you ever had a character that you really cared about who met a similar fate? And if you could vote for immunity for any character still alive, who would it be? And no, the answers to that last one won’t affect the outcome. I was just curious, that’s all.

Also for those of you that want an update, Episode 11 is getting very close, but not quite close enough for me to give a guess just yet. It should be sometime in the next week or so, though.

Sometime in the next few days you should expect some outtakes from Episodes 5-7. They will contain a couple of rofls, I hope. While we have gotten better about recording our stuff without many goof-ups, it’s three episodes worth of content, so it should balance out.

Also, here are some screenshots from Episode 8 for you to chew on.

Enjoy!

However, all that free time is gone as of this coming weekend, as we kick up production on Episode 8. We’ll hopefully have a camera there filming the process as we move through some of the episode, and hope to release our “making of” video at some point in the next month or so.

Speaking of, do you guys have any particular piece of the TLW production process that you’re most interested in hearing about? Besides whether or not Nick’s Beard (it must be capitalized out of honor) hinders our ability to puppeteer. Let us know!

Anywho, we’ve got a new TLW based short coming out this weekend, and Episode 6 will be dropping sometime next week. Get excited. There are a lot of fun elements in every aspect of production for the next two episodes, ranging from sound design to color correcting and Hammer work. I’m just pumped about how the end products are going to turn out.

There’s a chance many of you have already seen Cortez’s cameo in Source Wars, made by Xanatos and crew, but if you haven’t, you should give it a watch. Xanatos did this with our permission, and he’s a bud of ours, so I was happy to lend my voice. It’s pretty goofy, but definitely good for some laughs.

Remember, check out the TLW premiere page for a higher-res version of the episode. If it’s not showing the new ep, just refresh or clear your browser cache. See the episode after the jump!

By the end of the episode I’m sure you’ll notice that we are introducing a new element of Counter-Strike: Source to the show. We’ve wanted to do this for quite some time, so it’s nice to finally slide it into the story. I think you’ll be pleased with where it goes.

Special thanks to Jace (AKA Damn Dangerous) for some especially rocking music. In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to have a new TLW short, and the next two episodes after that will wrap up the first half of this season. Awesome? Yup.

Enjoy!

Be sure to visit the Season 2 premiere page to see a higher-res version of the episode. I’m a big fan of the page, and still love Nick to this day for making it. It helps Season 2 episodes feel more like an event, in my mind, which is exactly what we like. Click here to watch it.

Or if you just want to watch it the normal way, the video is waiting for you after the jump.

Just a fun side note: this season, we’re rolling with a new structure in terms of how we develop the show. If you remember, a few months back we talked about producing the season in three-to-four episode chunks, or arcs. Episode 3 marked the end of the first set of episodes that we made, and Episode 4 marks the beginning of the second set. It’s definitely helping us not only in the speed of making the episodes, but also in the writing of them. I think when it’s all said and done, you’ll be able to look at the arcs and see how they break down. Cool stuff.

Enjoy!

A bit ago, I mentioned the Streamys, which are still accepting votes/nominations. Feel free to submit Web Zeroes for the comedic categories, if you feel inclined to do so. Also, Hawty McBloggy is running a contest called the “Best of Halo Awards” for notable Halo machinima from the past year, and Bag Boy has been nominated! There are some other greats on the list as well, so browse, watch and vote to your liking.

I think it’s about time you saw the first glimpse of Episode 3 of Season 2 of The Leet World. In true Counter-Strike:Source fashion, our dudes are battling it out in Inferno. We worked hard this weekend filming, and I’m excited about the results. Here are some screenies:

Enjoy.

And while I’m thinking about it, I have some screenshots from Episode 1 of Season 2. Enjoy!

I know that some of you are having problems logging in. That comes from some pretty hardcore caching we’ve got set up on the site- all you need to do is just refresh the page (try it more than once if you need to) and it should help.

There’s a cool new post up on GamerSushi, titled “5 Features That More Shooters Need”. Thought you guys would like it since I mention some Counter-Strike in there.

Also, the dudes over at The Duo Group have just put out a new Gears of War machinima, as well as the guys over at LitFuseFilms. It seemed appropriate to mention these in honor of the hallowed Gears of War 2, which I will be beating like it stole something later this week.

I can’t wait to show you guys some proper screenshots, and you should start getting some of those next week, once we have some things we can really display. For now though, I have brought some teasers…

Looks like somebody’s got a bit of an upgrade…

Have fun with that. Also, I just put up an article at GamerSushi titled “Are we Really Ready for the Next Gen?”. You guys should check it out, and I would appreciate it if you could Digg it, too, for those of you who enjoy it. I’d heart you forever. Or at least for today.