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.

Daniel and I were definitely able to get out and talk to some dudes and gals about Smooth Few Films, so that was fun, too. Nick was there in spirit (he couldn’t make the trip), and he did such a good job designing the discs and the cards, I was proud to hand them out. I was probably awkward a couple of times, but I’m proud of us for having some balls and doing something that’s really difficult to do- put yourself out there. It’s one of those things that I’ve never been able to do until TLW really when it comes to creativity.

A lot of people talk and talk about doing something but never actually pull their pants up and do the darn thing, and this weekend, for good or ill, we took a stab at it.

Some of the highlights of the weekend:

• RoosterTeeth’s cartoon. The dudes behind Red Vs Blue debuted a cartoon of the same series, a project that they are taking a big risk on. It was incredible, hilarious, and looked gorgeous to boot. Being in the audience at their panel when Burnie paused the video, and informed everyone that we weren’t about to watch machinima, that was wild.
• Felicia Day and The Guild Screening. If you’re unfamiliar with Felicia Day, she was the female lead in the recent web series “Dr. Horrible” by Joss Whedon, and it’s a sight to behold, it truly is. She also is the writer and producer of The Guild, another online web show that really gave us some inspiration for Web Zeroes. Long story short, we waited in line to meet Felicia Day (who was signing The Guild DVDs) and handed her a DVD of ours, and she actually made us sign it in case we ever got famous. Later that night we attended a screening of The Guild, and it was the first time the gang had ever screened it live, so that was a cool moment.
• Geoff Keighley/ Hal Halpin panel. I attended a panel with Geoff Keighley of SpikeTV and Hal Halpin, head of the ECA, and it was a very thought provoking and intelligent discussion regarding the growth of the video game industry, lobbying for gamers, etc. Totally rocked. Gave each of them DVDs as well.
• Dinner with RoosterTeeth. Steak and beer with these dudes is a good time. It was especially fun after a long exhausting day at PAX. It’s nice to talk shop with guys who have been there, done that, and to just hang out and get fat with food.

Other highlights included Adam Sessler himself telling me that promoting ourselves at conventions was totally the thing we should be doing, meeting Jonathan Coulton and him remembering A Day in the Life of a Turret, hanging out with Travis from Darkspire Films and a dude asking us to sign his companion cube.

Here are a couple of pictures:

Daniel poses so I can take a pic of a dude sporting a headcrab, Daniel and I pose with Felicia Day and Sandeep Parikh and one of them metal dudes from Fallout 3.

Me posing with a Gears of War promo, Daniel and I hanging with Jonathan Coulton (writer of Still Alive and other fine musicry) and the Left 4 Dead booth.

If you’re interested in reading more at the moment in terms of actual games, I’ve put a couple of things up on GamerSushi, including a blurb about the coolest thing we saw all day in a clip of an animated Red Vs Blue series. I’ve also put up a video of MK vs DC (Batman vs the Joker!), and there are more videos coming over the next few hours.

Now that the hubbub over the end of Part 2 has died out long enough for me to speak, I wanted to give you dudes a few screenshots from Part 3 of the Season Finale. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you when it’s going to be out, because it’s all taking a tad longer than we anticipated. Rest assured that Nick and I are devoting virtually all of our free time to knocking this finale out of the park. I’ll let you know more soon, along with an announcement or two.

Also, if you have a few moments, I have some lines in the new episode of Red Vs Blue. You can hear my dulcet tones in the first scene and elsewhere. Woot and such.

Likewise, RoosterTeeth released the first episode of their new Red Vs Blue series, Reconstruction. Definitely an entertaining watch, I completely forgot I was viewing a Halo machinima.

Towards the beginning, you’ll see an impressive big army shot that Smooth Few Films was able to assist with when we visited RoosterTeeth in Austin, due to skillful (not really) puppetry by Daniel, Nick and myself. Listen closely in the shot that follows, and you might hear a familiar voice…

Some Season Finale details and screenshots are coming tonight/tomorrow.

Voting for the Themetacular Challenge ends next week- go vote!

Why were we going? Several weeks ago we received an invitation from none other than Rooster Teeth, the creators of Red vs Blue, to come up for a visit in Austin, where their studio is based. We happily obliged.

Once there, we were given a tour of their place, talked machinima, movies and gaming, grabbed some grub and knocked back a few cold ones. I have to say that Rooster Teeth’s reputation of being nice, super-cool guys is spot on, and they were great hosts. As a long time fan of their work, it was cool validation for me that what we’re doing here on this site is worth the late nights and long hours.

I am bound to the obligatory rule of the internet, “pics or it didn’t happen”. Even when that picture makes me, Nick and Daniel look horrendous.

Pictured: Nick, Eddy and Daniel from Smooth Few Films plus Matt, Burnie and Nathan from Rooster Teeth. Not pictured: Jeff, Eddy’s Dignity.

In other equally awesome news, my brother Kerry, who plays Leeroy, graduated college this weekend. Congrats dude.

Also, I miss Nick and Daniel.  But not really.