Airsoft GI

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 23, 2012

Filed under: Movies 104 comments

If you can, you’ll want to watch this one full-screen and in high-res. It starts off as an incredibly faithful Left 4 Dead fan film, and then expands into… Well, I shouldn’t spoil it. You’ll see.


Link (YouTube)

Awesome, but it’s also very instructive in light of the recent SOPA debate. There’s a lot of copyrighted characters in this thing. Midway Games, Warner Bros. Interactive, Epic Games, Microsoft Game Studios, and Valve could all claim that this movie uses their copyrighted stuff. Sure, this is non-profit and obviously every bit as legal as fanfiction, but companies have opposed this sort of thing in the past.

But even if none of those companies would take action, would people really risk sharing it? Would I want to share this video on my website if doing so could result in a takedown? I mean, a SOPA takedown would mean this site would vanish and I’d have to fight to have it restored, during which time I wouldn’t be able to promote my various projects. I can’t perform due diligence on this video and make sure the producers have permission to use those characters, sounds, and music.

But most importantly: Who would bother making a video like this? This cost a great deal of time and money to produce. Who would take that risk in a world where everyone would be afraid to share it??

This is the fiendish heart of it. Beyond the lack of due process, the damage to free speech, the potential for abuse, the security hazards, and the dangerous precedent created by SOPA, we wouldn’t even know just how much we’d lost. There’s no way of measuring the things that don’t get made.

Anyway, that was a pretty hilarious movie. I’ve never been a fan of Master Chief, but even I cracked a smile when he showed up and started kicking ass. I am simply amazed at the sheer volume of clever, interesting, high-quality content that the internet produces for me every day.

 


From The Archives:
 

104 thoughts on “Airsoft GI

  1. Lesquille says:

    The awesomeness cannot be contained! STRIKE DOWN SOPA WITH THE MIGHTY FIST OF JUSTICE!

  2. Zombie says:

    Why wasnt the Director cheating more? I mean, there were like 7 people at the end. That calls for at least 3 or 4 tanks. And less Health packs, worse weapons and less ammo. Common guys, your going for realism here!

    1. Jakale says:

      I’m more disappointed by the lackluster performance of the tank. Walking? What is that? Tanks have two speeds: faster than you, and stopped to wail on you or throw something large and heavy. I get that they wanted him to pose for the camera, as it were, and the group was incredibly overpowered by then, but still, he didn’t even pick up speed as he was being shot, much less get close enough to hit someone.

      Also, not a single game-style yell past that first “Reloading!” with all those specials around. I am disappointed.

      1. Cineris says:

        The tank’s performance in the video perfectly mirrors the tank’s effectiveness against Tier 2 weapons in Left 4 Dead.

  3. Even says:

    “but even I cracked a smile”

    I’d rather describe my own initial reaction as dropping my jaw three stories below the sea level in a giant exclamation of “WHAT?!” from the point he made his entree to the credits.

    Still, production values up the roof and I really like what they did with the L4D characters.

  4. Alphadrop says:

    My brother first showed this to me, both agreed that Ghost didn’t get enough screen time. Other than that top notch work.

    1. Fat Tony says:

      Ghost is a featurless husk of a char from MW2, what else could he do?

    2. Indy says:

      Speaking of Notch, I’m a little surprised a Creeper didn’t appear during the horde.

  5. Entropy says:

    ehehe. Ok, thats kinda funny. Still, the L4D survivors shouldn’t have been quite so stupid with the witch. Come on, they should know what’s up by now.

    1. swenson says:

      My thought exactly! They’ve known about them since the “pre-movie” of L4D at the very least.

      1. SyrusRayne says:

        Seriously. Bill is dead in this video, so they’ve met dozens at least.

  6. Specter says:

    fun fact:
    “this video is not available in your country”

    1. robo9 says:

      Same here, “because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights.”

      It may. Maybe it doesn’t, we don’t know! Better block access to it, just to be sure.

      1. Specter says:

        use a proxy, it’s worth it ;)

      2. Piflik says:

        The really sad thing is, that Youtube is the only platform that has been blocked by the GEMA…obviously other platforms are not big enough to bother…the GEMA wanted a share every single time anyone watches any video by its artists, Youtube refused and now nobody can watch these videos here in Germany, even if they are on the artists’ own channels…they are not protecting their artists, they are greedy bastards who just want more money…
        And want to know the best thing? Due to its monopoly here in Germany, the GEMA can just assume that anyones work is managed by them and if you use any music, you have to proof, that it isn’t managed by the GEMA…

        Luckily the film is also available on Vimeo

        1. Narida says:

          Yeah they wanted like 12 cents per video viewed, which adds up to ~700.000 € Youtube would need to pay the GEMA every month…
          This sucks :/

          Thanks for the link, awesome video! Talk about an all-star cast :-D

        2. Rax says:

          grooveshark shut down their service in Germany recently for the same reason, so it’s not just youtube. Still sucks, though.

          1. Zak McKracken says:

            I’m no friend of the GEMA, but the grooveshark thing is a bit different. They were offered to pay a certain fee (as everyone else. symfy for example), but decided they’d make more money if the tell everyone to call GEMA and go hook up with simfy (who probably paid a bit for them to do this) and get out of the market.
            This bit is in German, but it tells the story, I think:
            http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Grooveshark-schliesst-in-Deutschland-die-Pforten-1415481.html

            Also, grooveshark doesn’t write on their page that GEMA fees were the main reason, but “operating costs” in general, and lowering GEMA fees would contribute to reducing those (big news!).

        3. Zak McKracken says:

          Now, this looks as if I was defending GEMA, but actually … they didn’t do much, but youtube’s lawyers feared they might, and so they decided to better block everything than risk anything, or, worse still: Explain anything to your users. Standard procedure at youtube.
          Funny enough, GEMA and Youtube did find an agreement last year, but still lots of videos are blocked. I wonder what that’s about.

          But thanks for the Vimeo link! I like them better anyway :)

    2. rofltehcat says:

      Same here but there are proxy sites that can easily hidemyass. Gonna watch this later.

      1. Unhidden says:

        You can also simply add an “ss” infront of “youtube” in the url.
        For the video above
        http://www.youtube.com/v/PGC-_o6QteU
        becomes
        http://www.ssyoutube.com/v/PGC-_o6QteU
        This will bring you to a nice proxy site with download options in different qualities and an integrated hd capable player. So far, at least for me, that proxy had the best image quality i could find.

        Works well for us poor GEMA-ridden germans. ;)

  7. James Pony says:

    Shamus, you really don’t understanding anything about business at all, do you? EVERYONE knows that destroying all possibility for free advertisement improves your sales by three hundred billion percent!

    I’m going to be participating in the Marathon, will I ruin my chances by doing something stupid like training for it? No! I did what every professional would do and literally shot myself in the foot!

    Seriously though, that’s pretty high-quality content. The two things that really stuck out for me were the part where Pil- I mean Louis shoots through the car window (the holes visible didn’t make much sense in the context) and the tongue. Then again, there’s no guarantee an official, high-budget Hollywood film would’ve gotten the window-shooting right or that they wouldn’t have spent a fortune on obvious uncanny-valley-CG for the tongue. Another thing is the weapon sounds, but that often really isn’t a thing big-budget films get right either.
    The only thing it was really missing was Gordon Freeman (and maybe Johnny Gat).

    1. rofltehcat says:

      Hm… to your marathon analogy:
      To me it looks like “poison the water supply for all the marathon runners”. Very successful professional runners can still bring in their own water carriers though or afford antidote.

    2. Svick says:

      On the other hand, the bad weapon sounds could be a reference to bad weapon sounds used in many games.

      1. James Pony says:

        As far as I can tell, those sounds are from the games. The problem really is that this isn’t any of those games and gunshots sound quite different from different angles, at different distances and in different environments.

        But as I said, weapons hardly make realistic sounds in movies anyway. Although I really can’t understand why they so often INTENTIONALLY make the sounds unrealistic. Their excuse is (or seems to be) that people expect to heard the unrealistic sounds, but that’s as credible calling bad cinematography/art a “style”. No, I don’t care if you say you’re being “ironic”, bad is bad.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          But the audience does expect to hear fake sounds.Most people have never heard the sound of a real weapon,so they base their experience only on stuff they saw on tv.And so once the trend started,it continued till this day.Same with explosion(check the mythbusters video where they compared these things).

          1. James Pony says:

            And that 1) is stupid, 2) serves no real purpose, 3) currently isn’t even a technical issue and 4) combined with the atmosphere of general anti-intellectualism and ignorance, can lead to police searching a university dorm because someone reported hearing a “gun loading sound”.

            There’s no pressing necessity for any of the factual errors in movies and a story that doesn’t work without something provably false is just bad storytelling.

            1. Hitch says:

              Warning NSFP*, but related to the topic.

              http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic

              *Not Safe For Productivity

              1. Trix2000 says:

                Unfortunately your warning only made me feel worse when I clicked the link. :( Not only did I know exactly where I was going, but also a reminder of some of the consequences.

                Why must Tvtropes do this to meeeeeeee?

            2. Raygereio says:

              “story that doesn't work without something provably false is just bad storytelling”
              While true, that really has no bearing here. No story is dependant on the exact sound a weapon makes. These are issues of imemrsion, not story telling.

              Anyway, you should blame the public for this, not the creators of whatever media has the silly weapon sounds. More often then not when realistic sounds are used, people will complain they sound “fake”.
              Same is true for an explosion not throwing

              1. James Pony says:

                I mean things like silent “silencers” or Earth ceasing to rotate. Then again, really, the exact sound a weapon makes could be critical. For example a gunshot doesn’t actually sound very much like a gunshot at all – and I’m not talking about Hollywood effects – especially at a distance or behind some obstacle. The echoes distort the sound and geographical features or buildings can absorb or enhance part of the sound. Sometimes the sound it makes when you open a can of Coke sounds more like a gunshot than an actual gunshot at a distance.
                With firearms (and other weapons/-systems) the ignorance is really problematic because this “movie magic” extends to real-life politics, to a point where on occasion people are actually trying to make legislation based on SOME GUY NOT EVEN MAKING A BASIC WIKI SEARCH WHEN WRITING FICTION.

                Also I do blame the creators. They started it, even if only due to technical limitations once upon a time, and they damn well need to fix it.
                AND the perpetuation of these falsehoods is basically calling the audience a bunch of drooling idiots.

                AND really, Way of the Gun strived for complete realism and this did not make the movie confusing at all.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  “AND the perpetuation of these falsehoods is basically calling the audience a bunch of drooling idiots.”

                  Which they are.

                2. Sho says:

                  It sounds kind of prohibitively expensive to produce realistic gunshot sounds then (the deafening power mentioned in comments below notwithstanding). I mean for a movie, maybe their sound engineers could handle it, though if not then the simplest way is probably to test-fire and capture the noise (which could get expensive and/or dangerous).

                  But what about videogames? Physics engines have a hard enough time as it is without calculating the gunshot noise every time. It sounds a pretty hefty undertaking.

                  I suppose the best solution is simply to be more accurate rather than perfectly accurate, but you’re still being inaccurate so may as well not bother.

                  1. James Pony says:

                    Well, video games are actually pretty good about it. It doesn’t even need some fancy calculations, just a different sound for 1) outdoors, immediate vicinity, 2) outdoors, far away/behind obstacle, 3) indoors, immediate vicinity and 4) indoors, behind corner. Even if you just set it all with a simple distance condition, it usually sounds good enough often enough.

                    Even Half-Life 2 was pretty good about this and I recall Insurgency sounding pretty good as well. Plus with games you’re busy with all the playing, so you might not even notice lesser errors, unlike in movies where you’re just passively observing.

                  2. Peter H. Coffin says:

                    The technical problems in making firearms and explosions loud enough for the viewers are obvious. However, the technical problems in making firearms loud enough for the characters are much smaller. The keys to look for are that a silencer isn’t silent like a bubble coming out of a tube toothpaste, it’s more like someone whacking a yardstick down flat on a tabletop. Unsuppressed gunfire without hearing protection should make it impossible for anyone to hear whispered speech or mere footprints for a while measured in a few minutes, and for most firearms the muzzle flash would dazzle the shooter in a dark room enough to make seeing a dark target difficult or impossible for a few seconds.

                    1. Trix2000 says:

                      It depends on the firearm, though firing any without some sort of hearing protection is just asking for it.

                      And don’t get things started on recoil….

              2. Ellery says:

                The strange thing is that unrealistic sounds from firearms only bother me occasionally. But every time someone in a film draws a knife or sword and it makes any noise at all, I notice. Sometimes its a huge “Shink!” and others more of a “sssss” but any sound beyond the quietest is probably not realistic.

                1. evileeyore says:

                  Agreed.

                  Especially when drawn from a canvas sheath with no metal bits on the sheath…

                  /facepalm

                  1. James Pony says:

                    Anti-tank hits making huge fireballs, anything computer related ever, sci-fi tech being either pure magic or logically inferior to actual current technology, historical “facts” based on data that was known to be pure fiction already a hundred years ago, etc.

                    And that’s just the things I have any basic knowledge in. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hollywood manages to make over 25 mistakes in one 5-second scene about knitting.

                    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      “anything computer related ever”

                      You didnt like the effects in terminator 2?Cgi can be done well,but only when it is used to enhance the experience,instead of replacing it completely.Its rare these days,but still can be seen in some movies.

                    2. James Pony says:

                      I mean when computers are featured in the movie. Idiotic graphic interfaces with thousands of rotating 3d animations, for what? A two-word .txt file! All the “hacking”, and whenever they show a computer game that’s not an actual, existing game. Sometimes even when they feature an existing game.

            3. Klay F. says:

              So do you want permanent hearing damage when you come out of the theatre from seeing an action movie? Because a real gunshot, especially indoors will permanently fuck up your ears. Between seeing something entertaining, and hearing loss, I think I’ll choose the option with less realism thank you very much.

              1. James Pony says:

                Hearing damage is obviously a non-issue, especially since the volume in the theaters is already too high AND the Einsteins at movie sound design constantly up EVERYTHING ELSE, including explosions, background music and insects/spiders (seriously, what?), but turn down the speech until you can barely hear it, so even at home I need to wear buttplugs in my ears when watching a movie, but have to rub my face on the speakers if I want to hear what they are saying.

                But if you really want to get with picking the nits, it should be obvious to anyone that I did not at any point mean full, eardrum-busting volume.
                And as Fists mentions technological limitations, I already said those are not an issue today, as almost all sound effects are artificial anyway, either by using other sounds or digital editing.

            4. Fists says:

              Very difficult to recreate or record actual firearms percussion as it damages human ears and will cause peaking in microphones and speakers so I think that particular issue is a necessary evil

              edit: whoops, Klay beat me

        2. Santa says:

          How about dialogue, then? No-one on cinema speaks like real people! Where is the stuttering, sentences abandoned halfway-trough, and mispronounciation? Enraging! And they had the technology to fix it for generations. This is just plain lazy.

          Just like dialogue, sounds in a film must be streamlined, as it were. Guns are scary and bad, therefore they must sound scary and bad. And the sound of opening a Coke, or whatever a real gunshot may sound like, is in most cases simply not enough. This is hardly the film-makers’ fault.

    3. 4th Dimension says:

      Or Warhammer 40k dudes, but if they show up they’ll steal the show.

  8. Daemian Lucifer says:

    And the age old question is finally being answered:Skeletons are at war with the zombies.

    As for the sopa thing,Im surprised how idiotic big businesses are being run.Your customers are practically lining up for a chance to create something for you to make money off of,and instead of exploiting that,most of corporations want to stifle it(aside from firaxis and valve that is).Are people really that dumb,that they cannot see how much effort fans are willing to put in just for a chance to get their name in the credits.Free labor people!Encourage and exploit it.

    1. RCN says:

      Skeletons at war with Zombies?

      You just gave me an awesome idea for an adventure hook. Thank you so much.

  9. MadTinkerer says:

    When this was first posted on RPS, like most of the rest, my initial reaction was “Meh, what are all these console characters doing in my lovely PC game tribute film? Oh wait, L4D is also on XBox. Whatever.”

    But in the context of SOPA and PIPA I salute these brave guerilla film makers.

    1. Fists says:

      The xbox thing did stick out for me as playstation/PC gamer. Using 360 exlusive characters is fine but it was evident that the entire production team only play 360 releases. That or no playstation exclusives have characters suitable and unique enough to bother including

  10. Leviathan902 says:

    I loved this video when I first watched some time ago. The twist was amusing and entertaining.

    For some reason though, all the comments on the site I originally watched it on were complaining about how stupid the twist was and how they ruined a good fan-film.

    Whatever, some people just can’t take a joke I guess.

    1. Milos says:

      I share your sentiment. It was Rock Paper Shotgun for me and I couldn’t believe the amount of bitching in the comments below this amazing fan-made video.

  11. Lazlo says:

    You’ve missed the even more insidious part. You say “Midway Games, Warner Bros. Interactive, Epic Games, Microsoft Game Studios, and Valve could all claim that this movie uses their copyrighted stuff.”

    While that’s true, they could make that claim just as easily if it weren’t. So it’s not just a matter of people being afraid to make innovative new fanfiction that may or may not be covered by fair use, but instead people being afraid to make or host anything that might be popular enough to make big content afraid that they might lose part of their audience to it.

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      The proof of this is that it already happens. We should be trying to make it more expensive and more difficult to create frivolous lawsuits. Taking away freedoms is not the answer.
      However, this problem will always exist. The strong prey on the weak, and no law will be able to change that. We can certainly mitigate it through legislation, but the ultimate solution lies in a different sphere.

  12. Doctor Satan says:

    Shamus, when’s your book coming out? Don’t be like Rockstar.
    If you need inspiration I’m sure Two Steps From Hell will help you. :)
    Sons Of War

    OT: <>NAIIICE!!<>
    also wat is rel=”nofollow”?

    1. sab says:

      wikipedia: nofollow. And no, I’m not gonna link that for you.

  13. Alex says:

    I've never been a fan of Master Chief, but even I cracked a smile when he showed up and started kicking ass.

    Ditto. I really hope this film gave the modders some ideas.

    I mean, who would you rather play L4D with? Rochelle, or Scorpion?

    1. Destrustor says:

      I’d want to play it with Reginald Cuftbert.
      Sure I’d get killed by collateral damage, but it would be hilarious.

      1. Jakale says:

        The rampant use of pills would certainly fit the character. Now, if only you could drink the Molotov cocktails instead of setting them on fire…

        1. If only you could do BOTH.

  14. SolkaTruesilver says:

    All right. This video was awesome.

    the first half was perfect atmosphere. He nailed the despair, the fear and the grim determination that The Survivors had to live with. The Witch wasn’t as scary as I’d expect, but her introduction was top-notch.

    Past halftime, the fun began. That’s were the atmosphere went to hell, and the movie director went for PURE BADASS MOMENT, and he pulled it off pretty neatly.

    For a 1-shot 10 minute video, it’s a very good transition. But if there is ever a full-lenght movie, I’d prefer to go with the 1st genre than the 2nd.

  15. Vextra says:

    For a moment I thought they were gonna go all Dead Island with the sad piano music whilst they left Louis to die, with a sad cinematic pull away as he stares bleakly up into the sky.

    I’m glad they went for the Balls to the Wall AWESOME instead.

  16. gragsmash says:

    I’ve never actually played L4D, but I have to say that after reading Left 4 Dumb, I have a hard time taking these characters seriously.

    Pretty badass fan film. I think bringing in the other game characters was gilding the lily, though.

  17. Hitch says:

    Leaving aside SOPA for a moment. (In the hope that within a few months it will just be a curious and forgotten footnote.*) But the thing that strikes me about this, and similar little “fan” productions, is how well they do comic and video game subject matter when big-budget, mainstream Hollywood fails so spectacularly and consistently. Okay, they’ve gotten it mostly right a few times recently, but how many millions of dollars have been squandered on horrible flops in the past decade?

    *Admittedly, I’m probably over-optimistic.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      To be fair to the industry,it does squeeze plethora of material every year,almost all of which is well advertised,so you are bound to see every single failure.But with fan works,the worst stuff simply gets stepped over,excluding the few that became famous.

    2. krellen says:

      The primary difference I have seen is the “geek” movie stuff that works is almost universally done by people that like geek stuff – they’re geeks themselves.

      Christopher Nolan is the only exception to this I’ve seen, but that’s only because I grudgingly accept that his work is “good” based on others reactions; I’m not a fan*.

      *Heath Ledger did an excellent Joker. I’m not wild about the rest of The Dark Knight.

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Well, there’s also the fact that this vid does not have to sell thousands of tickets to pay for itself nor does it expect to make 80 million bucks. Consequently it doesn’t care for age ratings, pundits, critical reviews etc. Finally it’s a 10 minute joke (more like 8 minutes if you discount the credits), definitely a high quality but it’s not exactly a 2 hour long story.

        That said I’m not saying that Hollywood doesn’t fail from our point of view, I’m saying that they fail largely because they take content that is liked by one demographic and try to sell it to another.

        1. JPH says:

          “they take content that is liked by one demographic and try to sell it to another.”

          Yes, this is absolutely the problem. As Scott Pilrim aptly demonstrated, the nerd demographic isn’t big enough to sustain a big AAA Hollywood budget.

          1. Irridium says:

            Doesn’t help that they marketed it as just another teen drama but with game references.

            That’s why I didn’t go see it, at least.

            Yeah yeah, I know my mistake, I rectified it, but still.

            1. JPH says:

              I certainly don’t blame you. I wasn’t tempted to see it either. I only saw it out of peer pressure.

              1. Sleeping Dragon says:

                Would you believe I have YET to see Scott Pilgrim? I mean, I heard it’s good, I heard it’s exactly the geeky thing I’m likely to enjoy, but I somehow couldn’t really find the willpower to get off my ass and go see it. I postponed the thing to “I’ll rent it sometime” and I never really bothered… One day I’m going to watch it and then I’ll probably find myself regretting that I didn’t do so earlier.

    3. Blake says:

      One of the biggest differences is most of these fan movies are short, single scene kinds of things.
      If they tried to keep you occupied for 90 minutes I’m sure they’d have a much tougher time.

      I did thoroughly enjoy this though, never played L4D myself but I knew enough to get all the references.

      And I too liked the chiefs entrance in spite of his own lack of personality. Very good video.

  18. Mersadeon says:

    Ok, I won’t read the comments because of Spoilers, so maybe someone else already asked that –

    How do I get around the region lock? The music wasn’t licensed in Germany, so I am not allowed to watch it.

    1. Piflik says:

      Alternatively you can watch it on Vimeo.

      1. rabbitambulance says:

        Yess, you’re awesome.

  19. Airsoft says:

    Thought this was about me :(

    also, this is awesome.

  20. GM says:

    where witch has taken Lois down it went downhill but before that rather good video.

  21. RCN says:

    When the tank appears, I just thought “Oh Yeah!”

    And that damn sentient refreshment doesn’t even exists in my country.

    1. ClearWater says:

      Same here. I don’t even know the drink’s name but that was the first thing that came to mind.

  22. Eldiran says:

    I found it quite silly that they didn’t immediately know what a witch was. If they’re without Bill, then canonically they’ve slain about 200 witches by now.

    That said it was very impressive visually for a fan film.

    1. McNutcase says:

      What got me was the fact that Zoey startled the witch, not Louis. Try to be consistent with the established game mechanics, guys!

      Secret message from my cat:
      77777777777777777777777777777776yu

      1. eaglewingz says:

        22333333————[[[“////<< mm

        1. SolkaTruesilver says:

          DON’T HELP THEM!

          You think you’re building brownie point, but that’s what they want you to believe!!!

          http://www.catswhothrowupgrass.com/kill.php

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            All hail our kitty overlords!

            1. SolkaTruesilver says:

              NO! We have to fight them!!! Fight them to the last claw!

              I mean, to the last man!

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Why do you have a purrrroblem with our furry masters?

    2. Bryan says:

      Would’ve been better with Bill and his broom.

      Oh wait, that’s Left 4 Dumb, isn’t it. Crap. :-P

  23. danman says:

    I loved the video. Only criticism was that I was waiting for a Fracis “I hate…” line. It was still really cool though.

  24. Eärlindor says:

    Hahaaa! That’s awesome.

  25. rabbitambulance says:

    Doesn’t work in Germany. Damnit, I hate GEMA.

  26. Bill? Oh no! NOT BILL!

  27. swenson says:

    Well, that was pure awesome. I kept waiting for Samus to show up and was disappointed when she didn’t, though.

  28. Adam P says:

    Valve, Bungie and several others are listed in the credits, I think they may have done this legitimately and actually gotten approval from the appropriate companies before using their property. Which any respectable work really should do.

    1. Alan says:

      If that’s the definition of respectable art, I want nothing to do with it. Popular culture demands to be remixed, and the world would be a far, far worse place if artists played nice with their sources.

      1. Cineris says:

        I can’t tell if you’re being serious, but I agree. Lots of social criticism would be off the table.

      2. Adam P says:

        That’s a good point. I spoke pretty ambiguously and my mindset is usually locked in on the for profit, business standpoint. There’s nothing wrong with little not-for-profit creations for fun. I really more mean larger collaborations or for-profit works. I like Family Guy and Weird Al as much as the next nerd but they tread dangerous ground and just like the tabloids, they have to expect to get sued. It’s difficult to draw clear lines for legitimate reasons on these areas. What is ripping off another’s work? And what is just having fun? My ‘should’ really refers more to safe practice than condemning those who disobey. Sorry for my lack of clarity.

  29. Yonder says:

    It was nice of everyone else to stick around and help the Master Chief so he wouldn’t feel lonely while he saved the world. Although I suppose he may need the backup, as it’s probably theoretically possible for a Tank to hurt him.

  30. Fists says:

    On the whole SOPA thing turns out 8 countries have already signed a trade agreement which is at least as bad as SOPA.

    Info article on EFF https://www.eff.org/issues/acta

    There is a video on youtube by an anon. member too but I figure the EFF is a little more credible/less polarised

  31. Dnaloiram says:

    Well, that was resoundingly dull. I don’t think it was absolutely awful, but I was quite bored.

    I appreciate the effort they spent on it, though.

  32. acronix says:

    I find jarring that they decided to make the silly (but amusing) crossover despite having stablished a dead Bill before even starting the movie. We are even shown zombies munching on him. It´s like they noticed L4D gameplay isn´t really good material for a movie but were too late (or unwilling) to correct it.

  33. randy says:

    Yeah, I did crack no smile either. It was more like “WTF?!?!?. Why would you fuck your video halfway through, you were going so well!!!”. It went from being a really great L4D tribute to a console fanboy wet dream in 2 seconds. Really sad given the effort put into it (but hey, kudos to them, and I’m sure a lot of people liked it).

    And SOPA?. PIPA?. ACTA?. Don’t get me started. You Americans (or USAns, really) need to stop thinking you can do whatever the hell you want in the world. Or your government does. Or at the very least realize that it’s just not OK.

    1. Zak McKracken says:

      Don’t start to think that us Europeans (I guess that’s what you are too) are much better.
      After all, the US never had the GEMA problem on youtube (Germany), contrary to Hungary, US press is still free (although self-censorship is a big thing sometimes, apparently), and France … ahh, don’t get me started on France, and Big Brother England… Also, ACTA came into existence only because our heads of government, on a transnational level (and without asking any parliament, ever) decided it should be done. Talk about democracy deficit.

      … I think we’re just finding different ways of making laws that act as if the internet never was or could be required by law to become like the real world.
      I’ll stop now before running into politics too far (I fear I already might have).

      Main point: Don’t point at “those silly Americans”, even if there’s crazy stuff happening there, there’s other crazy stuff happening here, too.

  34. you were right I could not read all the comments posted here, well hopefully we hear any more about sopa/pipa. Those company’s would have had a field day if they passed. Allot of us would not have our web sites either.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to Airsoft Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.