Ross Scott

Once I have a contract, I'm going to document every exchange that's taken place between me and Machinima.com since December, with select quotes related to the situation. I won't be naming individuals or discussing specifics of the contract, but just how long this has been taking has become farcical. I want people to know exactly how this process has gone.

I was ready to RELEASE the next episode mid December. I'll wait until I actually have an official agreement with Machinima.com, but I may detail a play-by-play of how long this has taken afterwards. The analogy I've been making is the situation is kind of like having terrorists storm a building and take people hostage, then they say they'll kill the hostages unless the police give into their demands. So the police ask them what their demands are and the terrorists don't say anything. That's kind of where I've been almost 3 months now.

This is just a quick update to let people know I have finally had some real communication with Machinima.com and I THINK something is going to be able to be worked out so I can have more Freeman's Mind episodes out as soon as possible (assuming this post doesn't jinx everything). Besides trying to get ahead on FM episodes I'm also working on a side project that is directly related to Freeman's Mind (and no, it's not a different series) that I'll announce later. EDIT: I've been told today (Mar. 22nd) that there should be an agreement proposal sometime by the end of next week. While I can't discuss specifics, I'll keep making timetable updates as I get them.

Unfortunately I still have no update on releasing new videos (speaking of which, if someone wants to make me an offer on Freeman's Mind or Civil Protection, go ahead and email me). In the meantime, I've mainly been doing freelance voice acting work, but I want to work on future videos, whenever they come out. There are two key areas I could really use help in: WEBSITE DESIGN / PROGRAMMING: I've been wanting to make updates to the site for over a year now, but don't have web programming knowledge myself. Some of the things I wish to do are update the FAQ, add extra info fields to the episode pages, and have some sort of Wordpress plugin system so I could manually generate new episode pages myself, etc. AUDIO EDITING: I have had some great audio editing help in the past, but it's a real dice toss as to whether anyone will reply if I need help with a video. I'm looking for someone to add in sound effects, do some general reverb processing, and volume balancing. If you have examples of previous work you've done, please send me a link to them. - - - If you're interested in helping in either of these positions, please contact me at [email protected]. They will have to be volunteer positions since I'm currently in Ramen noodle territory myself. For audio editing that I use, I will put you in the credits of the video, and for website help, we'll find a way to credit you somewhere on the site. Also I'd like to add that if you are interested in helping, try to sound semi-professional. If I get an email like this: " ya ill fix ur site wat u want -Sent from my iPhone " it doesn't inspire confidence in me as to your abilities. I'm old-fashioned like that. EDIT: I've received a bunch of offers since I made this post, so I'll probably be covered once I sort through it all.

Maybe it isnt....but I am trying to analyze the situation from a viewer standpoint since well there are alot of Machinima.com Directors who are being kept in the dark on wtf is going on...especially if they have been a partner with Machinima.com for a long time, so to see this happen.....aswell as the constant layoffs from alot of departments that Machinima.com has had for a while....it seems like the Machinima filmmaking industry aswell as gaming in general are starting to fall flat if it was on the stock market....it looks like it is going downhill instead of up Here's what I can say: Machinima.com wants to do major changes to my contract regarding payment and rights to the videos. Some of this would be positive, some of this would be negative. I need to discuss the specifics of this with them so I can make an informed decision one way or another. This is what I've been trying to do since this news was dropped on me mid-December. Having any communication on this has been very difficult. Meanwhile, all videos are on hold and everyone is frustrated, me more than anyone.

No way, I can't last that long with that level of indecision. I was told "try to have something by the end of the week" 16 days ago and "couple more days" 9 days ago. I've sent 2 follow-up emails since then. Believe it or not, this is progress compared to what was happening in December / early January.

It's an annoyance for sure, but the alternative is just releasing videos now, then having my whole Youtube channel nuked on miscommunication a few weeks from now (I would assume) once they get around to everything. If I don't sound more outraged, it's because this isn't the first time for me that Machinima has taken a long time to get something done. I'm probably most upset that I was notified of the changes until a week before I could submit my last video in 2012.

Some news: I finally got in touch with Machinima last week, they want to make an offer, but it's still taking them a while to put it together, so I'm still in the dark about what's going to be happening. In the meantime, I still can't release new vides until this is settled one way or another. I plan to, but the outcome of negotiations with machinima may determined how that happens. I have some more information now than when I wrote that. I think it's very unlikely the series will be permanently jeopardized anymore, with or without Machinima, but this is still a mess until it gets resolved. It does, I'm not an employee there, I only was for a few months in 2009. I still get some income from them, plus communication has been going so slowly, even if I stated over and over again I wanted to leave, it would probably take them a few weeks to actually make it happen. No, it's not that simple at all or anything that has been posted here.

Actually $3,000 represents more money than all existing donations combined. Because there are consequences for releasing a video without having discussed this first. They're not UNWILLING to talk, they're just taking a very long time to establish communication with. If I were to just release a video without any communication first, I'd say it's probable that my personal Youtube account would be flagged and taken down by Machinima. here would probably be a lag time on it too. If I discuss it first, then I can have a clear course of action for releasing future videos. It's more complicated than this. Again, it's a matter of communication. The rights aren't a clearcut thing, but I can say they don't own them all outright. HOWEVER, if I just start releasing new videos, communication at Machinima is such, that I think my Youtube account could get banned by ANOTHER department at Machinima not even in communication with the one I'm talking until the whole thing got resolved weeks / months later, creating a big mess in the process. Also I've gotten some good voice acting offers so far, I'll be working on that until the Machinima.com mess gets sorted out.

This is literally the first I've heard of it (they never told me). Hell, accursedfarms was started BECAUSE I couldn't get a webpage with Machinima a while back. I don't know how to update it, I've had to depend on web code people to update that page. I generally have to ask them at least 3 times in order to do so, and it hasn't really kept up. Same for the Civil Protection Christmas episode. My biggest goal for the website is to get help to set up a template system so I can personally create new episode pages. Nothing. They were supposed to contact me, but I think it's fairly clear they won't. I've sent another email to hopefully get things resolved.

To be clear, I intend on making videos whether I get money or not, but if I'm not getting any money, you can bet that's going to have a big impact on the release time. While I'm happy for donations, I'm certainly not depending on them. I haven't tallied 2012 yet (I will when I do my taxes), but for 2011 the total donations were about $1,600, and 2012 was definitely less. I'm very frugal, but even I don't know how to live on $4.40 a day.

I unfortunately still have no news on when / if I can upload new videos on Machinima.com. In the meantime, the whole situation has been making me nervous financially since I don't know what's going to happen. I've tried applying for an additional job, but haven't had much luck yet. In the interest of me being able to pay rent in the future, I am now offering my services provided someone out there is interested in hiring me for something. Here are some areas people may want to hire me for. VOICE ACTING: I can do any voices you've heard in the existing videos, plus I've also recorded a voice acting reel as a sampler for additional voices I can perform: Voice acting reel for Ross Scott (MP3, 4MB) Please feel free to spread this to anyone you think might have an interest in hiring me. SCRIPT WRITING: Writing is generally one of the lower paid categories in movies in general, but I thought I would list it as a possible option anyway. I've obviously done a lot of comedy writing which you see in the videos, though I'm not strictly limited to that. I am likely to be a poor candidate for any dramatic dialogue however. SOURCE ENGINE ANIMATION / MACHINIMA VIDEOS: I'm really not anticipating anyone hiring me in these areas, since even at minimum wage, I couldn't even afford to pay myself the hours I normally dump into machinima videos; animation can be incredibly time consuming. I also have some experience animating with the Unreal 3 / UDK engine, however I'm far less experienced with it than I am with Source. - - - As for how much I'm charging, it kind of depends on what people want me to do. I found this article indicating how much voice actors typically earn, but I'm guessing most of those numbers are far beyond what I qualify for. Also it's worth mentioning that I can't do any jobs directly related to Civil Protection or Freeman's Mind until things are resolved with Machinima.com, sorry.

I can't reply to a lot of the other comments here, but I can say that this is serious. The main question is how serious this is going to become. I'm optimistic about the long term, but for the near future I'm really hoping things don't escalate to the point where I need legal help. It's not at that phase right now, but I don't know where it's going since I haven't been able to get much clear communication from them over the past week or so and they're all gone until January.

Yeah they sure know how to wish me a merry christmas.

I was hoping my next post on here would be a new episode, but unfortunately that's not happening. Last week I found out by accident that Machinima.com is planning to change the terms of their contract with me. This may jeopardize every video I've released so far and all future ones. Or it may not. I've been finding it difficult to get an answer either way and the only thing I know right now is that I won't have an answer before the start of 2013 at the earliest. I can't give any more specifics than this because of contract reasons, but this situation has been frustrating the hell out of me, because until I have this resolved, I can't release any more videos and I'm sure people are waiting on more. Just so you know, episode 45 of Freeman's Mind is DONE. I'll probably be done with episode 46 before I hear anything from Machinima.com again. I promise I'll do everything I can to get these out as soon as I can without having legal action taken against me or losing all rights to the videos. I'm sorry about the delay with this, it caught me completely by surprise.

Here's a quote:

Bulletstorm more or less had all this, including a rail system way the hell above the ground. Also while not the ending, No One Lives Forever had you in the sky in freefall where you have to hijack someone else's parachute to survive. NOLF 2 had you fighting inside a trailer that was flying through the air in a middle of a tornado. To be clear, the quote from Ken Levine is "I can tell you it is absolutely different to anything you’ve seen in a videogame."

I've joked in the past that in the future you might have a nice small compact unit that's your PC, then an external block you lug around that's your videocard. Since they're inherently parallel in nature, your biggest limitation is size and heat. I mostly have everything inside the case, although for long term storage (that's where all the old CP and FM files are) I have redundant hard drives that I can plug into a SATA dock when I need to access something, then leave it turned off the rest of the time.

I saw this at PC Gamer and it definitely got me thinking: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/07/bioshock-infinite-ending-is-absolutely-different-to-anything-youve-seen-in-a-videogame/ They're saying the ending to bioshock is different than anything I've seen in a videogame. That's a big claim. While I love System Shock 2, I wasn't taken in by Bioshock, I thought I might skip Bioshock Infinite because of that, but a statement like that almost sounds like a challenge. I've seen a lot of interesting endings in videogames. Here are a few that come to mind: -Ending where you were helping the bad guy all along and didn't realize it / betrayed -Ending where you were the bad guy all along and didn't realize it -Ending where it was all a dream -Ending finding out the whole thing was a simulation -Ending to a murder mystery where the murderer is not found -Ending where you become as bad as the person you were fighting / you become corrupted by the power you're using -Ending where the protagonist murders the love interest -Ending where you put yourself back in extreme danger for no damn reason at all -Ending where you go back in time and kill yourself -Ending where you commit suicide (without time travel) -Ending where you take over the world -Ending where you take over the world then hold a heavy metal concert with your minions -Ending where you pass the buck to some random side character who screws things up -Ending where you transcend into a higher being -Ending where the whole world transcends into a higher being -Ending where you kill everyone important and have anarchy -Ending involving alien abduction -Ending undoing everything you did via time travel -Ending creating a paradox and a split timeline -Ending where you're trapped in a delusion -Ending where the bad guy wins, but it's not really that bad, just not great -Ending where you are tortured horribly forever I'm sure there's potential for some un-used game endings, but it's not a lot. I don't think I've seen an ending in a videogame where you de-evolve into nothingness, only in movies. Feel free to post any thoughts on this. Also I haven't played Mass Effect 3 (or 2) yet, but I know its ending is infamous (and don't know what it is), so maybe use the spoiler tag if you want to talk about that. Feel free to post other crazy endings you've seen not listed here.

GordonFreeman: Something REALLY screwed up when I tried to reply on the forum and I accidentally deleted your post. Sorry about that. I even had a reply to you, you were asking about the Skyrim COPS video asking why they were able to submit that. My answer: I guess Machinima lied to me? I want to get as many up as possible, but I have to go through Machinima to do it. In the past the mistakes made in the typos kind of discouraged me since they weren't 100% accurate, although they were very close. I'm thinking my perfectionist attitude about it is holding things up, so I may just see about getting a bunch up soon out of the existing ones and call them the official ones. It's just another entry on my giant "to do" list. Yes, I have used it. As for it being faster and quicker, for most things it's not that it's necessarily a lot faster or quicker under ideal circumstances, but the difference is more like between a really reliable car v. one that breaks down every 3rd time you use the brakes. As for the look, it will be different because it's a different engine, however I promise not to use the tinting, desaturating, and overblooming crap that plagues so many Unreal 3 engine games. I'm also going to make sure I have high quality antialiasing on UDK videos. I thought about that while working on the video, and hey, the driver does exit his vehicle multiple times. Grigori could be proactive with his hitchhiking.

Okay I can't hold back after reading a comment like this. A lot of people in the credits did about 5-20 minutes worth of work, and were so hard to get a hold of that if I had to do it again, I would have done all of their work myself. I was hoping to assign some of the easiest jobs to other people to help save time, but that proved fairly disastrous overall. Also the people in the credits are just the ones that DID something. The majority of the volunteers ended up not doing anything. Now some other people really did do a bunch of work though, so it's definitely a mix. One person did more work in one night than 15 people were able to do in over 3 weeks. In the future, I'm really going to have to reconsider how much help I ask for, on average about 80% of volunteers who offer to help, never do ANYTHING (or even reply after the first email) and of the remainder, about 75% of them will disappear randomly. To volunteers: If I asked you for something simple, and you did it and replied faster than a week, congratulations, you're not who I'm referring to. Also if you had the courtesy to tell me you were too busy to help, I also appreciated that. All other volunteers: what the hell guys I actually wasn't even trying to scare anybody with this one, although I did want a tense vibe I'm guessing the guy who did all the work in one night was Sean who animated the car? No, I did the car in the sections where it doesn't look quite as good, Mendelevius did the car in the sections where it looked pretty damn good. Sean did do a ton of work in one night, by placing down lots of underbrush props to make the forest look more believable. Other volunteers did some work there, but Sean came in and blew away all of them (and everyone else I tried to assign to that) in one night.