Ross Scott

As much as I like the idea, I'm not sure how realistic that is. Total donation money received in 2012 was $1,120.72. That would cover my rent for about 2 months, but not food, utilities, taxes, and social security payments. As for the rights, I plan to get that sorted out soon, I'll make an update when I do. All I can say is no one has made a post on here that accurately represents the situation, it's more complicated than that.

I emailed to see if they were interested, but haven't gotten a reply back yet. Is there other contact info I should use besides the email address on the blistered thumbs site?

My education history is basically the result of me going back and forth between doing school for a while and not being sure what I wanted to do, then working for a year, then going back to school, repeated a few times. This may sound outrageous (especially looking at me now), but I have a bachelor's in criminal justice (and a minor in psychology), with the idea at the time of going into law enforcement. The short version is I wanted to end up at a job where I wasn't bored, and that's something local law enforcement can deliver on. Around that time I made Civil Protection, won first place in a contest, which encouraged me to keep going with it, worked some temporary jobs at the same time until I ended up getting a contract later with Machinima later, only semi-recently making enough from it for me to survive from it, then Youtube changed the rules. As for mapping, I'm not a good designer for that, only basic experience, for in-game animation I probably would be qualified just from experience on CP and learning other engines. It's really not my first choice at all, but if I was made an offer I would have to consider it. Well beggars can not be choosers. At this point I'll work at whatever I have to in order to survive, but I'm not going jeopardize losing Freeman's Mind permanently.

You can spread the word that the videos may end up in a new home and everything is in a state of flux. Plus there's other stuff I'm working on that I'll hope for help with publicity from you guys later on (it's all good stuff). As for adblock, that's a dichotomy for me since I hate intrusive ads, but that's how I've depended on my income. Individual views mean less than ever in financial terms, especially with Youtube's changes. You could take the most avid fan of the show and it's unlikely he or she would watch the videos enough times over the course of a few years for it to add up to a dollar. I don't see any sane way I can tell people to leave adblock off when I have it installed myself. Even though I'm looking at financial trouble, I honestly feel that no viewer has any OBLIGATION to suffer through ads or to pay me, since I see that as kind of arrogant. I'm not curing cancer or inventing new alloys or something. I'm trying to make funny videos that people like and I really hope I can survive some way doing it, but I think it would be insane to put that burden on you. Also I am reminded of this picture. Not as good as episode 6 huh?

Hey, as part of an additional side project I'm doing (there's purpose to all this stuff believe it or not), I could use some help from people. While I remember a lot myself, I wanted everyone to list as many GOOD machinima videos that they know of here. I don't mean stuff necessarily from Machinima.com, just machinima as a medium. The age doesn't matter, although I'm particularly interested in ones that don't have an absolute ton of views and may have gone overlooked before. It can be from any game engine. Thanks.

Absolutely, though I may make a repeat of this information in a news post later. There's multiple things at work here: 1. Youtube isn't paying for ads on mobile devices like tablets or smartphones, even if they display there. This accounts for about 40% of my video views, according to Machinima. The ratio can be more like 60% for a lot of videos I've been told. This sounds like fraud to me, but I imagine Google lawyers have some impressive stuff backing this. 2. Youtube has changed how they pay users based on ads. In some ways this isn't completely unreasonable, but it hurts a lot of viewers. As I've been told, Freeman's Mind is not directly monetizeable because it doesn't tie into a product. No one is advertising to sell copies of Half-Life. If I was doing this in a brand new game, like Bioshock Infinite, those would be much more monetizeable, because that's a game that's trying to get sales right now. Alternately, if I was doing an unboxing of a mouse or something, that would also be much more monetizeable. This means that targeted advertising is flowing more towards people who can easily have tie-in advertising rather than advertise based on general trends the way Amazon recommends things for you. This means less money for video makers who aren't doing tie-in stuff. 3. This is the most evil part in my opinion, Youtube is essentially trying to kill the "long tail" effect of Youtube. Meaning that when you're searching for videos or get recommendations, instead of getting videos that are most relevant, it's going to essentially bury those and redirect you to videos that are bigger and earning more money, regardless of how relevant they actually are. This started in 2011 and reduced my views to about half. You can hear more about it here, (skip to the 5 minute mark): Even if money wasn't involved, this is just evil, because it means you as a viewer won't see the videos that most pertain to what you're interested in, they're trying to mainstream everything as much as possible. 4. Some black magic voodoo going on. I have a friend who makes a little bit of money from Minecraft videos, and he's told me that Youtube is actually SUBTRACTING money he's already earned, often overnight, he'll simply "lose" $6 or so from his total with no explanation. I also follow an economic video blog who updates every day, has been running it for over a year, and in one video he claimed that he just "lost" 600,000 total views (out of about 1.8 million) overnight, again no explanation. Whatever Youtube is doing, they're clearly violating Google's "Don't be evil" mantra. Basically living off my savings. I've applied for multiple jobs with no luck, although I did get a little bit from voice acting for various freelance projects to soften the blow. If nothing changes (although I'm doing a lot to try and change things) then I can survive financially for about 3 months before I'm in deep shit.

I really can't get into any specifics, but my opinion is that it's incredibly restrictive on rights to the point where it could easily put the series in jeopardy and be harmful for me. I really can't say anything more detailed than that.

I've had this discussion a lot with a friend of mine and I have to say it's probably not this because if you're trying to stall someone, you don't wait months BEFORE making an offer, you make the offer THEN stall. And yes I am trying to look into other options, though I'll admit I'm an idiot in being dependent on their income to survive and I'm trying to brainstorm ways to make up the difference elsewhere. Youtube has changed the landscape substantially, so that even with Machinima changing nothing, I'm getting less than 20% of what I was in 2011 and it's likely to be the same or worse elsewhere (I'm thinking about having a new post on this). In other news, regarding punk games, it looks like I spoke too soon! http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/05/punksnotdead-free-low-fi-brawler-that-doubles-as-a-rude-wake-up-call/

I made an update. Unfortunately things are still not great. I'm going to try seeking some legal consultation somehow.

It's caused more stress over the past few months than almost anything I can remember over the past few years.

You answered your own question man.

I think Rage might be the closest I can think of recently. I'd say Bulletstorm had some punk elements to it, even if it might be a stretch to call it a punk game. Actually I was trying to go for over the top. I also wanted to establish that the Doom guy had a little bit different personality from Freeman. Freeman is a physicist who has some real mettle to him. The Doom guy is a space marine who is such a badass he gets kicked out of hell.

I don't think it's necessarily a reflection of Machinima as a whole, but I will say that the contract I've been shown in its current form strikes me as "evil." There's way more stuff in there that's been added than there was in the past, you can't attribute that to being overworked, it took more effort to add that.

Well in case there’s any confusion, yesterday was April Fool’s Day, so there are no episodes 1-6 of Doom Guy’s Mind, it was meant as a joke. One thing that’s no doubt confusing people is why this was up on Machinima.com’s channel. I’m just as surprised by that as anyone, as I still do NOT have a new contract with them and I am waiting to hear back from them. They decided to make an exception for me submitting a new video for April Fool’s Day, so that’s how Doom Guy’s Mind got posted. I actually thought for certain they wouldn’t resolve things in time, in which case I would have posted it on my own Youtube channel. Out of all the videos I’ve created however, I feel like this one is likely to appeal to Machinima.com’s target demographic more than any other. Working on Doom Guy’s Mind kind of made me nostalgic for “punk” games. There were a lot of punk games in the 90s. I feel even with the indie scene there aren’t enough punk games today, but that’s probably just me getting older. Doom was also the first video I’ve had to record realtime in a while, which is a challenge for my system, since I don’t have a SSD. With all the Source videos, I export the footage frame by frame, so it’s all perfectly smooth. I hate having to record in realtime, because one hiccup from a hard drive means the footage will start getting choppy. Also to clear up any confusion, this was NOT the Freeman’s Mind related side project I mentioned earlier, that’s still a work in progress. I hope to be able to announce that in a week or two. Besides that, I’ll be continuing work on future Freeman’s Mind episodes. I’ll make sure they eventually get released one way or another.

More on that tomorrow.

hell yeah

Shwd0jkvfc0 (Downloadable copy will be up later) Hey everybody, sorry for such a long wait on the next episode, but it's finally here. I think this episode turned out a little better than episode 6, let me know what you think. Also I think there's a glitch or something where Youtube is labeling this video as having offensive content, but that's an error because this video is totally not offensive.

Well I've been offered a contract and while I can't reveal anything in it here, all I can say is there's no way I can sign it in its current form. I submitted a list of revisions needed, I'm really hoping things can come to a sane solution.

It's a complicated issue. I really can't go into detail on it because of the contract, but here's the simple version of it: Machinima wants to change the terms of the contract. I need certain assurances before I can agree to it. If those can be met, great. If not, then I guess I will have to leave. Either way, I need communication with them. If I just leave without some sort of resolution with them, it could cause a whole extra level of problems that will make my life worse all round. I really do wish this could be happening faster, it's driving me nuts.

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.