Ross Scott

Jesus Christ!!! Less than 20%, a sixth of what you made just a couple years ago, how the hell has youtube caused that?

I always thought this was a problem just with machinima, but if now even youtube is not paying you a reasonable amount for what you're producing, this sounds much worse than I thought. I understand you can get into specifics on the machinima contract, but could you tell us what's up with youtube's harsh pay cut?

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.

 

So how HAVE you been making a living lately?

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.

Thank you! i must ask you though ive seen you talking about a new contract that you won't sign i realise you can't reveal alot but in a nutshell could you please tell us

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.

And Ross please release some new episodes, get a contract with someone else, they are just using a tactic, stalling you until you run out of money and be desperate enough to accept their shitty terms for the movies.

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.

I think I'm developing a pathological hatred for machinima. Seriously, if they don't get this sorted out within the next two weeks this will have gone on for over THREE MONTHS since we first heard about it! Even if they finally get this contract issue solved, by say, June, I still don't think I'll be able to forgive them for causing this agonizing hiatus. Mr. Scott how long are you going to give the guys to get their sh*t together?

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

I mean I know that their are legalities behind it and everything

You answered your own question man.

Aside from Duke Nukem Forever, no, can't think of any games that come close to feeling like punk games.

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.

 

Production wise it felt the most complete somehow and it was a good change of pace with out going too far

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 the problem is that mashinima sucks or is evil, I think it's that they probably have a small overworked underpaid legal department and Ross gets lost in the shit storm there.

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.

And how does this fit into the "I can't release anything until I sign a new contract" grand scheme of things?

More on that tomorrow.

Well, that was fucking metal...

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.

What I don't understand is why you need Machinima in the first place.

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.

I don't understand how communication like this (three months???) is even possible. If I let a contract sit for three months at my company, I'd be fired. It just doesn't sit well.

 

It is weird how they'd take so long to pontificate over one content creator's contract (alliteration FTW!), when keeping up a release schedule is important.

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.

Sweet merciful Jesus.

 

It's felt like we were trapped in some limbo state this whole last month.

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.

I don't think it's that simple...

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.

Okay, but is there a reasonable limit on this? If you dont hear from them in a year, we're still going to be waiting?

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.

You mean they STILL haven't talked to you yet? It's been over a month, how could they have not found the time to establish communication let alone resolve the problem! If I sound furious, I'm mad at them not you, Mr. Scott, I just find it practically insulting that they can stop you from releasing videos and not even tell you why! How long are you willing to wait for these guys to get their act together and contact you?

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 hate to ask, but will you be finishing the downloadable versions of FM 43 and 44 soon or are those lower priority now?

I plan to, but the outcome of negotiations with machinima may determined how that happens.

 

Ross has said that this is a very serious matter and it could jeopardize the future of Freeman's Mind. I think we have reason to panic.

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.

 

I heard from another Machinima producer that Machinima was laying off some of their producers and directors. We can hope that this excludes Ross.

It does, I'm not an employee there, I only was for a few months in 2009.

 

Why don't you just leave Machinima?.

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.

 

Machinima owns Freeman's Mind and Civil Protection through contract. THE END

No, it's not that simple at all or anything that has been posted here.

But damn, why donate 3,000?

Actually $3,000 represents more money than all existing donations combined.

 

Wait. If you cant get them to talk to you.. why dont you just release the video?

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.

 

And if one did, exactly what could they do to him?

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.

 

Bullshit. They have the rights that were assigned to them by contract. If they didn't, we would not have this situation right now.

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.

He still has a webpage over there.

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.

 

Maybe Ross is in charge of that page and he just hasn't gotten around to updating it?

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.

 

Any updates ?

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.

As much as I would love to hire you for script writing, for a project I have in mind, and/or voice acting, I unfortunately wouldn't be able to pay you, not even a ha'penny an hour.

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.

 

Donations as last resort I presume ?

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.