Ross Scott

This is sort of an offshoot of another thread that got derailed, but in general, I think big money controls most of America nowadays. Not everyone may agree with me, but I recently saw a video that I feel like REALLY illustrates it in the news, check this out: TM8L7bdwVaA The first thing I want to point out is that this is from a variety of stations, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, etc., so this transcends "liberal" or "conservative" media and extends to basically any mainstream televised news. For me, it's refreshing to see proof of this. I feel like when big money controls the mainstream news, it influences the entire country. This also means that stories that are critical of big money's influenced are largely repressed, with the only sources of getting them being on more "fringe" sources or some international news. Anyway, I recommend sharing this video with anyone who believes we have "balanced" news in the USA, to me this video says it all.

Here's what I know about that: -I've been told by Machinima.com in the past they don't count towards monetization -Machinima.com has also flat out lied to me before on payouts, saying my old CPM cost them money (I make more money PER VIEW on my own than I did at Machinima, so for them to be telling the truth, my channel would have to be worth more to advertisers than theirs), they also said views on videos older than 3 months don't monetize at all (again, this is a lie, if somebody watches FM #4, that helps me just as much), so it's hard to know the truth from what they've said -I've been told by technical people some of them count on some platforms towards monetization, others don't -I've NEVER heard of mobile views not counting at ALL, like you're a ghost that was never there. So if 10 people watch a video on an iPhone, it should still show 10 views, but those views might not count toward any income.

WHO KNOWS what is going on inside their heads. Cramming Google+ down everyone's throats was an intentional dick move, but screwing up YT's interface HARD in the process? That doesn't seem like something conducive to good business even if seems deliberate as hell. You're right though, this could just as easily be hurting them and they don't care? I don't frigging know. I guess having it uploaded for 6 hours means "it isn't quite ready yet" It's been so long since I played it, I actually didn't remember that as part of the plot to OF, I mainly remember the monster at the end. I just figured it's sort of a logical next step given the extent of the problem and location.

Blip.tv link (download will be up later I swear) Here's another episode that got delayed more than I wanted, but I'm still making them. This is coming out on Valentine's Day, but it's just a coincidence, I didn't plan it like that. This episode isn't especially related to Valentine's Day unless you find ninjas and shotguns romantic. I think this episode came out pretty well, it actually took longer due to bugs with HL: Source's demo recording, but I was able to eventually work around them. On another note, I wanted to try and introduce some democracy to what I work on next and see how it goes. I've start on episode 55, but after that, I haven't decided what video I should do next, so you can vote on it below: [poll id=10] In reality, it's more of a competition between Freeman's Mind and Ross's Game Dungeon, but I just wanted to see how big the divide is. While I haven't given up on it, I can't realistically do another animated video at this time since that will delay everything else too much and I need to keep my income going. This goes double since it's now a CONFIRMED conspiracy that Youtube isn't counting all views and I guess is just pocketing the money instead. I've suspected something like this ever since I saw some statistically improbable things happen in December, but that link above has actual proof in it. I'm sure Google's stance on this is that it's just a bug they need to fix. An enormous, and insanely profitable bug. So, while I plan to go with the majority rule, if Youtube siphons off enough views from FM so they're both equal, I may just do more RGD instead, since I can produce it faster and it's a little more fun for me to make. More videos coming! LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

BTGbullseye: I really think our terminology is getting mixed up. When you say "left wing", what do you mean? Because I see it as kind of a spectrum leading from mild to extreme: modern Democrats = very mild left wing, more left on social issues, not really left wing at all in economic issues now, or in words only People with socialist leanings = (Chris Hedges, Bernie Sanders) more "traditional" left wing, but considered radical nowadays People with communist leanings = extreme left wing, not very realistic in my opinion Anarchists = extremist left wing, Noam Chomsky is actually a flavor of this So when you say "extreme left wing" or "radical left" that automatically excludes all democrats in my mind. Something like the Green Party could be considered more radical or extreme left wing. I disagree when you say they're about hoarding power, they're more about trying to level the playing field.

Your last sentence comes across like hyperbole man. I largely see voices like Limbaugh and Hannity as PART of the big money, they're some of the channels for it on the right wing side. Are they calling for prosecution and penalties of illegal by the banks? Do they speak out against unfair tax avoidance of large corporations (like Google, General Electric, Exxon, Apple, etc. all paying single digit or less in taxes?). What is their solution for people in poverty? Do they speak out against CORPORATE welfare (for instance? How would they solve the current problems we have? From what I know of Hannity and Limbaugh, their stances are a lot of the noise that gets in the way of more serious debate. I mean I even found a link of him defending Super PACS, which I see as a signficant step towards moving power away from the average voter towards big money. To give them credit though, I did some research and noticed he DOES speak out against quantitative easing, so kudos for that, although I think that's incorrect framing QE as a liberal issue, many liberals hate QE also, just apparently not the Obama administration. This is kind of what I mean about the "noise" however. The way QE is being used I think is highly irresponsible, but the thing is both Obama AND Romney were in favor of maintaining the status quo with the federal reserve. So calling it "liberal" or "conservative" I think is intellectually dishonest and is just playing people against each other. An issue like that is essentially independent of both sides, since again, I think both republicans and democrats are more or less at the call of big money. Plus, the second part of your sentence says to me either you were just speaking off the cuff, or else you may be ignorant of the actual extremist left. I think this could be terminology however. I want to be clear, if we're not talking social issues, I don't consider any of the Obama administration or even most of modern day democrats to be the radical left. I see them as highly centrist, in some categories more right wing than Republican candidates of the past. When I hear "radical left" I'm thinking of Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Bernie Sanders, Robert Reich, etc. I can guarantee all of those people very much wish to remedy our current situation and have been trying their best for years. Bernie Sanders (an independent) where he's essentially mocking them by saying sarcastically (and loudly to them) how our Congress is acting like our most important priority above all else, is tax cuts for billionaires. Anyway, you may not agree with all of their stances or routes to a solution, but I think saying the extremist left doesn't want to do anything about our situation is totally false. I think the MAJORITY of people want to change the situation, but there is so much misinformation and obfuscation that it's unlikely to happen without drastic actions. I may as well piss everybody off equally, but I think Obama has given lip service towards more fairer economic opportunities and little else. Looking at JUST his economic history, I don't see a world of difference between him and Bush. I can't know what goes on his head, but personally I think he's largely a puppet and doesn't have anything approaching realistic solutions for our most serious problems. He can give a good speech and say he'll do something, but in terms of what he's actually done or his current plans are, I think they're piecemeal at best, regressive at worst. Some may blame an obstructionist congress for holding him up, but I think that's a cop out. If a president TRULY gave a damn, he would implore more of the American people directly, explain what he wants to do, how he plans to do it, and get legislation so simple made that anyone trying to spin it off towards the interest of big money would look corrupt as hell. You CAN shine a light on corruption if you really want to, and the president has one of the most powerful offices in America. Then again, if he actually DID do that, he might get assassinated, so again, it's hard for me to know what's going on in his head, but I think holding up Obama as a model of what the left-wing wants in terms of economic policy is a farce.

Well besides it being easier to just manufacture more USB ports rather than USB ports AND PS/2 connectors, part of the reason those were phased out is because there's more power going through a PS/2 connector and in rare cases could actually damage the motherboard if ever unplugged while active (though I haven't really heard of those situations since the 90s). Actually the PS/2 does offer a minor advantage for keyboards as it means more keys can be pressed at once (look up "n key rollover") if you want to know more about that.

I agree, for me personally, a lot of social issues in politics I think of more as noise than anything else. I think the most important issues are ones that affect BILLIONS of people, not small factions. Since the USA has the world reserve currency, our economic issues really do have that kind of impact. I would disagree, I think America is dominated by big money. In 2013, over 3 billion dollars were spent on lobbying. We have more millionaires in congress than any point in history. I've read that since the recession, 95% of our economic gains have gone towards the upper 1%. Our system is essentially rigged to snuff out third parties. In my opinion, that's not democracy. I've read before that nowadays we essentially have the one-party system, the party of business, with two different factions. I mean our answer to the 2008 financial crisis was to essentially bail people out, slap on the wrist penalties for most companies, nobody went to jail, and no serious legislation was passed to prevent the same thing from happening all over again. HSBC was found guilty of laundering money (and CONTINUING to do so) for Al-Qaeda, the Mexican cartel, and many other criminal organizations, yet the only penalty was a fine of 5 weeks of profit for them. No one went to jail over that and the justice department even came out and said it was afraid to press harsher penalties for fear of damaging the economy. It's essentially an admission that large banks are above the law. I think neither the left nor right establishments are seriously going to challenge this order, because they're also being funded by it. The only people who are serious about wanting to stop corruption in our system are essentially radicals now, as the mainstream just accepts it and debates things like social issues instead.

Ah, the Xbox One solution huh?

Ha ha, well that would definitely be fast enough, but I only have 8GB, but even if I had 16, it would burn through that very fast. Part of the issue is I may be aiming higher than I should for the visual quality as I've been recording in RGB lossless compression. Now while Youtube is of course YUV lossy compression, I have noticed a difference in color quality making the RGB conversion the final step in the process v. recording from the source in YUV. Keeping everything in RGB (like the source) until the very end definitely helps with the color. That unfortunately means more data has to be recorded in order to preserve it. 1920x1080 at 30fps with CD quality audio comes to about 188MB/s uncompressed. Now with Fraps it would probably only be about 60% of that with no quality loss (dxtory allows better lagarith compression, but dxtory doesn't always work properly on games that use AA), but that's still a lot of data to be grabbing in realtime.

Yeah wow, this thread is such a resources, I'm tempted to turn this all into a permanent page somehow with links to EVERYTHING. Go to gorilla gong. We're putting up new content every day, plus we have plans for new stuff soon I think a lot of people are going to like.

I have a giant list of games I plan to check out, a lot of those are abandonware though, so the only barrier is me just finding time to get to it. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head: Fortnite - I was sold on the trailer and the concept, it's rare this happens Project Zomboid - I actually own a copy of this one, bought it a while back, I'm waiting until they think it's ready for release Trackmania 2 Valley - unlimited driving on scenic country roads sounds like something I'd like Diablo 3 - I heard many people say it's not good, but I was a huge fan of Diablo 1, so I'm still curious Darkspore - Also heard it's not the best, but it sounded interesting, plus as an online only, this one is at risk of going 100% dead later Gone Home - plot premise sounds like something I'd like Miasmata - deep forest survival game I'm Not Alone - some mansion horror game The Last Door - Lovecraft themed horror game Nether - maybe, I've played the original Day Z and while I like the survival aspect, getting sniped by other players gets old fast, depends if I can get around that or not

Yeah this is pretty much my viewpoint as well.

The thing is in less than lethal doses, the effects of radiation aren't clear cut how much it's affected you. You may feel fine, for years even, but a sufficient dosage might have taken 10 years off the end of your life and you won't realize it until much later. It's a combination of genes and luck. The more radiation you get, the less luck you have.

Well if it's any solace, the coolest game character ever in my opinion is Kain, and he has a British accent, so it works out. Alright I found it. It's overall pretty depressing, but watch the chunk that I've linked here: I remembered it wrong however, it wasn't "looks on their faces" so much as what they were saying, but you still get the idea they were NOT ready for the amount of radiation they exposed themselves to. The moral to this story is don't go to Chernobyl, ever.

Blip.tv link (download will be up later) This episode got delayed more than I intended, but if you've been watching the series a while, it's nothing compared to some of the other ones. This episode is also one of the shorter ones in a while, although really, this is ideally where I wanted to aim, but the past few episodes have just been one thing after another, there was less of a good jumping off spot. I know plenty of people would just as soon have me make the next episode 30 minutes long, but it's definitely easier for me to break it up some more. Part of the reason this episode got delayed is because I've been spending a little more time learning possible software for the long-term movie project I still want to do. That's not anywhere close to being done, but I would go crazy if I wasn't doing SOMETHING on it, I mostly put that completely on hold for 2013. Finally, the documentary Freeman refers to in this episode is totally real, though I forgot the name of it. LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

I had to make a post on this since I'm following this like a sporting event: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-microsoft-paying-youtubers-for-xbox-one-mentions/ The short version: Microsoft paid Machinima to promote the Xbox One. Machinima offered a minor promotion to people in their network to promote the xbox one and made them sign a new contract saying they could not say anything negative about it, nor could they reveal any terms in it. This may or may not be illegal according to the FTC, who knows. Since then, Machinima gave a statement on the matter that sounds EXACTLY like the sort of conversations I had with their legal department when I was trying to get them to honor my contract. If you want to see how Machinima talks to people trying to get them to act honestly, this is a perfect example: I bet I even know who wrote this. Anyway, Microsoft has since given a statement saying they had no knowledge of Machinima's activities, saying it's all on them. Yeah right. Here's my hypothesis: Microsoft of course knew the details of what Machinima was doing, it would be unrealistic to suggest otherwise in the contract. Machinima told the truth, what they're doing it TYPICAL for them. The difference is this time the public got wind of it AND actually cared, so it turned into a scandal. Machinima bunkers down into legal protection mode so they don't sued by the FTC, and Microsoft points the finger at them to look good, because MS is much, much bigger than Machinima, so they can dictate terms. In any event, this is STANDARD behavior for Machinima, it's nice to see more people aware of it.

He may not be aware of GG yet unfortunately, but we're working on that. As for actual machinima disappearing, no worries man. Not only is GG growing, but we're working on some changes I think almost everyone is going to like a lot.

I hope he doesn't get mobbed by ignorance. Even though he founded Machinima.com, he's a good guy, into machinima at heart, hasn't been involved with the company for many years.

They more accurately express the emotional states involved too. Mine most accurately reflects a combination of the top picture and the dwarf on the left towards the bottom. The time from December to late August was perhaps the most sustained stressful period of my entire life. I've had worse times, but not ones that lasted unabated for 8 months. After it was over Magda said my face even began to start looking better. They're portrait art on cards from Magic The Gathering. I've always been amazed by the art quality on many of them, I tried to pick ones that fit the tone of the events.

Yeah you and me both. Especially since Valve made their policy official in 2013:http://www.valvesoftware.com/videopolicy.html The cool thing with them is there IS no contract, just an informal agreement and guidelines to follow. If they went evil puppetmaster for some reason later on, I could always just leave. Maybe I just don't know what I'm doing, but almost every time in the past I've tried to use that for something I thought was gone, there would be errors and it wouldn't work. Regardless, people are welcome to fact check this stuff. The blip.tv takedown happened in mid-May after I informed them of it.

LEAVING MACHINIMA Hey everyone, this is a post I wasn't sure if I was going to make, but I've decided to risk it as I still keep getting questions from viewers. They were dying down for a while, but recently I was informed that Machinima.com has been using some of the old Civil Protection footage in their official Xbox One App, and this testimony has stirred things up again, so that's sparked a lot more questions at me. So I want to clear up, hopefully once and for all, everything that went down between Machinima.com and myself last year. THE STORY SO FAR I'm still not at liberty to reveal everything that's happened, but what I mentioned in my last Escape From Machinima post is only a portion of it. To do a quick recap on that, Machinima.com attempted to change their contract terms with me, stalled me for months after my pay dropped about 80%, until I eventually quit after seeing their new contract offer, which had terms in it I could never agree to. I thought that would be the end of the story when I wrote that post, but nope, it kept going. UNPLEASANT DISCOVERIES After I left Machinima and planned to start distributing my videos on Blip.tv in addition to Youtube, I decided to check out of curiosity if anyone had put any duplicates up of my videos on there. It turns out someone HAD, Machinima.com's Blip.tv channel had been uploading copies of my videos there. While them publishing my videos elsewhere was allowed based on my contract terms, Machinima.com never informed me they were doing this, never gave me any statistics on views for blip.tv (and still haven't), and never paid me anything for views on Blip.tv, but they WERE collecting advertising revenue on them, for years. All in all, at least 15 of my videos were posted from periods ranging from early 2010 to late 2011 and were up on blip.tv's channel under Machinima's name and they were collecting income on it without paying me up through 2013. Without revealing anything that's in it, I can say that this activity was a clear, repeated violation of my contract with Machinima, and in the event something like this happened, most of the rights on many of my videos would return to me. To make matters worse, this was actually on top of violations I discovered earlier in the year where Machinima simply never paid me for two videos dating back from 2009 and 2010. At the time, I passed that off as an oversight, but since the blip.tv violations appeared much more deliberate, it made me start doubting that. STAY QUIET AND BURY EVIDENCE After discovering all this, I contacted Machinima.com, informing them of what I discovered and expressed that since their actions repeatedly violated my contract, I was claiming the rights back on my videos. My message was relayed to their legal department, but I didn't get any answer for weeks from them, despite my messaging Machinima every few days trying to get some sort of update. During this time however, my videos on blip.tv, then later ALL of their videos on blip.tv were taken down (more on this later). MACHINIMA'S RESPONSE In June, I was finally given a response from the legal department, which claimed Machinima.com owned all my videos under the US Copyright Act based on a contract from 2011. The problem with this response was I NEVER SIGNED a contract with them from 2011. In fact, I specifically rejected their new contract offer from 2011 because I felt it would take many of my rights away. My contract with them was from 2009 and had some rights protections written into it. I informed them of this, then after a few more emails, their legal department asserted that they did indeed own the rights to my videos based on my 2007 contract. They might have had a valid point, except my 2009 completely replaced my 2007 one. After some more emails, I confirmed that they had actually lost the signed 2009 contract entirely. By their request, I then sent them an unsigned copy of my 2009 contract that I had on hand. At which point, they still did not change their claims about owning all my videos, nor did they address my questions concerning their breach of my contract. They DID ask if I had a signed copy I could produce for them, even though they had (or used to have) the only one in existence. LEGAL WORDS At this point, I was incredibly frustrated and discouraged with how the situation was being handled and I decided to get some legal assistance. I received a few replies and one fan in particular was able to provide an invaluable amount of pro bono assistance for me. I ended up sending a 15 page letter to Machinima detailing everything that had happened to me from them and stated that I would be pursuing legal action against them if my rights weren't restored. I am not at liberty to discuss what happened afterward, but I will say I can live with the outcome. I've more or less been avoiding any involvement with Machinima.com since. NPR! After all this went down, I was also contacted by NPR as they were doing a piece on Machinima.com. I gave them a 20 minute interview about it, they used one isolated sentence from it, but that's the nature of modern media. Also their statement about my situation with Machinima.com isn't entirely accurate, but it's close enough for anyone who's not a lawyer. But hey, I got to be on the radio! QUESTIONABLE ACTIONS Back to the Blip.tv thing, that's worth discussing a little further, because that didn't just affect me. Machinima.com uploaded thousands of videos to their blip.tv channel from around 2010-2011, maybe late 2009 and early 2012, I don't remember. I can't fact check any of the dates, since they took down all the videos they had on blip.tv after I brought it to their attention. I am assuming this is because I'm not the only one they did not pay for this. I still have no way of verifying how much money was due, as I was never given any statistics regarding the views on blip.tv. However, I was able to create a screenshot cache of the majority of videos they did have on their channel before they took it down which I am including below: BLIP SCREENSHOT CACHE (15MB ZIP) Many of these videos I know were published on different contract terms than mine, so every video on that list is not necessarily a violation of Machinima.com's contract with their creators. However, I've confirmed that a few directors have told me that some other videos listed above were a violation of their contract, similar to mine. I would not be surprised at all if Machinima.com performed hundreds of violations this way, withholding money from dozens of directors. These directors still may not have been paid, I have no way of knowing. If you or someone you know were a machinima director between 2010 and 2011 and submitted content to Machinima.com, I encourage you to look through the list of videos provided in that link. If your content is in there, Machinima.com may owe you some money. If you've already been paid for these videos, you have me to thank for that. If you haven't, it's worth asking about. Honestly, this particular item strikes me as potential lawsuit material, although I have no desire to get involved with that unless I have no other choice as those are time consuming and expensive. Even for the situation with my own videos, I always viewed a lawsuit as an absolute last resort. Not because I lacked evidence, but because of all the time, work, and money involved. I'm actually not a vindictive person by nature, but when my back is against the wall, I'll of course fight for my own survival and videos. PRESENT THOUGHTS I've seen debates from people for and against Machinima.com as a business before and some misinformation spread around as well. I can not speak for how Machinima.com conducts business as a whole, since I'm not privy to that information, I can only attest to my personal experience with them; and in my experience with them over this past year, they have outright lied to me on occasion, they withheld a substantial amount of money from me, they violated my contract numerous times over a period of years, they made false claims of ownership over the rights to my videos, and they did not honor protections in my contract until after I stated I would take legal action against them if necessary. There are a few other things I'm not at liberty to discuss, but as a whole, I personally consider this all highly unethical. I don't see any way to defend those actions from an ethical perspective. In the last post I made on this topic, I said I wanted to see Machinima off as friends. After what happened since, I think that's no longer possible. I still will assert that there are a few good individual people who work at the company (one of whom has by them), but none of them made the decisions that affected me in such negative ways this past year. I really just want the company out of my life permanently and hope I never have to deal with them again. TO OTHER DIRECTORS My personal advice to anyone considering joining them is don't do it. Based on my experience with them this past year, it's hard for me to imagine any other network conducting business in a worse way than they did with me. I encourage people to send this post to anyone you see who tries to defend Machinima.com's way of business. I've seen the argument many times that creators "should have read the contract," well, my retort to that is it doesn't MATTER if you read the contract if the party who wrote it refuses to honor the terms listed in it. If you personally are having difficulty with the company, my advice to you is to seek some sort of legal aid. I feel in my case, my situation would never have been resolved satisfactorily without the legal assistance I received. I would NOT advise trying to reason with the company yourself if they are acting in a manner that seems unfair to you. It is difficult for me to imagine anything working in your favor that way. CONCLUSION? Anyway, this post wasn't especially funny, sorry about that. It's hard for me to come up with wise-ass comments when there's a possible threat of legal action against me if my jokes are a little too good. So what I've written above isn't a joke, this all happened like I described it. In all honesty, it's probably a stupid idea for me to make this post since I have no way of knowing how or if Machinima.com will react to this, but what I've said here is the truth and remaining silent about it while I see their actions continue to affect other people has been like a weight I've been carrying around inside me for a while now. It's been downright cathartic being able to type this. Again, I hope this is where it ends and is the last post I end up making on the topic. More videos without any legal drama coming soon! - - - ADHD VERSION: Machinima.com tried to claim all of Ross's videos based on a contract he never signed. They also lost his signed contract. They also withheld money from him, over a period of years. Machinima has withheld money from other directors, and maybe still is withholding. Machinima breached and did not honor parts of their contract with Ross. Ross was on NPR. Machinima.com is not Ross's favorite company in the world. LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS