What did "The Nostalgia Critic" think of MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME?

We asked "The Nostalgia Critic" his thoughts on MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME... his response is... interesting... 

Awesome new Teleport VFX from MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME

Check it out, created by Alan Chamberlain, these are the new teleport VFX we're using from now on. We think they're pretty damn cool. It's designed to look like various pixels coming together and reconstructing a human.

You can see the full series we use it in here.

Martell TV: A New Home For Online Video?

This Martell TV thing looks pretty interesting. Creating your own station, like TV networks have done for years sounds cool. It also seems a lot more social media friendly in general. The ability to have that "scheduled release" and run times thing looks nice. Also the ability to schedule ads as part of your own show and change it up however you want sounds pretty good. We've seen how certain YouTube creators have had placed ads for things like Netflix or whatnot, but they only get a certain amount of money from it and then it's stuck on their video forever. I like the idea of being able to do those paid ads but not have them stuck in there forever.

Below is a list of stuff that Martell TV can do that YouTube can't, or any other major uploading side like Blip/Vimeo e.t.c. As can be seen, it's actually not an uploading site you just embed your video form other sites, so you really have nothing to lose as YouTubers old videos will remain in place on YouTube and will continue to upload to YouTube, just also get added to this more "scheduled release" style.

The interesting thing is that the image on their site shows a mock-up picture of their application running on a Samsung tablet, so this tells me two things. First of all that the people behind this know exactly what they're getting into, an audience that will be watching the majority of their content on hand held devices like tablets, smartphones and so on, and I'm guessing because of those pre-installed ads that you can place, is kinda banking on it a little. In another albeit long shot, maybe they have a deal with Samsung, otherwise, why are they using their logo?

Anyway, feel free to drop a line in the comments below and check out the their full presentation and website at this link here:

http://www.strikingly.com/martelltv

MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME - EPISODE TWO: DUTY CALLS

EPISODE TWO: DUTY CALLS

MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME premieres it's second episode and it's sure to be a blast.

Don is finds himself a war-torn world surrounded on one side by a mysterious but beautiful woman and the hulking super soldier "The Sarge" and on the other Nazi's, Communists and Terrorists in the most awkward of alliances out to kill him. Time to First Person Shoot and questions later!

NEXT EPISODE AIRS TUESDAY NOVEMBER 20th! 

Subscribe to see it first!

Watch Don fight his way through real life video games, First Person Shooters, Arcade Beat 'Em Ups, Space Combat Simulators and more, only on Leon Unity.

Watch/Subscribe to us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/LeonUnity
Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/mylifeasavideogame
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MyLifeasaVG
Shoot us an email: info@leonfilms.net

DIRECTED BY

Brian Dickson

WRITTEN BY

Petros L. Ioannou

STARRING...

Petros L. Ioannou as Don DeWitt

Jennifer Polansky as Kera Althorn

Brent Black as The Menu System

GUEST STARRING

James Ramon-Baker as Greg Nathanson

Sabrina Jean-Hughes as Don's Ex "Jenny".

Created by Petros L. Ioannou

Produced by Leon Films, Ltd

MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME - EPISODE ONE

EPISODE ONE: LOADING...

MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME gets off to with a bang.. literally, there are explosions within 5 seconds.

What if your life was a Video Game? Don DeWitt is what you'd call a "hardcore" gamer. So much so that it's been to the detriment of everything in his life from work to romance. One day however he gets more than he bargained for when he is pulled into an alternate reality where video games are real life and realises that things are a lot tougher when your life is a Video Game.

WATCH EPISODE TWO NOW

Watch Don fight his way through real life video games, First Person Shooters, Arcade Beat 'Em Ups, Space Combat Simulators and more, only on Leon Unity.



CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE

Find us on Facebook: Facebook Page - My Life as a Video Game.
Follow us on Twitter: @MyLifeasaVG

Check us out on Instagram: @mylifeasavideogame

We also have a Tumblr: mylifeasavg

Shoot us an email: info@leonfilms.net

CHECK OUT THE GAMER BAR FROM THIS EPISODE: "LOADING" (Yes, it's real).
www.drinkrelaxplay.com
Great bar, now located on Rupert St in Soho, London.

STARRING

Petros L. Ioannou as Don DeWitt

Jennifer Polansky as Kera Althorn

Brent Black as The Menu System

GUEST STARRING

James Ramon-Baker as Greg Nathanson

Sabrina Jean-Hughes as Don's Ex "Jenny".

Written & Created by Petros L. Ioannou

Produced by Leon Films, Ltd

Five Reasons Why Online Video is Better than Regular TV

The title is pretty self-explanatory; online video is taking over, live regular TV is diminishing in ratings. With that in mind, here are five reasons why online video is better than regular television and why it's taking over.

1. Available to Watch; Anytime, Anywhere.

Regular television had this problem, it can only be watched at a specific time and then it's gone until it came out on video. There have been efforts to counteract this over the years, replays, VHS recording, TiVo, Sky+, DVRs, etc. But it still forced the viewer into restrictions set by the TV Network. With the advent of online video things were up and available to watch whenever you felt like it, and for the most part weren't going anywhere, thanks to the ad revenue system, people could be earning money any time and views can watch content any time.

2. No Wasted Hours of Programming

With so many people working all day, everyday, only "Primetime" shows were watched, three or so hours after 7pm for TV Networks to air their stuff when people could watch it. That left roughly seven eighths of the day almost completely wasted airtime, leading to some people being forced to miss their second favourite show when it clashed with their favourite. Now, they're online all the time, so they can be aired any time they want, as well as the fact that if something goes up in the middle if the day, it's always going to be viewable later when people get home from work to relax.

3. Content in the Hands of Creators

YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo e.t.c. all have the ability to upload videos with no oversight committee of assholes, who wouldn't know their head from their bell-end, saying "I want you to change this". Now people can put their content online with only their view count to determine if someone likes their content. It means talented people who have great, unconventional ideas that TV Network execs, who are completely out of touch with the viewing audience, would shoot down before they even reach the pitching phase. Combined with crowd funding sites like Kickstarter, bigger, better projects can be made with the help of a community. In the case of a web-series, their fate for another season lays in the hands of their fans and their fans alone.

4. User Interaction

Despite the fact that in YouTube comment boxes you can find the lowest forms of human scum and obnoxious drivel. Comment boxes provide a way for fans and creators to interact with each other on a level that simply wasn't available with regular television. Audiences can now talk about their favourite shows with each other and the creators can read and what they're talking about. Regular television simply can't do this without something like a forum or dedicated manner. It's the power of social media at its finest, people interacting online with each other.

5. Competition Becomes Collaboration

Maybe I'm being a bit of an optimist on this one but when there's no need for competition between shows as there is no longer a time slot system, what was once competition for ratings between shows now becomes collaboration between them. They help each other out, collaborate on various things and work together for their mutual benefit. Just look at this video here: REWIND YOUTUBE STYLE VIDEO. It's nothing but collaboration based on an Internet meme song by Korean Pop Star. Everyone benefits from it, just like when crossovers happen online, they only serve to bolster each others view count and rating. A system that was once about crushing the opposition and stealing their views, now has become system of mutual help and benefit to each other, a "scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" system.

So those are my five reasons why online media is eclipsing traditional television. Take it or leave it, I hope one day I can look back on this and be proven right, but only time will tell.

My Life as a Video Game - A Kickstarter for a New Webseries

My Life as a Video Game

A Brand New Action-Comedy Webseries

KICKSTARTER LINK HERE

Creator PETROS L. IOANNOU (Final Fantasy: Zero, Union Square: A Love Story) and co-star BRENT "BRENTALFLOSS" BLACK (What If Video Games... Had Lyrics?, Nostalgia Critic: Moulin Rogue Review) present to you a brand new and exciting series for the web that celebrates gamer culture, pokes fun at the tropes and explores our love for the interactive arts and why we play them.

     SYNOPSIS

Don DeWitt (Petros L. Ioannou) is man with extraordinary potential but zero determination. If you looked up slacker on Wikipedia; there'd be a picture of him. He's always been fine getting by, just by the skin of his teeth. Don's only real love ever has been playing video games.

One day he is pulled into amazing circumstance, he is now in an alternate reality where the rules of Video Games are the rules of the world. He is in a fight for his very survival as he must manipulate the rules of the games he understands better than anyone to survive in this new crazy world

Here he meets Kera Althorn (Jennifer Polansky), fallen Princess of a Space Empire who you might say got fed up of "being in another castle" and took it upon herself to take back her father's Empire. Along with her trusted A.I. sidekick the "MENU System" (Brent Black) a cocky floating head on a computer screen, Don joins Kera in the fight hoping that she might help him get back to Earth.

Together, as they leap from Beat 'Em Ups to First Person Shooters, RPGs and Survival Horror, they begin to raise an army of the heroes of the various video game worlds against the usurper of Kera's Empire, General Atticus Dynas who seeks to unite the villains on his side. It's now that Don must use that potential he's always had and become the hero he was always meant to be, if he ever wants to find a way home.

     WHERE DOES YOUR MONEY GO? 

The various perks can be seen on the right but the reason we need this...

It ain't cheap to make a show. We've gone indie because we want creative control, we don't want interference from a studio and we love the web. We want to create something that is free for people to watch, whenever, wherever they feel like it. More than that, we want a community, an audience who is invested in it as much as we are.

The money contributed will go to paying for professional actors, the equipment, the crew, the effects, and the location rental costs, all of which, amounts to quite a bit. However it's all necessary in order to raise the funds to create this monumental show that we think can really blow web-created content wide open and make this one of the most fun and entertaining shows on the web to watch.

     WHO ARE WE?

We have a very talented cast and crew, professionals from all walks of life, those who have worked with the best and frankly, are the best.

     Cast 

PETROS L. IOANNOU - Petros is a writer/actor from London who graduated from the New York Film Academy with a Masters in Screenwriting. He is perhaps most famous for the creation of "Final Fantasy: Zero" a fan made RPG production and the short film "Union Square: A Love Story". Petros wanted to create his own show specifically for the web and as such created this show.

BRENT BLACK - Brent is a comedic entertainer best known on YouTube as "brentalfloss" for his "What if Video Games had Lyrics" series that has generated over 150,000 subscribers. He also appeared in the Nostalgia Critic's "Moulin Rouge" review and has possibly one of the best comedic timings known to man.

JENNIFER POLANSKY - Jennifer is an actress from Canada, Jennifer has been in numerous film, TV and web productions. Including 2012: The Web Series, and I Hate Toronto: A Love Story.

     Crew 

NICK M. HOMLES - SERIES DIRECTOR - Son of double Tony Award winner, Rupert Holmes, Nick is a very talented director with a wealth of knowledge and experience under his belt beyond his young age. He's recently finished work on the short film "A Manhattan of My Own" and a teaser for feature film "Reject Road". His short film Marco Polo is set for release in Q1 2013. 

KEVIN PENKIN - MUSIC COMPOSER - Kevin is one of the biggest rising stars in video-game music composition having just recently collaborated with famed 'Final Fantasy' series composer Nobuo Uematsu, writing music for the Japanese PSP title "Jyuzaengi Engetsu Sangoku Den", which saw release on the 24th May 2012. He soon set to work on the music for upcoming game "Norn9" once again with Uematsu.

     STRETCH GOALS 

• $30,000 - The Standard, if we raise this money we make the first ten episodes of the show which will comprise season one. This is the standard goal we're aiming for.

• $50,000 - Extended Cut, if we manage to get this together we can make the episodes longer and add an additional five making a fifteen episode season. We'll also be able to hire more cast and crew to make the shoots easier, quicker and get the final product to you sooner. In addition we'll be throwing a huge launch party in Los Angeles for all who contributed to attend and meet the cast and crew. In addition, every person who donated will receive a digital copy of brentalfloss' first album "What if this CD... had Lyrics?"

• $70,000 - Super Season, if we get this this goal, we will produce a huge amount of TWENTY-TWO EPISODES for this season and still have some money extra to pay even more cast and crew to get this production done to the absolute best quality possible. This includes a HUGE season finale set in a Fantasy RPG world where the heroes must battle against an ancient dark dragon that threatens to destroy the world.

• $100,000 - THE ULTIMATE SEASON, if we reach this incredible goal we will produce perhaps the most astounding web series ever made. TWENTY-SIX EPISODE SEASON, extended cuts on all episodes with some damn fine special effects and maybe even a few very high profile names too and bonus "Space Battle" episode. In addition to that we'll be throwing launch parties in Los Angeles, New York and London for anyone who has contributed to attend for free! 

    WHY MAKE THE SHOW?

I’ve always been fascinated with video games. Not just for their entertainment value, but as an art form. It’s often been questioned if they even are one. Do they offer something to us that is more than just pure entertainment? After all, something may be entertaining but for it to be art, it has to give something more to the audience, something to add to their lives, to discuss and perhaps change their outlook on certain things. To many of us ‘gamers’, video games, or ‘the interactive arts’, have done just that, much in the same way the theatre, novels, television and film had done for previous generations. In many ways with this series, I hope we can explore this question and celebrate it. Celebrate gamer culture from Platformers to RPGs, Beat 'Em Ups to First Person Shooters and the whole spectrum of gaming. This comedic take of a man who plays way too many video games and one day finds himself trapped in a universe where the games he played are now reality, will be created for the web, a culture almost synonymous with gamers and geekdom. It is the perfect home for an exploration and celebration of the art form we call video games and one I hope you will all share with me and enjoy. 

- Petros L. Ioannou (Creator)  

       OTHER WAYS YOU CAN HELP 

Even if you can't contribute to the effort, though anything will do, please just spread the word about this project. We want to get this thing off the ground and really get it rolling and we need your help to do it. We need a community.

Nostalgic about The Critic

It's only been a few days now since the last episode of "To Boldy Flee" the fourth year anniversary special and just as a warning there are going to be a few spoilers for that here. Anyway, as most of you know by now, at the end of this mini-series Doug Walker, creator of and actor who plays The Nostalgia Critic, decided to kill off his creation. It was a sad ending to what was easily their best anniversary special. Now I've talked in length about my history with online video, so I won't go into that again but suffice to say there's a lot I had to say on the subject. Doug Walker's Nostalgia Critic has been a big part of my life the last three or so years, after learning about him through the Angry Video Game Nerd, I grew fond of him. I laughed, I cried, I pressed a few seconds back on the video just to watch favorite moments like the famous 'bat credit card' moment over and over and over and over again. But sadly as phrase that named the Star Trek finale that he based his final episode on; all good things must come to an end.

With the end of the Nostalgia Critic, but not the end of TGWTG or anyone on that site by any means, and Doug Walker moving onto bigger and hopefully better things on the site with a new show and a new studio to create them in; I've decided to pay a little tribute to a Doug's character and what he represented for me as I get nostalgic about the nostalgia critic.

Unlike a lot of people, though I believe a few people saw it coming, I already knew how To Boldy Flee was going to end, I knew Doug was going to "kill off" the Nostalgia Critic and end the series. I was informed by a mutual friend we have and felt a little saddened but also like it was time. I used to be back every Wednesday and watch the latest episode. But around about a year ago just after Suburban Knights I felt things were starting to get a little stale. I'd questioned how long Walker could keep up doing this show if let's face it, there's only a certain amount of shitty movies from the 80s and 90s. When he did Digimon, I knew the end was coming and our mutual friend confirmed it to me a few days later.

I've really enjoyed watching the show for the past four years and I think it's safe to say that without The Nostalgia Critic I probably wouldn't be well on my way to producing my own webseries. In fact the original concept for this series was about an internet critic whose life turns into a video game he has to review. Doug, along with James Rolfe, the Angry Video Game Nerd, pretty much created the concept of a comedic online video critic. So much so in fact that the two started a "rivalry" and "feud" when fans saw that both parties were similar but no-one else was doing much of that. Eventually it grew; Linkara doing comic books, The Angry Joe Show and The Spoony Experiment doing video game reviews, The Nostalgia Chick, originally just a female counterpart to Doug's Critic, since has grown into becoming her own thing with her own style separate from Doug's initial one. I've met people from his website, even knew someone, whom I went to film school with for a year, who joined their website. My current development of my webseries that I've been hinting at an alluding to on twitter over the last few weeks, was inspired by my love of web videos that really started with the Nostalgia Critic and culminated in my experiences at Vid Con 2012. 

Overall I just want to say thanks to Doug Walker, I can't wait to see what he does in the future and I hope that he creates something bigger and better than The Nostalgia Critic, something that he can say goes beyond what he's done before. So if you read this Doug Walker; thank you - you've changed and influenced my life. Good luck with everything in the future.