In Defence of Kickstarter

There has been this misconception in the media that Kickstarter has become a haven for con artists, or worse rich people who have the money and contacts to do something about it but choose not to and would rather get money for free. Specifically the later since the Veronica Mars movie got funded and Zach Braff's second directorial feature "Wish I Was Here" also reached its goal. A lot of people have been saying that Kickstarter should be only for the desperate, those who can't rally the funds together to get their project made but that once you are making money, forget about it. Well, speaking as one of those desperate people who used Kickstarter to raise $30,000 for my web series MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME, I can safely say, that the people who say that... Really don't get that Kickstarter is about something more than that. Perhaps more important, it's certainly not a con.

Lets go back a few years, for starters to look at Anita Sarkeesians project "Women vs Tropes in Video Games", many people called her out as being a con artist because she raised over $150,000 for her project, a project that could have been done on a lot less... Like say, the $6000 she  asked for. People often forget that fact when criticising her and her campaign. She never asked for all the money that was contributed, she in fact only asked for a small sum, but people saw the merit in her argument, and the points she wanted to make. I also saw much of the merit, even if I do disagree with many of her points in her final product; her overall argument is a very valid one that even if I didn't agree with it, I would respect. People contributed money to her campaign because they believed in her cause. She not once turned around and said "Hey... Umm I actually need bazillion dollars for a million foot high green screen." She was very gracious as anyone should be for the funding she received. But more than giving her money, it gave her a following and community, good and bad... More on that in a bit.

Fast forward to more recent history and other campaigns. VGHS: Video Game High School raised over $270,000 for its first season. But like many projects even though they only asked for $75,000 they received a whole lot more. But also like many projects,  they either went over budget or Kickstarter was just the beginning of their funds. A way to Lo and behold; Kickstart their project into existence. The eventual budget for season one was $636,010, over double the Kickstarter investment. They invested a lot of their own money for sure, they had sponsorship deals etc. Now I've not looked into this too much, but I'm sure if you asked the team at Rocket Jump, what people had said, I'm sure you'd get trolls saying things like "Why did you go so over budget..." Or "What could you possibly have spent so much money on?" Or even "Bullshit! You're just saying that for tax/bragging/because you took a lot of the money for yourself/insert some other shite reason here". How do I know these questions? Because even I have gotten them. My Life as a Video Game raised $32,314 in total. Not even 1/8 what VGHS season one raised (let alone their record breaking season two campaign). And I STILL had detractors. 

But here's the kicker, I know what it's like for the Rocket Jump team because my own project wasn't entirely funded by Kickstarter either. I have invested to date a lot of money and I estimate I'll put in a lot more by the time the first season of this project is complete. This is money I have borrowed, or had to sell my car to get. While I am immensely grateful for the Kickstarter money it didn't cover all of it. And that's what a lot of people have failed to realise is that Kickstarter even when you reach your goal, is often just the beginning, even with money you will likely have to invest yourself too, there is the stress, the egos, the rage and the overall hell that comes with making a huge project like VGHS or My Life as a Video Game. The same knowledge can be said for even bigger Kickstarter projects like Veronica Mars or Zach Braff's Wish I Was Here, both of which will undoubtably require additional funding and heartache, blood, sweat and tears to be made.

Then there are those such as Ken Levine, who said in his own blog, that people will contribute their money to projects like Braff's or Veronica Mars instead of projects like mine. That's simply not true, for starters Kickstarter projects had more funding during the time Braff had his up than ever before. And no where is it mutually exclusive that you must contribute to one and not contribute to another. Now Levine, though a talented writer that he is and I'll always give props to one of my own, has clearly no clue what he's talking about on this subject. Yes, Hollywood will always try and take advantage of things, but that's the problem isn't it? That's why Kickstarter funds projects like my own, because when people do get involved when money-men get too involved in projects they want their say, studios want things done their way. Instead people like Braff and myself have gone on the record that we want this to be a community project, funded by a community that a community can follow and bring other people into the community. It doesn't defeat the purpose of Kickstarter and it never has, Levine has clearly never done a Kickstarter, so he has clearly no idea what goes into one. He says "support a Veronica Mars movie by buying ten tickets to it". Well without Kickstarter, without fans saying they want want and proving it so by helping make it possible there would be no movie to buy tickets for. And it's not like fans are conned out their money here, they offer it, and they've done it in the past long before Kickstarter was even around. Fans tried to bring back Star Trek: Enterprise for a fifth season raising over $1 million back in 2005 long before Kickstarter existed and a mere few months after YouTube was founded. For Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas came up with the idea because Warner Bros turned it down, but agreed to license it and give them money should they reach their goal and prove it's a viable movie. If anything projects like Veronica Mars and Zach Braff's Wish I Was Here, bring attention to Kickstarter and to other projects like mine. I won't deny there are dangers but the reaction is honestly actually a little insulting to me. Let people use their money in whatever way they see fit. Not to mention this isn't a charity drive, people are getting their returns, as I write this I'm in the process of sending out personal thank you songs, t-shirts and posters to my own backers.

And in spite of this, I'd go as far as to say Kickstarter is about far more than just money. Money can be gained from investors, from studios, billionaires who are drunk. But people like Zach Braff, Freddie Wong, Anita Sarkeesian and myself, went to Kickstarter for more than just money. This is about creating a community, getting people invested (quite literally in some cases) in your project. It also proves that people believe in you. People get back things from Kickstarter in the form of rewards, and they are helping people realise a dream. Together they become a community, they get updated on the project, they get told more and more about it and become invested in seeing things get made. I have backed a number of projects myself, including Braff's, VGHS Season 2 and ScrewAttack Gaming Convention's return. I am a part of those communities now. Kickstarter brings people together as a part of a project. I had very few fans and/or subscribers when My Life as a Video Game was launched on Kickstarter, when Brent told everyone about it, his fanbase came to the Kickstarter and it grew, more and more people joined the Facebook page. Over 4,000 of them are now on the Facebook page. Of whom only a small percentage are Brent's fans. This is thanks to Kickstarter a lot, because even though our fans came from one place they became our fans, they became our supporters and many more joined us.

Kickstarter is near and dear to my heart because without Kickstarter I'd have no community, no project and probably nothing that good going for me in my professional life. Because My Life as a Video Game and Leon Films, my company that produced it, are my full time job now and wouldn't exist without Kickstarter, without the community and the help they've provided financial being only part of it. I've had people who were fans, who came to help on set when we were desperate. We've had people send us encouraging messages which really have pushed me up when I felt down and like the weight of this project was going to crush me.

So to all who contributed and continue to, thank you. I believe in Kickstarter and I believe in those who help us create awesome shit in doing so, in spite of those who would hurl insult and berate. Kickstarter has helped hundreds of people, I'm just one of them. May they continue to help many more.

Why John Hurt Is Isn't The 9th Doctor

So, SPOILER ALERT, John Hurt will be appearing in Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary after the ending of The Name of The Doctor aired last week. He will he be playing "The Doctor" apparently and the main question everyone is asking is; which Doctor? Is it a past or future one. The main theory running around is that he's a Doctor between Paul McGann's Eighth and Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctors. The problem a lot of people have with this is that it supposedly bumps Eccleston to Ten and, Tennant to Eleven and Smith to Twelve. Well, I'll tell you why that's not the case and why John Hurt is not even playing The Doctor in the first place.

Now obviously this is just speculation on my part but I think it's pretty sound and I'm actually a little surprised that people haven't spotted this yet because it's right there in plain sight in the dialogue of Hurt's introductory scene from The Name of The Doctor. He is the same man as The Doctor, the man whose name we don't know and probably never will, specifically because to The Doctor that's not his name, his name is the one he chose, as "A Promise" that he made to himself. He is The Doctor. But John Hurt's character is the one who broke that Promise. "I said he was me, I never said he was The Doctor". John Hurt's character may have been introduced as "The Doctor" but that was just to add suspense, intrigue and above all else, simplicity. When you break the promise you have set for yourself, like say for example committing the mass genocide of your own people and another equally as advanced but deadly race, destroying your home planet and locking the Time War so that it can never be reversed or prevented, a move that while breaking the promise of the man who helps people, was necessary  and done in the name of "peace and sanity" but "not in the name of The Doctor".

As you can see, this might be the same man from Gallifrey who flies around in a TARDIS with the camouflage being a Blue Police Box, he is the same being who has done all the amazing things we've seen, all the amazing things we haven't, and all the amazing things he's yet to do... but he is not The Doctor. He broke the promise and as such foresaked the name. Every time they have shown images of the previous Doctors, or shown images of them he is not there. He is not there because he is not The Doctor, the Eleven Doctors until now do not count him as such and likely, he does not count himself as one of The Doctors. He regenerated into The Doctor and from The Doctor but he was not The Doctor. As such when you say who The Doctor is, he is not counted among them. What he did, likely the events that ended the Time War and probably more things during the war to fight the Daleks, are not the actions of the man who would be The Doctor, they're the actions of a man who would break the promise to help people and would instead become a warrior, a soldier, even a villain. 

He is the part of same being we call The Doctor who would hate himself forever, always be the guilt that he carried from Eccleston's Ninth onwards, that might manifest itself as The Valeyard, The Dream Lord and other darker entities that will irrevocably change The Doctor forever. In fact, the show since it's 2005 relauch has had a darker and more sinister tone since the end of the Time War, since the events that Hurt's character likely created. The sinister actions that now weigh heavy on The Doctor, a man who twice chose not to annihilate entire races. "A Coward Every Time" he called himself in The Parting of Ways, because The Doctor would never commit an act. This is why John Hurt's character, is not The Doctor, he may be the same entity, but he is not a man who takes the name, he broke the promise.

What I Would Have Changed: New Super Mario Bros. U

It's no secret that right now the Wii U is struggling in sales, and while I don't believe that to be the case forever, I do think that it's certainly got a bit of an uphill battle compared to it's easy-to-understand predecessor. One of the main reasons for this is that the Wii U has yet to really demonstrate what it's potential is. Sure we've got Nintendoland, that while a fun game, serves little to show how a full-fleshed out game might be on this new console and more like a demo of neat tricks. There's ZombiU, an admittedly excellent game that brings the survival horror genre to new heights by being one of the most intense horror experiences since the original Resident Evil, but sadly that game hasn't really got mass appeal in the same way Mario does. Now let's look at Mario for a second, he has made his appearance on the Wii U in the form of New Super Mario Bros. U - A game that is the best 2D Platformer since Super Mario World for the SNES. However, could it have been even better, could it have surpassed World, or even my personal favourite Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES? It wasn't helped that a handheld New Super Mario Bros. game came out precisely three months earlier for the Nintendo 3DS, a game that really until the cool new DLC packs came out was very lackluster compared to both it's Wii and Wii U cousins. Now while I don't think any massive improvements to NSMB. U are going to skyrocket the sales of the Wii U, I do think that in my Hindsight of 20:20, there are certain things I would have changed to at best, make the game a system seller.

WHAT I WOULD HAVE CHANGED"NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. U"

Rules:

As per usual with these blogs, here are the rules:

• I can only change things about New Super Mario Bros. U, I can't say "Don't release New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS, as that's unrelated to changing NSMB.U itself.
• The Game has to be recognizable as a NSMB game. I can't simply say "Make it 3D" which would change it completely

THE CHANGES

First and foremost in any game is the gameplay. 2D Mario gameplay is also great, so why mess with the formula...? Well, I'm not going to. The Gameplay in the game is pretty solid, but the problem with it is just that... It's the same. It's the same as NSMB. NSMB.Wii and NSMB.2 - it offers absolutely nothing new. If you were to show me the front covers and Standard Def stills of NSMB. Wii and NSMB. U; without any of the power-ups of specifically defining characteristics of either game. I wouldn't be able to tell you which was which. Except for Wii is a red game case, and U is a blue one. So how am I changing the gameplay without changing the gameplay? Well, I'm not changing the core of the gameplay, I'm adding to it. How to do this? New Characters!

Characters

Perhaps it's just me and my friends but if you get stuck as Toad or worse, Toad-Clone, you're the butt-monkey of the group. Really? Does anyone actually like Toad... well some people do I guess... but in the entirety of nearly thirty years of Mario games are there not a few more characters you can play as. And to make matters worse, all the characters play exactly the same. Now Nintendo's rationale behind this is so that everyone gets the same experience... Well what you call "same experience" I call "dull and lazy". Why shouldn't Luigi get to jump higher like in Super Mario Bros. 2, for that matter, why isn't Princess Peach a character, make her able to glide. The ability to choose your character will get people to stop being Mario and play around a little, make the game a varied experience, as there were no power-ups in Mario 2, maybe now is the time to experiment with them a little, what if Luigi can jump EVEN higher with the Flying Squirrel power-up, or Peach's descent is longer than the rest now. What if Toad can fire up to three fireball/iceballs at once? Why stop at the Mario 2 characters, why not bring Wario into the mix with his unique dash ability only he has from the Wario Land games. What kind of unique power-up enhancements might he receive?

Power Ups

On the matter of Power-Ups, is it just me or are Nintendo running out of new ideas... Ice Mario, that's nice in a 2D game but isn't that great and we've seen it a few times now, a Flying Squirrell? Really? Well, if there are no new ideas, what about old ones. We've got the item menu right? Let's put it to good use like Mario 3. Where's my P-Wing, the Hammer Bros Suit, Frog Suit, all those rare interesting power-ups that made the game so much fun. I mean let's face it, wouldn't you want to see a badass Princess Peach hurling hammers at Goombas?

World Map

Onto the world map. It was a nice change to return to the continuous world map of Mario World's style... however I think it can be made better. There's a few times you can go different routes, but what if there were multiple routes through many levels that took you to different routes on the world map like in Mario World itself, routes that allowed you to access special levels and maybe find warp zones. It played with this idea a little but I'd really like to see it some more. Why stop at eight worlds, defy the norm create, ten, or twelve. In the handheld Mario Games it seems like many of the worlds are skippable easily and you only do half, the same in this game, you seem to choose the path of the worlds you want to do, so why not add more worlds to choose from, give us secret worlds like Star Road, the more content that ships with the game the more it'll feel like this is a brand new game and not yet another NSMB game.

Technology - Level Editor

Last but by no means least, we've just been given this brand new piece of tech in the Wii U GamePad and all you can think of is Off-TV play and creating blocks for people to jump on? Surely there should be more uses of the GamePad than that. What about a level-creator, how many times have you wanted to create your own Super Mario Bros. level but the technology of a normal controller was just all kinds of awkward for designing stuff, but with the GamePad, it becomes nice and smooth, like doing it on a PC or a Tablet. For that matter, this is the first Nintendo Console with solid online gameplay. While it's awesome to play this game in the same room as people, they needed to get consoles out the door, and no way is there better than "Hey, play this round mine... did you know we don't have to socially interact to play this awesome game!? Fuck yeah! Online Play!" Combine this with level-creation and Miiverse and you've got a vibrant community that would shit all over Little Big Planet and make NSMB.U, THE hot product to buy and play for the next generation. It would actually become a system seller. There's still time for a Level Editor, make a DLC to download and watch the money roll in... or dare it say it... watch it... Print in?

This is certainly something we're not likely to see any time soon...

So there you have it, the Mario series in general has always been pretty simplistic and I would never want to deviate from that, just to bring something new and interesting to it. This is not to say that the current game isn't great, it's a whole lot of fun and has a decent difficulty level, especially in the challenges that'll really put you to the test. But for now, this these are the changes I would have made to New Super Mario Bros. U

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.

Fargo: A Screenplay Analysis

Fargo

Screenplay Analysis by: Petros L. Ioannou  

Fargo is a 1995 film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen; colloquially known as “The Coen Brothers”. Right off the bat I’m going to say something many might consider controversial, even blasphemous; I am not a fan of the Coen Brothers. I think they’re really, really overrated but that Fargo and The Big Lebowski are excellent films. In this case I’m going to be saying what I really love about Fargo and why I think it’s such an excellent screenplay by two writer-directors who generally speaking I really dislike. I was not fan of Burn After Reading, I think No Country for Old Men and True Grit are highly overrated and The Ladykillers is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen to the point that in the cinema I actually walked out, which I didn’t even do during The Last Airbender, a film I consider to be an insult to writers, directors, actors, cinema as an art form, the viewing public, God and the universe. So despite my dislike of the Coen Brothers as writer-directors, I love two of their films, my favourite of which, is Fargo. 

The story is a zany and bizarre one. It’s about a man named Jerry.  Jerry is a desperate but greedy bastard who wants money and will do anything to get his hands on it, even something this despicable. He hires two criminals to kidnap his own wife so that they can con reward money for her rescue but then things go wrong and the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan and splatters all over Jerry’s not so proverbial plans and the humour for the audience kicks in. For all the rage-hate I have for the Coen’s this is their trademark, taking something to almost slapstick extremes with such a dark overtone you’re sometimes laughing out of sheer horror. The same kind of humour that would go on to influence films like The Hangover. I think this and Lebowski are the only two films they execute it successfully in and Fargo does it brilliantly.  

Looking at the language in the film it’s very interesting. Most films will write in Standard English or Received Pronunciation to make it clear and then the director and/or actors will make the role their own. There will occasionally be a slang term thrown in here and there to show off the characters personalities but this film has dialect running all the way through the film’s characters. Clearly the Coens thought about this meticulously when they wrote and it shows in the impressive language of the screenplay as nearly every character seems to have not just a unique dialect but a unique speech pattern and voice of their own that leaps off the page. I find this very impressive as it’s something that’s very hard to do. 

The characters aren’t the only great thing about the script; the plot is excruciatingly detailed, painstakingly plotted and very, very, twisted, both in the literal sense and the moral sense of the word. Fargo simply put is an excellent screenplay and by far the best of the Coen brothers rather average resume in my personal opinion, which is also another reason it stands out. It’s a masterpiece of a script that captures atmosphere, character in plot in the script without getting confusing, something that for most writers is bordering on the edge of impossibility. 

A Clockwork Orange: A Screenplay Analysis

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Screenplay Analysis by: 

Petros L. Ioannou

A Clockwork Orange is a film written and directed by one of the greatest geniuses in cinema history, Stanley Kubrick. It is based on the novel by Anthony Burgess. It is simply put a story about an insane man, forced to be sane. It is the sort of film that really makes you question, life, existence, freewill, choice and pretty much everything about the human condition, like every episode of Star Trek thrown into one incredible masterpiece of a movie pulled right out of the nightmarish mind of Kubrick, yet not his own original creation but certainly with his added flair in the screenplay. You can almost feel his intensity coming off the page as you read it. That’s part of what makes this such a great screenplay, despite having seen the film myself and been very disturbed by it at age sixteen, I can honestly say that even if I hadn’t seen it I’d almost be able to hear the musical beats and see Malcolm MacDowell’s performance leaping off the page at me. It’s one of those screenplay’s that so well written, the film could have made itself. That’s not to knock Kubrick as a director though, we’ve all seen what happens when his ideas are done by another director, even a great one like Spielberg, it just never quite lives up to the Kubrickian style and creates this awkward middle ground. Thus it’s probably a very good job that Kubrick himself directed the film.

First of all the language in this film is almost Shakespearean, it’s strange and exceptionally fun. I’ve actually noticed upon reading it that many of the lines are written in Shakespeare’s trademark rhythmic style of iambic pentameter, not all the lines but a good few of them are. It adds to the bizarre eclectic majesty of the script’s atmosphere and setting. The dystopian world that exists is anti-Orwellian in nature, yet embodies too, much of that style. Look at our protagonist, Alex DeLarge, the style of language and setting we can see how strangely matching this all seems to him. He is the most depraved man on the planet. He is insane, he is a rapist, a murderer, a drug abuser and yet a man who listens to Beethoven, calling him “Ludwig Van” like he were a 20th century rapper and speaks in his voice over in this Shakespearean language; “O Bliss, bliss and heaven, oh it was gorgeousness and georgeosity made flesh.” You wouldn’t find this sort of language in anything else and it makes his character so very fascinating as though the world that he creates through his acts of “ultra-violence” is pulsing out of him. In this context no-one seems to speak like a normal person in this whole script. And I don’t just mean that half the people here speak in cockney or in an exaggerated received dialect, but in some bizarre crossbreed of both. Just a footnote is that the word ‘georgeosity’ is not an actually a word in the English language but an invented word that makes sense to those who speak English, much like Shakespeare often did.

The plot is strange to say the least, but it all stems from Alex, his disturbed psyche and his ultra-violent nature.  Alex DeLarge is the leader of gang teenage delinquent thugs called “droogs”. They spend their free time breaking into people’s houses and raping women or as the first scene in the movie shows, beating a homeless man to death in the street. Despite being a charming young man from a well-off family and very much able to get laid as is shown when he meets two girls in a record store and proceeds to take them home and have a consensual three-way with them, he is at his core a violent, aggressive, obnoxious person, who only commits the crimes for the sheer thrill of it all. He’s not sexually repressed, he’s not in need of money, he just loves the thrill of tormenting others. He is the most mentally depraved man imaginable. One day his antics get him caught and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Worthy of note is that he only gets fourteen years showing the decline of society to the point where murder only gets fourteen years, that’s not taking into account the knowledge of all the other crimes he’s committed in the past.

In prison Alex is beaten and likely raped by the other inmates and as such two years into his sentence he is taken as a volunteer for a therapy that could make him “normal”. The smile on his face as he agrees to transferred to the Ludvico Medical Facility doesn't indicate happiness at escaping prison and being normal, it indicates happiness being able to escape and cause havoc again. However after two weeks he is “cured” and shown to be mentally unable to fight back against someone who would insult him and physically attack him and worse still he becomes disgusted at the very sight of female nudity. This begins the real story; a man who is so depraved yet has his choice to be depraved removed only to find out that the real world hates him so much that they use him as an outlet for their own rage and psychosis. His free will has been removed and thus society is free to destroy him. To quote the prison minister;  “Choice?! The boy has no real choice, has he? Self interest, fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to also be a creature capable of moral choice....” There’s a grand irony in the technique used to “cure” Alex. He’s cured by exacting physical violence upon him, it’s not turning the other cheek, it’s using fire to fight fire, which if history has taught us anything only leads to the house getting burnt down.

Throughout the story, Alex is beaten by people as they exact their own rage and punishment upon him and he is unable to fight back. Even the journalist, who wanted to help him and saw what society in its attempt to “cure” people by controlling them as disgusting turns against him when he finds out it was Alex who raped his wife and crippled him. Eventually Alex is ironically “cured” of his “cure” when he is actually finally accepted by society.

A Clockwork Orange is an excellent film, brilliantly written and later to be even more brilliantly executed.

Why VGHS Season 2 is very important to the future of Television

Video Game High School, a webseries produced by the Rocket Jump team, Freddie Wong, Brandon Laastch, Will Campos, Brian Firenzi and Matt Arnold for the freddiew YouTube channel, is perhaps one of the most significant undertakings in television history since Jerry Seinfeld sat down and said, "I'm gonna write a show about myself... and nothing... but something..."And I'm not just talk about how it's influenced myself or others, which I'll be the first to admit it has; I'm talking about how it's important to the landscape of film and television in general. 

See around about twenty years ago the internet was created and amongst all the hamsterdances, nyan cats and generous helping of free porn, arose the online television series, also known as the webseries. The webseries was a game changer, before then in order to have your work seen by more than ten people at a film festival, you had to get a whole slew of people to agree to all kinds of crap to get your work published by a major studio or television network. They would control your fate until the day you died and you wouldn't even take the majority of the profits, they would... by far. Hollywood was a place where a lot of people came together to try and create good things and got beat down by a system that sent people home in metaphorical body bags (not literal, Hollywood has never been involved in any murderous activity or scandalous activity what-so-ever and no-one has a gun to my head at the moment.) With the advent of the internet you could put your films and serials online for people to watch, made mainstream by the advent of YouTube in 2005.

Things like The Guild and LonelyGirl15 were independent shows, published by the creators, often with the help and funding of the fans. There was the Angry Video Game Nerd by James Rolfe, Annoying Orange, Legend of Neil, Fallout: Nuka Break, Mortal Kombat: Legacy, The Nostalgia Critic and now Video Game High School. But what makes VGHS special? Why is Season 2 specifically such a game-changer?

The answer is simple. More and more people are watching things online; Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, it's all changing and VGHS is changing with it. Unlike the first season which revolved around 9 episodes each with a short 10-ish minute runtime as webseries tend to have, first to cater to the short attention span of the internet crowd and second because that's just the way YouTube was set up back in the old days. My own webseries MY LIFE AS A VIDEO GAME is set to have 10 episodes of that length divided up into 3 episode blocks that'd make up a half hour episode of television in total. Freddie Wong and Co. are going further than I am, further than anyone has ever really gone before. They're going to create a series that is essentially a television show, on the web. Six Full TV length episodes of around a half hour in length, not designed to cater to the YouTube crowd anymore, not for people with a short attention span in the same way previous series have been.

Why is this important you ask? What is the difference between my style, and what VGHS is doing? Freddie and VGHS is doing something incredibly important by forcing the viewer to sit by his laptop, or use the YouTube app on his TV, Console, Roku or AppleTV box, and watch a true television series on the web. They could quite easily break up these six episodes into three each totaling at around 18 episodes to make more money from ad revenue and see it run for longer. But no, the VGHS team sees the future and sees the potential of the web-based series. This is huge people, make no mistake about it. The great thing about the web was that it wasn't run by people out to make money and this team are proving that once again by sacrificing monetary gain to have a quality series that proves to the world that a television series can exist on the web and the web alone.

I don't doubt they'll reach their target on Kickstarter but people, get in on this action while you can and help make history. VGHS Season 2 is important to the landscape of television, it will prove that a television series can be sustainable on the web. Six episodes might not seem like a lot but remember outside the US, many shows run for much shorter times. The Inbetweeners, a classic British comedy show only ran for six half hour episodes a year. I can't wait to see what's in store for Season 2 and I can't wait to see how this all pans out. Freddie, Brandon and the rest, if you're reading this, I salute the ever-loving fuck out of you all; make the web proud!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/freddiew/video-game-high-school-season-two - Check it out MOFOS!