In this episode, I look at Disney’s Aladdin, one of the best-selling Genesis games of all time, and breaks down the influence it had over platform games in the 90s. Turns out, it’s quite a bit!
PortsCenter 1.22 is uploaded, I’ve created and queued the pages for Retroware (today, just after 1pm PST) and PortsCenter.TV (tomorrow, twenty-four hours later), and I’ve also queued up the post for the PortsCenter Tumblr on Friday at 1:01pm.
I need to get more organized with my post-production process. Shooting the couch segments of an episode only takes, at most, two hours, which includes setting up and tearing down the lights. Post, however, takes the better part of a day. I have to:
Record the voiceover,
prepare overlays for things like game captions, credits, etc.,
capture any game footage I might not have yet,
get the bones of the edit in – voiceover and shot material,
curate game footage and drop it in,
realize I’ve forgotten to capture footage of some other game I mention within the episode, so set up to do that,
add the background blur effect so it’s not just game footage on a black background,
select my music,
rebalance the audio tracks,
prepare the end credits, including game footage and footage from last week’s episode and footage from the next episode
(which usually involves capturing about 30 seconds worth of gameplay of next week’s game, unless I can’t be bothered like last week),
give it a watch-through, tweak any parts I think need tweaking,
re-record any voiceover I think needs to be redone or rewritten,
watch it again,
render the video,
prepare web assets such as YouTube thumbnails, featured images for PortsCenter.TV and Retrowaretv.com,
watch an episode of Futurama while the rest of the episode renders,
upload the episode,
prepare posts for PortsCenter.TV, Retrowaretv.com, and the PortsCenter Tumblr,
add annotations once the upload is complete,
and update the annotations for the previous episode.
That’s a lot of work. Today it took me ten hours to get it all done. If I did color correction or any particularly intensive visual effects I’d probably never get any sleep. Is it any wonder I haven’t had time to do much behind-the-scenes stuff?
Still, I am exceptionally proud of all 22 episodes so far. There’s two left to do, then I’m taking January off to rest, recuperate, and get ready for season 2 in February.
In 2011, with the help of a handful of friends, I produced, shot and edited the pilot episode for PortsCenter. The process from early idea to finished edit was surprisingly short, sparked from a conversation I had with Kyle LaCroix about the PSone port of id Software’s Doom. I wrote the first episode over a couple of days, purchased two grey PlayStation consoles and two copies of the game (with kind help from Teri Fisher and David Lewis, who chipped in funds for the pilot at a time when money was thin on the ground for me), and roped in a bunch of friends to help me shoot the episode and capture the game footage.
Two years later, I’m in the final stretch of the first season. 2013 has seen PortsCenter join Retroware TV as a featured show and signed with Screenwave Media, a YouTube network that has been incredibly kind and supportive of the show. But most importantly, we’ve nearly completed our first full year of production on the series, with twenty completed episodes and a further four left to produce before the new year.
Over the last year I’ve learned a lot, a lot, about producing content for the internet. I’ve learned a lot about what I need to do to make PortsCenter work. I’ve no idea how much of what I’ve learned is going to be applicable to others, but what the Hell, I’m going to write it down anyway.
#1: Keep your mouth shut.
It’s a fool who tells the world what he’s going to do before he’s actually done any of the doing of it. Don’t tell the world you’re going to climb Everest before you’ve bought your gear. Or before you know how to climb a mountain, for that matter. Do your research. Study. Figure out what you need to do in order to do the thing you want to do. Then, once you’ve done that, keep your fucking mouth shut until you have something to show the world. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
I’ve made this mistake often over the last fifteen years as I’ve hopped aimlessly from one pipe-dream creative endeavor to another. I still made that mistake with PortsCenter, by posting the complete list of games I intended to look at for the first season. You’ll notice games on that list that I sadly didn’t get to this season – Perfect Dark, Street Fighter II, Gears of War: The Board Game. The Gears episode is my biggest disappointment, because I’d announced plans to look at it before I’d figured out the logistics of filming four people playing a board game.
You may think this contradicts my previous point, but it doesn’t. You’ve got to plug. You’ve got to be on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, everywhere talking about the video you’re filming, the song you’re recording, the comic you’re drawing. Then you’ve got to do it again when it’s released. Then you’ve got to do it again so you catch the people who didn’t catch it the first time ’round. Then you’ve got to do it a third time. Then you have to do it all over again when you’re getting ready to release your next video, or song, or comic, or whatever. If you don’t tell people what you’ve released, how is anybody going to find it?
The trick is not to be obnoxious with it. I try very hard not to drown people with “WATCH PORTSCENTER!” messages on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook every five bloody minutes. I use a rule of three – the day the video drops, the night the video drops, and then later in the week as I’m working on the following episode. This may seem excessive, but remember for every person who saw your first post, there’s probably someone who missed it who’ll catch it in one of the later posts. This is the internet. It’s global, and not everybody is going to be online or even awake at the time you make your initial post.
Occasionally I’ll post something from an episode currently in-production – a photo of my monitor showing part of a script, or a voiceover outtake. Something fun, so it’s not all promotional. I mean yes, ultimately this sort of stuff is promotional, but it’s fun too. There’s a world of difference between a tweet that says “Episode 21 drops tomorrow!” and another that says “Wow, Ben can’t even get his lines out of his mouth without accidentally beatboxing.” Again, the key difference here is that I’m not stating an intent to do a thing. I’m showing you the doing of it.
#3: Give a shit.
If you’re talking about a topic, be it for a podcast or a video series, or just for your Tumblr blog, make sure it’s something you genuinely care about. I’ve seen people, occasionally friends, make videos solely to attract an audience, often about a topic they have no genuine heartfelt interest in. It shows in the work, and people will see through it, whether you’re making a simple YouTube video, or a blockbuster movie.
On the flipside of this: If you have a genuine, heartfelt love of the project you’re working on, don’t phone it in. A “That’ll do” attitude isn’t going to result in a fun game, or a decent video, or a song worth listening to. It’ll be crap, nobody will give it the time of day, and you’ll wonder why you bothered.
The point is, a labor of love has got to be exactly that. It’s got to be hard work, and it’s got to be something you care about. Forget just one of these ingredients, and it’ll just be a thing you did.
This may sound silly, but I care deeply about video game ports. I’m fascinated by them. Almost obsessed. The version of myself I portray on the show is a little more aggressive about his fascination with ports than I am in real life, but the passion is still there. Ultimately, without that passion, PortsCenter wouldn’t be what it is. If I were just making this show because there aren’t other shows about game conversions on YouTube, it’d feel hollow. I think that’s an important distinction to make.
#4: Push your limits, but know your limitations.
Plan to make stuff outside of your comfort zone, outside of your knowledge level, because in doing so you’ll learn new tricks and techniques which will make your work better. You may fail, but you’ll still learn something and you can use that knowledge in the future. Or, as Thomas Edison allegedly put it, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
That being said, keep in mind your resources, talent pool and technical ability. It’s one thing to write:
A giant robotic spider lurches over the city, firing lasers from its eyes and swatting down aircraft like flies.
It’s another thing entirely to actually film it. If you know you can, do it. If you think you can, go for it anyway. If you know you can’t, or think you won’t be able to, scale it down to something more manageable and realistic. Remember to push yourself, but don’t overdo it and don’t try to run before you can walk.
That, ultimately, is what bit me in the arse with the Gears of War: The Board Game episode. I have no bloody clue how to film it. I still don’t. I want to include the episode in the second season, and I’m working on how to make it happen, but it’s nowhere near as simple as pointing a camera at my couch and making jokes about it. Mind you, two of my webseries projects for next year are going to be… well, not exactly simple. Yikes.
And finally…
#5: Make the sort of content you want to see.
This is an extension of sorts of Point #3. If you want to see a webcomic about a sentient cheeseburger trying to make it in a world populated by anthropomorphic geometrical shapes, start drawing it. If you want to watch a webseries about a guy with rabbit ears applying for a business loan, get writing. Write, draw, film and record the sort of stuff you wish existed, because either you’ll spend the rest of your life waiting, or someone else will beat you to the punch and you’ll regret not acting sooner.
PortsCenter exists because nobody else was making a show about video game ports, nobody else was making a video game show with this kind of sense of humor, and the one person I secretly hoped would make one, Charlie Brooker, seemingly had no plans plans on following up his single Gameswipe special, although in a few days his next gaming project, “How Video Games Changed the World”, airs on Channel Four in the UK.
So that’s it. That’s what I’ve learned. Except that I’m lying, of course – I already knew all of this. The trick is remembering it, and acting upon it. Here’s hoping that next year, be it PortsCenter, Dalek Gary or the other projects I have in the works, I’m able to keep a firm grip on these words.
In the highly unlikely event that you subscribe to this blog but not, say, my Twitter feed, Tumblr page or Facebook Page, I should point out: PortsCenter launched five weeks ago, and has been doing rather well. Two episodes have been featured on the front page of Screw Attack, and the show has received positive write-ups from Nukezilla and VelocityGamer.
I haven’t been posting the show here on the blog because it’s so much easier to disseminate stuff on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter et al. but in case you wanted to see the five episodes we’ve produced so far here’s a handy-dandy playlist. It’ll auto-update with new episodes too, so that’s nice.
So! So. Lots to do in 2013. Launch PortsCenter. Write and film Dalek Gary. Commence work on at least two other webseries, and polish off a sitcom idea I’ve been sitting on since 2007. That’s not to mention the project I’m pitching to a production company this month – which reminds me, I need to actually start putting together my pitch. Wow. This year is looking pretty busy.
I want to get out of some bad habits, which means I need to let go of some things. This includes webcomics. I’ve been webcomicing since 2003. My first webcomic, Fried, ran for three years and updated sporadically – even moreso once I realized I actually hated drawing. The second webcomic, Jump Leads, has come to an unceremonious end in part due to troubled art schedules, and Deadlong is on hiatus for similar reasons (though we’re filling the hiatus hole with some new material starting later this month). Other attempts to start webcomics, including a project with my friend Ray, have not been particularly successful.
It’s taken me a while, but I’ve realized webcomics isn’t where I want to be and it’s not what I want to do. Not to say I don’t enjoy webcomics, but I’ve been focusing my energy in the wrong place, and it’s time to reassess. Once Deadlong is finished, I’m done. Out of the game. Deadlong will be my webcomic swansong.
I think, truthfully, that I’d prefer to pour my energy into video content, and I want 2013 to be the start of that. I plan on trying to produce original video content throughout the year, starting with PortsCenter , then moving on to other projects. I’m developing a webseries with Mac Beauvais that should be a lot of fun, and I’ll be working with Michelle Osorio on new projects for Kill9 including Dalek Gary and at least one other thing that’s still sort-of in the woiks.
Another thing I want to do that’s important to me is to the stand-up into a proper paying gig. I need to do that, which means I need to get serious about it. I need to hone my craft, I need to get better at working off-book, and I need to actually book some actual gigs. In addition to this, I want to develop an hour of material over the course of the year which I’d like to debut at GMX Vol. 5, assuming they want me back.
Time to stop being passive. Time to stop expecting the new year to be a better one, and time to start making it so. Here’s to making things, and here’s to you. Happy New Year.
Me and a few friends. I promise you I’m not Shopped into this image. [Photo courtesy of WaspPhoto.com]Bloody Hell. What a weekend. I’m not entirely sure I’m capable of putting it all into words, but I’ll certainly have a go. (more…)
I’ll be in Nashville, TN from Friday to Sunday attending the Geek Media Expo. Here’s my complete schedule:
Portal Party 2.0 Friday, October 26th ▪ 8:00pm – 9:30pm, Palomino + Quarter Horse + Mustang rooms Last year, we both said a lot of things that you’re going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster. Why don’t you just keep testing with GLaDOS? Ellen McLain, voice of GLaDOS from the Portal series returns to berate Portal players just trying to survive, and maybe cake? Better gaming, better decorations, better batteries, and an awesome hangout for Portal enthusiasts.
Web Comics 101 Saturday, October 27th ▪ 7:00pm – 8:00pm, Arabian Room Learn the ins and outs of the webcomic business with a Q&A from the industry pros. Featuring Ben Paddon, Scott Sava, Brian Patterson and Ethan Nicolle.
PortsCenter – A One-Hour Look at Video Game Ports Sunday, October 28th ▪ 12:00pm – 1:00pm, Franklin Room British writer and geek humorist Ben Paddon talks about unique video game ports; games that have been converted for different systems. A blend of stand-up comedy and PowerPoint presentation.
One Brit, Many Doctors Sunday, October 28th ▪ 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Quarter Horse Room Doctor Who discussion with British expatriate and geek humorist Ben Paddon. What qualifies Ben to speak with authority on this topic? He has the right accent.
Please note that this schedule is entirely subject to change based on factors such as GMX shifting things around, or me dying. See you in Nashville!
