Qake-A-Thon - there are many gamer charity events for Child's Play, and this one is ours.
The livestreams have wrapped up, and the gaming room crew are slowly returning to the land of the living from their well-deserved slumber. Here are some random echoes and highlights of the past five days, mostly borrowed from other channels.
- recap of my own notes: preparations, countdown, launch and spectating.
- photos from Benefleet Tavern raffle. That night's contribution propelled the donate-o-meter over the halfway mark!
- Quake Live crew encounter. After some nerdgarage.org connections snitched on us in QuakeCon forums, an id software dev paid our livechat a visit. He donated a little power-up to the cause: pro-access tokens which allowed our crew to set up customized matches. Event Interactivity boost +20! (Also, this.)
At the time of posting this, the donations have reached £300 - the final mark of last year's event. Still some to go for this year's goal of 500. The event-related Child's Play donation widget will remain active for a little while longer.
I have yet to write a roundup of my current out-of-town adventures. Until then, two tidbits from the location, related to the Chaos Nova charity event as it unfolds in real time.
One: I take a hike to the village library for some data-splurge on Quake-a-thon livestreams.
Two: I settle at the sauna-side with my coffee and some food to witness mindless mayhem for charity.
Here's the Child's Play donation widget too. We're making progress!
Qake-A-Thon - there are many gamer charity events for Child's Play, and this one is ours.
Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since had the pleasure to dive into their forum-based
space opera
RPG, dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process. Once settled in the "writers' room" and
comms all set up, I'd start occasionally joining in for gameplay
sessions too, either in co-op, or just shout-along. This here is
one of those occasions.
Apparently we've been doing a *lot* of Killing Floor co-op lately (and I gleefully keep recording the experience). I even made a designated playlist for this.
Here's one whole session.
Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since had the pleasure to dive into their forum-based
space opera
RPG, dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process. Once settled in the "writers' room" and
comms all set up, I'd start occasionally joining in for gameplay
sessions too, either in co-op, or just shout-along. This here is
one of those occasions.
The most recent livestream I got to yell along to was about Stranded Deep. There be crabs! And coconuts! And a shark jumping!
Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since had the pleasure to dive into their forum-based
space opera
RPG, dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process. Once settled in the "writers' room" and
comms all set up, I'd start occasionally joining in for gameplay
sessions too, either in co-op, or just shout-along. This here is
one of those occasions.
There's been quite a bit of space (pardon, Spaaaaaaace!) co-op going on lately.
In addition to some StarMade exploration, our operations have escalated to engineering.
(Once again huge thanks to Knux_V1 for the gift!)
First off, a little montage thingie to tie the two processes together.
Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since had the pleasure to dive into their forum-based space opera
RPG, dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process. Once settled in the "writers' room" and
comms all set up, I'd start occasionally joining in for gameplay sessions too, either in co-op, or just shout-along. This here is
one of those occasions.
Recently we've been playing a whole lot of StarMade (huge thanks to Knux for gifting a copy). I've recorded some of it.
Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since had the pleasure to dive into their forum-based space opera
RPG, dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process. Once settled in the "writers' room" and
comms all set up, I'd start occasionally joining in for gameplay
livestreaming too, either in co-op, or just shout-along. This here is
one of those occasions.
It's actually three occasions, distributed between four uploads; featuring a sizable crew.
Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since had the pleasure to dive into their forum-based space opera
RPG, dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process. Once settled in the "writers' room" and
comms all set up, I'd start occasionally joining in for gameplay
livestreaming too, either in co-op, or just shout-along. Here are some of those occasions.
The first entry isn't really a capture of livestream but my attempt to record a Killing Floor co-op session one night. I didn't set up the audio quite right, so my side of Skype audio is left a mystery.
Also, there was some more quality time with the Long Dark. This time with more map reading!
The whole playlist with ChaosNova related streams & sessions is over here.
Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since had the pleasure to dive into their space opera
RPG writing process, dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process. Once settled in the "writers' room" and
comms all set up, I'd start occasionally joining in for gameplay
livestreaming too, either in co-op, or just shout-along. This here is
one of those occasions.
It is my intent to do a shared Wasteland 2 playthrough of my own, sooner rather than later. Until the conditions are aligned for that, however, I am more than happy to shout along while others' play. The characters being run in this particular playthrough loosely tie in and/or overlap with the characterization process in the ongoing Chaos Nova forum RPG storylines - "how very meta", as they say.
Vaguely around Earth Occidental Standard Year 2014, the drift of interwebs lead my paths into collaboration course with Chaos Nova
universe. I have since had the pleasure to dive into their space opera
RPG writing process, dispensing unsolicited advice about universe, life,
and everything in the process. Once settled in the "writers' room" and
comms all set up, I'd start occasionally joining in for gameplay
livestreaming too, either in co-op, or just shout-along. This here is
one of those occasions.
Okay, it is actually three occasions, all about survival. One session of Banished:
Ever since I uploaded my first gameplay videos to Youtube, i have received five copyright infringement notices. The first one totally freaked me out. It was a whole new territory of information and I had no clue how to handle this. I wasn't so much surprised (I had combined the game footage with classical, recognizable pieces) but I was clueless. Except that I knew very well I had my "rights" sorted out. So, i returned to the source for consultation - Incompetech's FAQ page, that is. See, Kevin has done all the homework for people who use the music on his site. So, once the initial panic diffused and craftiness kicked in, I found the 'dispute' option and simply copied the FAQ link into the explanation box. These two notices were taken back immediately.
My third notice actually did surprise me. Once again, I'd combined game footage with music from Incompetech reserves. Except this time I was pretty sure those were all Kevin's own originals. And the name of the piece I was supposedly using without permission wasn't even among the material. Processing this dispute took a wee bit longer, but a few hours later it was taken back as well.
Enter present day. I had already uploaded a bunch of Fallout: New Vegas gameplay videos and not had one problem with the material. And then, as I had entered the add-on scenario, the ingame radio was playing some catchy tunes - which I had forgot to turn off at first. And two of these tunes (not all of them - just these two) triggered a copyright notice from a fishy-sounding company called AdRev. Now, once again, I experienced some initial panic: the situation was new again because I had no idea what licences and rights might apply in case of letting others hear the music that played while you played. Then the Crafty Mode kicked in and I begun my quests to find out:
a) what sorts of rules apply to these two songs; and
b) what's the deal with AdRev.
I wasn't able to find out sure-fire intel about the songs, though many clues indicate that they're probably in Public Domain. (While the whole game soundtrack is publicly available in several places, I wasn't able to track down the licensing information to go with it.) I did, however, come across abundant intel and lament on AdRev and the likes. First there was this Google group dedicated on the topic. While my ingame radio case isn't as clear-cut as the "my video is silent" kind of instances, it became clear that this wasn't about legit claims or honest mistakes. There was also this page but it seemed too advanced for the issue at hand.
Then I found the videos from the many Youtubers who had had similar problems. I want to help spreading the word at least a little bit:
As for me, I feel I need to do some more homework before I hit the 'dispute' button on this - to make sure I've got all bases covered. In the future, I would also like to see these two reasons added to the dispute form:
* "I discard your claim because you are a copyright troll. Shoo!"
and
* "Oh, come on. This is simply ridiculous."
Not much to say besides that. (Learning about the recording tools, the audio hassles, the video formats, the encoding pains, the rudimentary video editing and all that - some other time.)
----------------------
ED:
I just found out there's more Noobvision going on in Youtube :) (So, once again, I am not nearly as original as I thought. Then again, I think it's pretty cool :D)
There are a few things I so very deeply appreciate in this life:
industrial junk, sheer beauty, from-broken-junk-to-chaos-to-order repair narratives, demonstration of skill and clever medium use. This video has them all.
.JPG)
