But Anyway, check out The Machinist.  It’s a great movie that will keep you guessing and thinking throughout, something pretty rare in movies nowadays.

–Sergeant JoKer

Doing a little research on IMDB shows that the highest rating he has been given on one of his movies was 4.1/10, and that movie wasn’t even a video game movie! The rest of his movies, for the most part, hover around the 1/10 to 2/10 range. Not exactly Spielberg quality, to say the least.

I have decided to compile a list of video games that Uwe Boll SHOULD make into movies. Maybe he needs a little help choosing games that fall within his level of expertise.

1. Tetris:

The game is about blocks falling down a screen. It should be a pretty cut and dry movie. He can dress some crappy actors, which he apparently has plenty of, judging by his past movies, in cardboard boxes (like in the Beastie Boys video for Intergalactic) and have them fall on top of each other to make lines. There’s no story to mess up, no characters to get confused, just 7 different shapes.

2. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

This is quite possibly the worst game in video game history. Supposedly, there is a landfill somewhere just full of the Atari cartridges of this game. The whole point of the game was to fall into holes so E.T. could phone home. This contributed to the decline of Atari and the destruction of an age of video games, just as Uwe Boll’s “films” have destroyed any hope we have to see a decent video game movie. With a game this bad, Uwe can only go up.  Of Course, it would be more of a remake based on the videogame, as opposed to the great original movie.  Do you think we could trust a movie of the caliber of E.T. to Uwe Boll?  He should just keep it simple, a movie about a wrinkled alien that falls down holes.  Shouldn’t be much of a challenge for him.

3. Hour of Victory

Crappy WWII video game in a genre already filled with bad Medal of Honor and Call of Duty clones; crappy director in an industry that already has plenty of crappy directors. This seems like a match made in heaven to me.

4. Shaq-Fu

Seriously, Shaq hurt his name and reputation making his horrible movies; then he made an even worse game.

Uwe hurt his name and reputation by making House of the Dead; then he made Alone in the Dark.

5. Two Worlds

For a game that was supposedly designed by rocket scientists, you would have thought they could have come up with something better. This game is proof that just because you’re an egghead, it doesn’t mean that you’re great in everything. Case in point: Uwe Boll, just because you have a video camera, it doesn’t mean that you can make a movie.

With all these videogames, only 2 things can happen. Either Uwe can actually improve on something and help his career; or, maybe the world and the movie industry will finally appreciate his total destruction of so many great possibilities for great videogame movies.

]]> http://sergeantjoker.com/2008/05/08/the-5-movies-based-on-videogames-that-uwe-boll-should-make/feed/ http://sergeantjoker.com/2008/05/08/the-5-movies-based-on-videogames-that-uwe-boll-should-make/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SergeantJoker/~3/284480670/ http://sergeantjoker.com/2008/05/06/inadequacies-of-the-dmca/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 07:27:17 +0000 Sergeant JoKer http://sergeantjoker.com/?p=21 As a father of young children, I enjoy buying movies for my children, obviously expecting for them to be able to watch them for years. Unfortunately, children scratch DVD’s and when I looked for a way to copy them so they don’t ruin the originals, I found out that it is illegal to circumvent copy protection software to make copies of the movies. It was not like I was making copies of a rented movie and taking them back to the store, I just wanted to make back-ups to be able to save the original.

After doing some more research I found out that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal for anybody, whether it is users, or software developers, to circumvent copyright protection. The DMCA has put way too much power with the companies that hold the copyrights to various things. There needs to be a compromise between the end users and the manufacturers/copyright holders.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 is a prominent copyright law in the United States that “implements two 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties: the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty.” (Copyright, 1998) Basically, it made it illegal for copyright protection and Digital Rights Management to be circumvented, whether that is by software or hardware means. This meant that the popular programs that allowed users to copy their DVD’s, whether it be for legitimate purposes such as backing up their owned property or pirating DVD’s that were not theirs, were now illegal. The DMCA is compromised of 5 different title’s affecting many copyright themes, from Digital media and liability of Internet Service Providers to the design of boat hulls. For the purposes of the rest of this paper, we will only deal with the parts that deal with Copyright protection in regards to DVD’s and digital media.

There are exceptions to the circumvention of the copyright protection methods, but those are all mostly for archival purposes, so that libraries and other institutions can make archival copies of media for preservation.

Some of the major criticism of the DMCA focuses on the fact that it does not make it illegal to make copies of copyrighted material, it makes it illegal to design and implement tools that allow uses to circumvent the copy protection. It’s a catch-22 that has many in a quandary; I can copy movies legally, but the tools to copy them are illegal.

The DMCA targets piracy because it is a valuable tool in preventing piracy and is useful because it gives developers a legal stance on which to prosecute individuals who pirate their copyrighted material. Many pirates will rip movies off the DVD’s by using programs that crack the encryption put on the DVD by the developer. Most of the programs used in the past, such as DVD Decrypter, DVD X Copy, and others have been out of business due to cease and desist letters from companies citing the DMCA. There are new programs that occasionally come out, but they normally do not last very long because of the active pursuit of those who violate the DMCA.

By targeting these software developers who make the programs, the DMCA is attempting to keep piracy down. Unfortunately, for those of us who just want to make copies of something we bought, we can’t do that legally. A good deal of the piracy that goes on today is done over the internet and peer-to-peer sharing programs. Most of the movies that can be found on there are not copies of retail DVD’s but bootlegs made with camera’s in movie theatres and copies of the movies that are not yet complete. They will be covered with time stamps and lacking in special effects, only useful for diehard fanatics that can’t wait to see a movie people in the movie industry that are just trying to provide rough copies of the films for working use.

The DMCA isn’t targeting the pirates, it’s targeting the end-users who buy the movies in the stores and want to make copies of them to preserve them. Most users have no desire to “rip” a movie off of a DVD and distribute it on the internet or on some street corner; they just want to make a copy so the original will not get damaged by accidents, carelessness, and little children.

Furthermore, the DMCA is stifling work on encryption and decryption work. Security experts routinely attempt to break encryption, not to bypass, but to learn how it works and improve upon it in order to build better encryption. Unfortunately, some of those experts are meeting legal consequences for their innocent actions. A Russian expert gave a presentation that highlighted how to bypass encryption used in some of Adobe’s products. His work wasn’t meant to do anything illegal, it was just meant to enable Adobe’s products to be used on other eBook readers and to allow users in countries where it is legal to make back-up copies a means to do that. (Lemos, 2001) The Security expert was subsequently arrested and faced 5 years in prison and $500,000 in fines for his work. Another example deals with a professor from Princeton University, who met a legal wall when he attempted to discuss his findings regarding a new encryption standard set forth by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). The SDMI announced a hacking challenge that asked teams to attempt to circumvent a new technology they were contemplating putting in place. The professor was able to crack the new technology and attempted to publish his findings about what he did; not in an effort to enhance piracy, but to showcase how they could be bypassed, in an effort to show where area’s could be improved. He was warned by the SDMI that he would be in violation of copyright laws if he published his findings. The professor was not some hacker attempting to pirate movies or songs, he was a respected college professor working in his field of expertise, and yet he couldn’t publish what he had done, because of copyright laws.

An additional possible negative consequence is that by making it illegal to even attempt to circumvent the copy protection, it allows the developers to put whatever they want on the software, just as Sony did when they put rootkits on some of their audio CD’s. In this day and age when plenty of people watch DVD’s on their computers and use their Media Center PC’s that are connected to the internet, who knows what the developers are capable of putting on their discs, things which we will never know are there because it is illegal to even attempt to look at what is hiding behind the encryption. I agree that copyright protection is a useful tool, but the Roman poet Juvenal said it best when he said “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” or “Who will ward the warders?” (Ramsay, 1999) or “who will watch the watchmen?” If the copy protection software is the watchman, who will watch it?

The purpose of the DMCA is “To protect copyright owners from infringement, to protect service providers from expanding liability risks, and to provide additional guidance to the general public.” (Cranman, 2000)

Basically, it is put forth to protect the developers rights to their products and media and the keep Internet Service Providers (ISP) from being liable for things that are hosted on their servers. Through these goals, the DMCA hopes to cut down on piracy, whether that be from illegal copying of DVD’s, to offering copies of the media on websites, and even cut down on the posting of copyrighted material onto websites like YouTube!.

Consumers want to be able to legally protect their investments when they purchase things such as DVD’s and CD’s. The items they buy cost money, sometimes significant amounts, that they don’t want to see go to waste with a simple scratch or overzealous child who is excited to watch the newest DVD in their collection.

There are multiple ways to reach a compromise between the consumers and the developers. They range from totally going against one or the other party to finding the middle ground that they can both be happy with.

The DMCA could be completely abolished and allow consumers to do anything they want with the DVD’s they purchase, with whatever software that developers can devise. Unfortunately, that will make the developers of the DVD’s unhappy because they are being denied their rights to their products.

If prices were to drop on DVD’s, then people would most likely not feel so inclined to protect their investments because the investment isn’t so great anymore. If a child scratches a disc, just go buy a new one without a big hit to the pocketbook.

Another idea is to allow users to download the movies to their computers, just as many videogame companies are doing with services such as Valve’s Steam. Including a one-time use code that allows the consumer to register their purchase and make available downloads for their movies would allow them to make copies of their DVD’s and save them to a hard drive. There are companies that sell media hard drives that hook directly up to a TV, allowing the consumer to watch the movies from the hard drive while protecting the original disc from damage.

Some of the possible outcomes of the DMCA are being seen all the time. Paramount Studios has sued a company, Load n’ Go, that sells DVD’s and iPod’s that are capable of playing video. Load n’ Go would load the movies onto the iPod for the customers who purchased both the DVD and the iPod. Nothing was being stolen or pirated, they were just making it convenient for the consumers to watch their movies wherever they choose, whether that be at home on a DVD or on their iPod while on the road. Load n’ Go claimed that what they were doing was covered under fair-use. (Von Lohmann, 2006) Fair Use is the term that describes the basic rights that anybody has to something they have purchased. Fair use, as defined under the Title 17 of the US Code is:

(1)the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2)The nature of the copyrighted work
(3)The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4)The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (Copyright, 2006

The last factor in determining fair use is significant because what Load n’ Go was doing was not effecting the potential market value of the DVD’s. The DVD’s was still being sold and it was also being loaded onto a portable media device for viewing anywhere. Unfortunately, Load n’ Go was being sued because they bypassed the copy protection in place on the DVD’s.

Fair Use was never put into play because, while Fair Use is legal, the DMCA nullifies it because it made it illegal to bypass copy protection, not matter the reason unless it is for encryption studies. Even encryption studies are a grey area, as can be seen earlier about the Russian security expert who arrested for bypassing encryption.

This is just one example of the many problems with the DMCA. While it doesn’t override other copyright laws, it inhibits the consumers’ rights that are given in other areas of United States law. The DMCA has the appearance of something that was cobbled together from other laws and ideas from groups such as the movie studio’s and Hollywood on what they think their rights should be, regardless of how it effects the consumers that they sell their products to. The DMCA needs to be scrapped completely and started over, amended to clarify such as issues as Fair Use and copyright protection, or combined with other laws that fall under Title 17 of the U.S. Code so that there is no grey area that consumers can unknowingly get in trouble for.

In the end, the choice comes down to the consumer on what they are to do. The DMCA explicitly prohibits the circumvention of copyright protection, unless it is being used by an institution similar to a library or archival society, or for studies of encryption. Title 17 of the U.S. Code specifies what Fair Use is and making back-up copies of DVD’s for personal use is covered under that. So, it’s up to the consumer to decide what they will do. I am not condoning violating U.S. law but steps have to be taken to preserve the rights that have been given to American’s in regards to the products that they buy. For the most part, most of the lawsuits involving the making of back-up copies has involved the companies that have developed the software to circumvent the copy protection, but that doesn’t mean that in the future, if changes are not brought about, that the consumer will not be targeted in the lawsuits involving making back-up copies of movies they own.

Bibliography:
Focus World, p120. Retrieved September 30, 2007, from Academic Search Premier. http://ezproxy.umuc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.asp

Cranman, K (2000, Feb 2). Overview of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Retrieved October 20, 2007, from ASU Office of General Counsel Web site: http://www.asu.edu/counsel/brief/dig.htm

Lemos, R (2001, July 17). Russian crypto expert arrested at DefCon. Retrieved October 19, 2007, from CNET News Web site: http://www.news.com/2100-1001-270082.html

Mossberg, W. (2007, March 22). Congress Must Make Clear Copyright Laws To Protect Consumers. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. B.1. Retrieved September 30, 2007, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1240290431

Ramsay, G (1999). Juvenal: Satire VI. Retrieved October 20, 2007 from Ancient History Sourcebook Web site: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/juvenal-satvi.html

The UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy, (2001,Feb 8). The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Retrieved October 20, 2007, from The UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy Web site: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.html

U.S. Copyright Office, (2006, July). Fair Use. Retrieved October 20, 2007, from U.S. Copyright Office Web site: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

U.S. Copyright Office, (Dec 1998). THE DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998. Retrieved October 19, 2007, from Copyright.gov Web site: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

U.S. Government (1998). Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate). Retrieved September 30, 2007, from Library of Congress Web site: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c105:6:./temp/~c105QLEO9x

Von Lohmann, F (2006, Nov 16). Movie Studios Sue to Stop Loading of DVDs onto iPods. Retrieved October 20, 2007, from Electronic Frontier Foundation Web site: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/11/movie-studios-sue-stop-loading-dvds-ipods

In the early days of video games, video games mostly centered on run and jump type games, with many Mario iterations and knock-offs. You had sports games, where people would spend hours just changing the names of the players to match their friends or actual rosters of the teams. You only really needed 2 buttons in order to play a game and those buttons made your character jump and maybe shoot something, whether that was a fireball, a claw, or a punch. To beat a boss, all you had to do was play it enough times and figure out the pattern to their madness.

Flash forward to 2008, and some games look almost photo-real. The graphics are amazing and the environments, many times, are destructible to a point. Boss fights are epic; there aren’t patterns to memorize and little quirks to look for; you have to outthink and outfight the boss. Sports games feature actual teams that play like their real life counterparts and its easier then ever to update the rosters to reflect them. Controllers have more buttons then you do fingers and are capable of making your character move in ways that were never dreamt of in the day of Super Mario Bros. The stories have gone from the simplistic, save the damsel or brother in distress, to epic stories that rival the depth and scope of the biggest Hollywood movies.

The real question is: How far do we, the gamers, want them to go?

I, for one, play video games to escape reality. It’s nice to sit back and lose myself in a game, just as it’s nice to lose yourself in a good movie or book. It’s entertaining and fun to be able to pretend you’re somebody else, capable of extraordinary feats on the way to solving some conflict.

As games become more realistic, they will become more like real life in ways never imagined. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) will become more cunning in how it reacts to you. Graphics will be indiscernible from real life and the stories will be told in ways that will really hit home, whether or not they are realistic.
One of the main reasons I don’t play Condemned that much is because it is really close to reality. Your character doesn’t have some abnormal super powers, ammo is limited, the graphics are disturbingly great and it just sucks you right in. For me, that’s not enjoyable. I don’t want to feel all the angst and fear of the on-screen character; I don’t want to be made to feel like a regular guy in a horrible situation. If I want that, I can join the Marines and ship out for Iraq, where normal people are put in horrible situations. I want to escape from reality; I want to be the super soldier capable of taking down an entire terrorist cell with a pistol and knife. I enjoy medical packs to heal my character completely; I enjoy crazy weapons with lots of ammo; I enjoy escaping reality and enjoying myself in a good video game. Don’t get me wrong, Call of Duty 4 is spectacular and I love to play it, but it’s storylines, at times, like when you are in the shoes of the man about to be shot or where you’re the soldier crawling around a wasteland on his last dying breath, are too real. That is realistic to the extreme. Why would anybody want to feel what it’s like in a situation like that?
In the end, this is my opinion, nothing more, nothing less and I am open for all constructive comments, as always.

I also want to say thanks to Eoco, over at OpinionDebug, who wrote the great story on videogames getting boring, for giving me a little inspiration to write about this.

Well, maybe they were doing their little dance a little too soon…

Mark Rein, the head honcho over at Epic Games, the makers of UT3, has confirmed that the XBOX 360 version of the game WILL support mods (OXM UK).

Not only that, but he has made it clear to gamers that the extra time on UT3 for the XBOX 360 has resulted in a better playing, better looking game with Split Screen, something the PS3 version doesn’t even have. (VideoGamer.com)

Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge XBOX 360 fanboy, and I will do everything possible to convince somebody buying a new console that they should get a XBOX 360 versus a PS3 (or as I call it to my friends and co-workers who already have it, the GayStation 3). In the end, it is up to gamers to decide which console to buy and a key factor are the games available for the console and how they play/look. We’ll have to wait and see how MGS4 looks and performs to see if the PS3 will ever be able to really catch up.

It is filled with the same creepy atmosphere as the first and some of the most bizarre and disturbing scenes I have ever seen in a video game.  Actually, this ties in with what I wrote earlier about the story over on OpinionDebug.  If it wasn’t for the fact that I had some friends over and we were having a good time making fun of each other, I wouldn’t have played it as long as I did.  Condemned sucks you in and makes you feel like you are really in those horrible places with the nutjobs running around with pipes and 2×4’s trying to kill you.

Condemned doesn’t take you away from reality, it distorts your sense of where you are at and makes you think you are there.  The game is awesome, but mimics reality, and nightmares, so well that it affects you.  Maybe I am a big pansy, but if it wasn’t for the fact that a bunch of us were playing it all together, I would have been scared out of my mind.  As it was, we were all jumping when, walking down some decrepit hallway, our little video communicator popped up in the corner and scared the crap out of us.

I will give updates as I play the game, but so far, a great game that really distorts your sense of well-being while your playing.

Definitely NOT for the kids!

    On the other hand, people can’t look so deep into videogames and expect greatness everywhere.  Some things aren’t supposed to innovate in leaps and bounds, move, or change you; they’re just meant to be fun.  While Eoco doesn’t make comparisons to the movie industry, it is the same in many ways.  There are many people who either want inspiration or to be moved and either are disappointed then they don’t get it, or they read into the movie and find things that the makers never meant to be there.  While there are truly great films every once in a while that truly touch you or innovate, they are few and far between.  Most movies, they are there to tell a story that helps the viewers get away and forget about their lives and just be entertained.

I enjoy playing video games and watching movies because they allow me to get away from reality, not immerse me in it more and tug at my heart or mess with my head.  Call of Duty 4 is awesome because I can pick up the controller and drop into a match, play for 10 minutes and turn it off.  It is a fun distraction from the monotony of everyday life.

Honestly, the games that are meant, and do, truly move you or feature groundbreaking innovations will, oftentimes, get pushed aside by my other games.  Ico, a truly moving and breathtaking game, didn’t hold my interest like other games did.  It was and is a GREAT game, but I play video games for enjoyment and separation from the real world, not to have my emotions toyed with.