Late to the game again, and I'm 95% confident BDA must know about this, but last year, a Twitch streamer called WayneRadioTV directed a series called Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware. Basically, the objective was to stream a playthrough of a version of Half-Life in virtual reality with experimental self-aware AI. Of course, it was all staged, and said AI was controlled by friends of Wayne.

The strength of the series, however, is that while they had set up some basic narrative guidelines, it was improv throughout. The end result is absolutely hilarious and the performances are amazing, especially that of Wayne's who almost never breaks character, playing the straight man trying to hold everything together. and maintaining the AI joke until the very end (even though it was absolutely obvious the characters were actors). The series actually ends up building a full story entirely based on the improv from everyone. It's an impressive feat and an incredibly entertaining moment.

Wayne edited the streams down to their best and most cohesive parts. The streams in themselves are great but long, and of course contain out of character moments, either when Wayne has to manage the livestream or when things go wrong or there's evidence we're not actually in Half-Life, but in Garry's Mod (as it was needed for the staging of the series - they actually had a friend operating invisibly as stage director, spawning objects, preparing scenes on the fly).

I actually somehow totally missed that, sounds frickin amazing and so up-my-alley, I'll check it out. Thanks Saniss

On the subject of watching extremely niche, super talented, people being passionate about they do and sharing it:

EDIT:

OH RIGHT. The other thing. I got sucked into the Artstation learning section over my break and discovered a bunch of talks and stuff from an art convention, which are great, but I discovered that they have a few talks from Crash McCreery talking about his process and showing off a bunch of his art for (apparently) the first time ever. Either way, they're fun talks and it's cool to see and hear him talk about his own stuff:

(I'm pretty sure you don't need an account if my incognito mode check is to be believed)

Portfolio tour: https://www.artstation.com/learning/cou … h-mccreery
Talk: https://www.artstation.com/learning/cou … wAZ/part-1

I finished the series, and am currently watching the cast/crew commentary on it. Oh my God, the extent to which they were flying by the seat of their pants with this.

This is just /delightful/.

Every time Rob does one of these deep dive videos it is an absolute delight. This is almost 2.5 hours but doesn't feel it at all, entertaining, interesting and educational front to back.

EDIT:

OH YEAH.

I was gonna say, I did actually end up watching this entire thing, and it was /fantastic/. I do want to go back through and listen to the commentary I just really haven't been in the headspace for it.

I didn't expect this to hit me as hard as it did, Grant really was someone special.

Warning going in: This scene is the moment Robin finds out John Belushi died, and it hits hard. So you know, be better emotionally prepared than I was, cause damn.

I was literally JUST there on Monday doing a location scout.  I hadn't known they had put that up, and I got more than a little choked up.

Brilliant!

This kinda gives me pans of Adventures in Faking This vibes - in a friends hanging out and making music way.

I loved every minute of it.

re: I didn't know this was a recurring thing so now going backwards to watch the rest of this band that only exists for one day a year.

Last edited by Regan (2021-10-28 00:50:10)

I'm on my way!