Wow. It’s been a week, but my brain is still adjusting to the new reality of what’s happened. You guys not only sent more money than I was due to earn this year (without additional work), but this is easily the most money I’ve ever received at once in my life. Receiving this money has been like a weight being lifted, it should buy me all the time I need to get my life stabilized financially again. When I made the fundraiser video (which I was hesitant about doing in the first place), I thought the odds of getting enough money for the SSD were pretty good. The 12k figure I put on the funds raised thermometer was just a pipe dream. That was just me calculating how much I would need (with taxes) to supplement my own income so that I wouldn’t need ANYTHING for a year, and could focus just on making videos. I never expected to GET that much. I thought MAYBE I’d hit the 1k mark. Some people have asked if I’ve been super happy and excited about this. I was initially, around the 1k mark. Since then, I’ve mostly been in shock as I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before. But since it has happened, I’ll put it to use! This is the second-most thankful I’ve felt in my life (the first being when I accidentally had my carotid artery sliced open as a kid, was bleeding profusely and almost died), so, thanks!

How I feel about all this
 

FUNDRAISER OVER?

There was never really an expiration on the fundraiser, but I will be disabling the counter showing how much has been raised in the near future. The reason being is that only counts how much money is in my Paypal account, so if I withdraw anything, you would see the number go back down, not showing how much has been raised since. I’m still ALWAYS happy for donations and the “prize” of any line you want voiced is still applicable, for both past and future donators. Also I have added a link to all the isolated voice tracks to Freeman’s Mind so far (597MB) as a bonus. Also, due to popular demand, I’ve implemented some cryptocurrency donations as an option:

I honestly have NO IDEA where cryptocurrency is headed, but hey, I’ll give it a shot if people want to send me some! As always, anyone who donated will receive a “thank you” email from me, although I need more time to catch up on email replies to everyone, the response I’ve received has been overwhelming, it’s gong to take me a little longer to get through it all (also if you donate via cryptocurrency, I won’t know who you are to thank unless you also email me). I’ve spent most of this past week focusing on Freeman’s Mind.

 
WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?

I’ve heard many stories before about people who win the lottery going broke after a few months because they spent it all. My brain is simply not wired that way. I’ve had enough financial stress over the past year that I’m going to make sure this money lasts as LONG AS POSSIBLE. I don’t want to go on a shopping spree and be back where I was the next day. I want to make smart decisions and still be making videos decades from now. If you’re curious, here’s what I have planned:

-Reserve cash to supplement food and rent: I want to make sure I’m always several months ahead for groceries and rent. This one thing reduces my stress more than anything else and is where the majority of the money will go.

-Smaller purchases I could have used for months: Stuff like replacing my broken shoes, replacing a ripped pair of paints, replacing my partially-broken headphones, in short, stuff I would have bought a long time ago if I hadn’t been economizing as much as possible.

-Some money for long-term volunteers: This is money for a small number of people who have given me a tremendous amount of help with the site or videos over the years.

-Computer parts: Maybe! Josh Phillips of LPC Gaming has offered to donate a 500GB SSD drive and some other viewers (thanks to Chris Cogden, Joe McJoey, and CyDrake583) have offered to donate some parts as well. So while this fundraiser was originally for the SSD, you guys have me covered there as well!

-Gorilla Gong: Besides making my videos, I want to improve the Gorilla Gong site, we have BIG plans for it, hoping to really make it explode with some of the features we have coming. I can’t reveal everything now, but it’s going to be awesome.

-Re-opening t-shirt shop: This is a low priority, but I do want to make this happen. The t-shirt will likely relaunch sometime in the future at a lower price to buyers with less money going to me (like a shirt), but many, many more designs to choose from.

-Long term stocks investing and MAYBE some trading: Now before everyone panics, I’m going to pursue this very, very cautiously. I’ve wanted to learn more about stocks for a while now since I want to put my money where my mouth is regarding things like peak oil and the economy declining. Additionally, I know of a trader whose advice I respect, so I may dabble in this, but not without expert advice. In any event, I will not be risking a significant amount of income in this, I’m not much of a gambler.

-More videos: Most of these don’t actually COST anything (besides the food and rent part), but I have promised to complete Half-Life for FM this year, also you can expect a lot more Game Dungeon later on. For the long term, I hope to divert some funds later for making the full length machinima movie I’ve mentioned before.

-Robot attack dogs: Some Japanese company is working on it. They’re having bugs in the AI where the dog doesn’t discriminate against the owner and got set back by some casualties.

So, while my plans are pretty conservative and not as entertaining as a kickstarter scandal, they should lead to more videos in the long haul.

 
MISC STUFF:

On thankfulness + guilt: I’m amazed how many people feel bad because they ONLY donated a small amount. Guys, I can get a leg of chicken + thigh meat from the deli for about .50 here. It ALL counts to me. Also, if you can’t afford to donate and feel guilty about it, don’t. It’s not like you OWE me the money, I’m happy to have you as fans. As long as I can stay afloat one way or another, mission accomplished.

On SrcDemo2: Many people informed me of this piece of software and certainly threw me a curve ball regarding motion blur. Now that I’ve had time to test it, my conclusion is it WILL cut down on the sizes needed some due to .PNG compression. However, I will probably continue using my motion blur technique as SrcDemo2’s requires a MUCH higher framerate to approximate the quality of mine, so the load on the CPU doesn’t make it very practical.

On RAID 0: While two fast drives in RAID 0 might handle most of what I need in terms of capturing, since I’m being donated a SSD, I plan to stick with my original plan, plus I was leaning towards that anyway since SSDs beat out RAID 0 in noise levels any day.

On Freeman’s Mind: I’ve completed the dialogue for the next episode, just waiting on some help with sound effects. I won’t be waiting for the SSD to arrive for THIS episode, so I’m going to clear up a ton of space to record this episode in HD. In any event, I’m working to get the next episode out ASAP.

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ADHD version: You guys have sent Ross a lot of money! This has changed Ross’s outlook on life, thank you! New Freeman’s Mind episode coming ASAP!

LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

Well here’s a video people may not have been expecting. It’s part a send-me-money video, part behind-the-scenes of Freeman’s Mind. I tried to make it entertaining. If you’ve ever been curious about some of what’s involved in making an episode, you might enjoy watching this. The short version is this explains some of the obstacles to making the series HD and why more money will overcome them:

 

DONATE HERE!

Now the bad news is the next FM episode is NOT ready yet, however it is partially done. I’ll re-record it in HD and get it out ASAP if this fundraiser goes well. In all honesty, I probably would have been done with the episode by now if I never made this video, but the “why isn’t the resolution higher?” comments finally got to me, so by delaying the next episode and making this instead, it could be increasing the video quality on all future episodes.

On a personal note, ever since Machinima.com prevented me from releasing videos for months at the same time my pay dropped over 80%, this past year or so has been like a marathon for me trying to get my income stable again. I’m still crawling my way back towards sustainability and have been involved with a LOT of different projects to earn more income. I’m doing everything I possibly can to try and stabilize things and hope to do so sometime this year, but any extra money you donate will be GREATLY appreciated. A big part of the reason I haven’t bought this part myself is I’ve never been able to justify it; all donation money over the past year has gone directly to food and rent. By making this video, it FORCES me to buy the part and increase the resolution to the show. Anyway, because a lot of my time is divided up these days, I can say that for now, more money likely WILL increase the release rate of both Freeman’s Mind and RGD since it will free up time I would be spending working on other things.

As an extra “thank you”, I’ve also updated all the downloadable copies for Freeman’s Mind, and I’m going to try my best to reply to all the emails I’ve received over the past months, something I’ve been neglecting a lot (again). If you haven’t gotten a reply from me, it’s very likely you will over the next week. And if you don’t donate, I’m still glad to have you all as fans and will keep making more videos no matter what.

I throw out a lot of information in this video, so I can only imagine the comments I’ll get from people telling me I’m wrong about everything, but here are some questions / comments I’m anticipating:

Q: Why aren’t you using Kickstarter or Indiegogo?
A: Those fundraisers typically require many prize levels that would take a lot of time to fulfill. It’s not that I don’t want to give people prizes, but I’d rather not spend weeks mailing things when I could be making more videos instead.

Q: Are there any prizes?
A: Maybe! I will send an email of thanks to everyone who donates. Also I’m willing to give any prizes that don’t require me to act like a business and take tons of time to deliver. I am willing to record a line for anyone who’s donated 0 or more, just email me about it. Also, I was considering releasing all the isolated voice files for all the Freeman’s Mind episodes if people are interested in that. If you have ideas about something else you’d like to see, let me know.

Q: You don’t need a SSD! You need a capture card or use Shadowplay then play back the demos in slow motion!
A: For adding in motion blur, that wouldn’t actually help save me any time, plus it would still be susceptible to potential dropped frames if there was some sort of hard drive stutter.

Q: You don’t need a SSD! Your CPU is too slow!
A: While a faster CPU would speed up the motion blur processing some, none of the cores ever get maxed during recording, there’s plenty of overhead. The hard drive speed is the bottleneck.

Q: Will you be updating all the old episodes to HD?
A: Unfortunately, no. I no longer have the old demos and project files necessary to do so. I never would have gotten rid of them if I expected FM to be as popular as it became.

Q: What about the Game Dungeon?
A: Due to voting results, I plan to focus mostly on FM for the near future, but I have a LOT of RGD episodes planned. This part will remove all barriers for recording in RGD also, so I’ll be able to cover potentially any game after this, not just older ones (though I still plan to keep doing those too).

Q: Do you eat only beans?
A: No, but beans + onions have a good cost-to-flavor / nutrition ratio.

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ADHD version: Send money to Ross if you want to see Freeman’s Mind in HD! Or send money because you can, Ross can use it! New FM coming this month, maybe in HD!

LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

Blip.tv link

Youtube link

Download 848x480 MKV

Here’s another episode that got delayed more than I wanted, but I’m still making them. This is coming out on Valentine’s Day, but it’s just a coincidence, I didn’t plan it like that. This episode isn’t especially related to Valentine’s Day unless you find ninjas and shotguns romantic. I think this episode came out pretty well, it actually took longer due to bugs with HL: Source’s demo recording, but I was able to eventually work around them.

On another note, I wanted to try and introduce some democracy to what I work on next and see how it goes. I’ve start on episode 55, but after that, I haven’t decided what video I should do next, so you can vote on it below:

[poll id=”10”]

In reality, it’s more of a competition between Freeman’s Mind and Ross’s Game Dungeon, but I just wanted to see how big the divide is. While I haven’t given up on it, I can’t realistically do another animated video at this time since that will delay everything else too much and I need to keep my income going. This goes double since it’s now a CONFIRMED conspiracy that Youtube isn’t counting all views and I guess is just pocketing the money instead. I’ve suspected something like this ever since I saw some statistically improbable things happen in December, but that link above has actual proof in it. I’m sure Google’s stance on this is that it’s just a bug they need to fix. An enormous, and insanely profitable bug. So, while I plan to go with the majority rule, if Youtube siphons off enough views from FM so they’re both equal, I may just do more RGD instead, since I can produce it faster and it’s a little more fun for me to make.

More videos coming!

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Blip.tv link

Youtube link

(download will be up later)

This episode got delayed more than I intended, but if you’ve been watching the series a while, it’s nothing compared to some of the other ones. This episode is also one of the shorter ones in a while, although really, this is ideally where I wanted to aim, but the past few episodes have just been one thing after another, there was less of a good jumping off spot. I know plenty of people would just as soon have me make the next episode 30 minutes long, but it’s definitely easier for me to break it up some more. Part of the reason this episode got delayed is because I’ve been spending a little more time learning possible software for the long-term movie project I still want to do. That’s not anywhere close to being done, but I would go crazy if I wasn’t doing SOMETHING on it, I mostly put that completely on hold for 2013. Finally, the documentary Freeman refers to in this episode is totally real, though I forgot the name of it.

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LEAVING MACHINIMA

Hey everyone, this is a post I wasn’t sure if I was going to make, but I’ve decided to risk it as I still keep getting questions from viewers. They were dying down for a while, but recently I was informed that Machinima.com has been using some of the old Civil Protection footage in their official Xbox One App, and this testimony has stirred things up again, so that’s sparked a lot more questions at me. So I want to clear up, hopefully once and for all, everything that went down between Machinima.com and myself last year.

 

THE STORY SO FAR

I’m still not at liberty to reveal everything that’s happened, but what I mentioned in my last Escape From Machinima post is only a portion of it. To do a quick recap on that, Machinima.com attempted to change their contract terms with me, stalled me for months after my pay dropped about 80%, until I eventually quit after seeing their new contract offer, which had terms in it I could never agree to. I thought that would be the end of the story when I wrote that post, but nope, it kept going.

 

UNPLEASANT DISCOVERIES

After I left Machinima and planned to start distributing my videos on Blip.tv in addition to Youtube, I decided to check out of curiosity if anyone had put any duplicates up of my videos on there. It turns out someone HAD, Machinima.com’s Blip.tv channel had been uploading copies of my videos there. While them publishing my videos elsewhere was allowed based on my contract terms, Machinima.com never informed me they were doing this, never gave me any statistics on views for blip.tv (and still haven’t), and never paid me anything for views on Blip.tv, but they WERE collecting advertising revenue on them, for years. All in all, at least 15 of my videos were posted from periods ranging from early 2010 to late 2011 and were up on blip.tv’s channel under Machinima’s name and they were collecting income on it without paying me up through 2013. Without revealing anything that’s in it, I can say that this activity was a clear, repeated violation of my contract with Machinima, and in the event something like this happened, most of the rights on many of my videos would return to me. To make matters worse, this was actually on top of violations I discovered earlier in the year where Machinima simply never paid me for two videos dating back from 2009 and 2010. At the time, I passed that off as an oversight, but since the blip.tv violations appeared much more deliberate, it made me start doubting that.

 

STAY QUIET AND BURY EVIDENCE

After discovering all this, I contacted Machinima.com, informing them of what I discovered and expressed that since their actions repeatedly violated my contract, I was claiming the rights back on my videos. My message was relayed to their legal department, but I didn’t get any answer for weeks from them, despite my messaging Machinima every few days trying to get some sort of update. During this time however, my videos on blip.tv, then later ALL of their videos on blip.tv were taken down (more on this later).

 

MACHINIMA’S RESPONSE

In June, I was finally given a response from the legal department, which claimed Machinima.com owned all my videos under the US Copyright Act based on a contract from 2011. The problem with this response was I NEVER SIGNED a contract with them from 2011. In fact, I specifically rejected their new contract offer from 2011 because I felt it would take many of my rights away. My contract with them was from 2009 and had some rights protections written into it. I informed them of this, then after a few more emails, their legal department asserted that they did indeed own the rights to my videos based on my 2007 contract. They might have had a valid point, except my 2009 completely replaced my 2007 one. After some more emails, I confirmed that they had actually lost the signed 2009 contract entirely. By their request, I then sent them an unsigned copy of my 2009 contract that I had on hand. At which point, they still did not change their claims about owning all my videos, nor did they address my questions concerning their breach of my contract. They DID ask if I had a signed copy I could produce for them, even though they had (or used to have) the only one in existence.

 

LEGAL WORDS

At this point, I was incredibly frustrated and discouraged with how the situation was being handled and I decided to get some legal assistance. I received a few replies and one fan in particular was able to provide an invaluable amount of pro bono assistance for me. I ended up sending a 15 page letter to Machinima detailing everything that had happened to me from them and stated that I would be pursuing legal action against them if my rights weren’t restored. I am not at liberty to discuss what happened afterward, but I will say I can live with the outcome. I’ve more or less been avoiding any involvement with Machinima.com since.

 

NPR!

After all this went down, I was also contacted by NPR as they were doing a piece on Machinima.com. I gave them a 20 minute interview about it, they used one isolated sentence from it, but that’s the nature of modern media. Also their statement about my situation with Machinima.com isn’t entirely accurate, but it’s close enough for anyone who’s not a lawyer. But hey, I got to be on the radio!

 

QUESTIONABLE ACTIONS

Back to the Blip.tv thing, that’s worth discussing a little further, because that didn’t just affect me. Machinima.com uploaded thousands of videos to their blip.tv channel from around 2010-2011, maybe late 2009 and early 2012, I don’t remember. I can’t fact check any of the dates, since they took down all the videos they had on blip.tv after I brought it to their attention. I am assuming this is because I’m not the only one they did not pay for this. I still have no way of verifying how much money was due, as I was never given any statistics regarding the views on blip.tv. However, I was able to create a screenshot cache of the majority of videos they did have on their channel before they took it down which I am including below:

BLIP SCREENSHOT CACHE (15MB ZIP)

Many of these videos I know were published on different contract terms than mine, so every video on that list is not necessarily a violation of Machinima.com’s contract with their creators. However, I’ve confirmed that a few directors have told me that some other videos listed above were a violation of their contract, similar to mine. I would not be surprised at all if Machinima.com performed hundreds of violations this way, withholding money from dozens of directors. These directors still may not have been paid, I have no way of knowing. If you or someone you know were a machinima director between 2010 and 2011 and submitted content to Machinima.com, I encourage you to look through the list of videos provided in that link. If your content is in there, Machinima.com may owe you some money. If you’ve already been paid for these videos, you have me to thank for that. If you haven’t, it’s worth asking about. Honestly, this particular item strikes me as potential lawsuit material, although I have no desire to get involved with that unless I have no other choice as those are time consuming and expensive. Even for the situation with my own videos, I always viewed a lawsuit as an absolute last resort. Not because I lacked evidence, but because of all the time, work, and money involved. I’m actually not a vindictive person by nature, but when my back is against the wall, I’ll of course fight for my own survival and videos.

 

PRESENT THOUGHTS

I’ve seen debates from people for and against Machinima.com as a business before and some misinformation spread around as well. I can not speak for how Machinima.com conducts business as a whole, since I’m not privy to that information, I can only attest to my personal experience with them; and in my experience with them over this past year, they have outright lied to me on occasion, they withheld a substantial amount of money from me, they violated my contract numerous times over a period of years, they made false claims of ownership over the rights to my videos, and they did not honor protections in my contract until after I stated I would take legal action against them if necessary. There are a few other things I’m not at liberty to discuss, but as a whole, I personally consider this all highly unethical. I don’t see any way to defend those actions from an ethical perspective. In the last post I made on this topic, I said I wanted to see Machinima off as friends. After what happened since, I think that’s no longer possible. I still will assert that there are a few good individual people who work at the company (one of whom has since been laid off by them), but none of them made the decisions that affected me in such negative ways this past year. I really just want the company out of my life permanently and hope I never have to deal with them again.

 

TO OTHER DIRECTORS

My personal advice to anyone considering joining them is don’t do it. Based on my experience with them this past year, it’s hard for me to imagine any other network conducting business in a worse way than they did with me. I encourage people to send this post to anyone you see who tries to defend Machinima.com’s way of business. I’ve seen the argument many times that creators “should have read the contract,” well, my retort to that is it doesn’t MATTER if you read the contract if the party who wrote it refuses to honor the terms listed in it. If you personally are having difficulty with the company, my advice to you is to seek some sort of legal aid. I feel in my case, my situation would never have been resolved satisfactorily without the legal assistance I received. I would NOT advise trying to reason with the company yourself if they are acting in a manner that seems unfair to you. It is difficult for me to imagine anything working in your favor that way.

 

CONCLUSION?

Anyway, this post wasn’t especially funny, sorry about that. It’s hard for me to come up with wise-ass comments when there’s a possible threat of legal action against me if my jokes are a little too good. So what I’ve written above isn’t a joke, this all happened like I described it. In all honesty, it’s probably a stupid idea for me to make this post since I have no way of knowing how or if Machinima.com will react to this, but what I’ve said here is the truth and remaining silent about it while I see their actions continue to affect other people has been like a weight I’ve been carrying around inside me for a while now. It’s been downright cathartic being able to type this. Again, I hope this is where it ends and is the last post I end up making on the topic.

More videos without any legal drama coming soon!

 

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ADHD VERSION:

Machinima.com tried to claim all of Ross’s videos based on a contract he never signed. They also lost his signed contract. They also withheld money from him, over a period of years. Machinima has withheld money from other directors, and maybe still is withholding. Machinima breached and did not honor parts of their contract with Ross. Ross was on NPR. Machinima.com is not Ross’s favorite company in the world.

 

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