Avatar Performance Artist Eulb Deco - also known as Jeremy Owen Turner of Vancouver - recently published an interesting machinima to celebrate his release from Blue Mars's non-disclosure agreement.
The machinima takes aim at one of the topics Pixels and Policy has investigated in the past: Whether Blue Mars is unfairly restricting content creation among small developers in favor of more profitable corporate deals.
Pixels and Policy is proud to host Deco's machinima. Below the fold you'll find one of the first pieces of Blue Mars performance art, and Deco's description of his work.
The Blue Mars Blues
Deco's piece, an experimental machinima titled "Welcome Horizon One," explores the limits imposed on individual content creation during Blue Mars's closed beta. The machinima was filmed early in the Blue Mars timeline, back in mid-September 2009, but it highlights the frustrations some users have felt regarding what they feel are artificial limits on content development.
Blue Mars required its participant developers to sign a non-disclosure agreement that sharply curtailed what they could discuss about Blue Mars's content creation and development system. Now that Blue Mars is in open beta, that NDA is void.
Deco is known for working in the silent medium, and the jagged cuts and clipping in his piece are intentional, a critique of the content-light but processor-consuming graphical demands of Blue Mars. The entire thing has the feel of a silent film or a tableaux performance.
About the Film:
The newbie avatar known as "Eulb Deco" makes his own face paint before entering Blue Mars for the first time as it was the only custom feature available to him.
Wearing his ratty template clothing, the shy Eulb decides to explore the welcome area to meet new creative people. Since Eulb is the only avatar wearing face-paint, he is ridiculed, ignored and/or humiliated by the other avatars - none of whom have any appearance customization.
Feeling as if he has re-entered high-school for the first time as a forelorn Goth, the dejected Eulb decides to hide his inner tears by walking/running away into the empty blue horizon before logging off.
Eulb re-logs back into the welcome area Within seconds after each log-off for another chance at feeling social, yet every time he re-enters the welcome area, he recieves the same glares from others. As a result, he runs away only to re-appear in the welcome horizon over and over again in a futile anti-social feedback loop.
Perhaps there will be more hope for explicit creative expression in the open beta and beyond...
Deco's piece is an artistic statement of displeasure about what he feels are restrictive content creation rules, and it's worth a watch. Check it out below:
LOL
An utterly boring video showing an utterly boring experience.
PONG is more fun.
Posted by: bogo | 01/13/2010 at 04:49 PM
Very boring machinima. I don't see any evidence that people are shunning him - those look like default BlueMars animations to me. My guess is that everybody is just trying to figure out how to move their avatar and not paying much attention to him. All BlueMars avatars look like high school - I have the same feeling of being back there, even among a very supportive group of friends.
Posted by: Riven Homewood | 01/14/2010 at 01:24 PM