LogFAQs > #968420223

Doe posted...

I wouldn't characterize such a group as just "Gmod/SFM people" as Gmod machinima is an absolutely painstaking process. There are a lot of fellows who still work in Gmod and have really elevated their level of output. I did once see a video that was "[excellent machinima] remastered in SFM" or something to that effect and it had none of the joy of the original's movement. But sadly the comments were impressed. Very similar to how people seem to prefer "60 FPS versions" of anime OPs and scenes online, where the 60 is just arrived at by interpolating in-between frames resulting in an uncanny movement pacing.

Oh I'm all too familiar. I'm only so cynical because it was my favorite thing for a while.
Gmod for the past decade or so has been working quite hard to go from what it was to SFM lite though. They have ragdoll movers that take the chaos out of the posing and moving, Stop motion helper gives everything this soulless look. If you watch for it it's mostly characters robotically zooming from pose to pose, makes you realise how endearing a bit of human error can make a video. The AI voices are on another level though, with these things it's become easier than ever to mass produce nothing-videos. Lots of videos are just "The mercs argue about a list of things I, the creator of the video am fond of and announce the positives of each." and these things do get substantial viewcounts. There's even a stand tool pose for people who cannot pick up the ragdoll or deem doing so an excessive waste of time. The hardware morph flailing epidemic is still going thanks to tools allowing further distortion of models. It feels like years ago Gmod was distilled down to a couple of formulas for successful videos, most borrow some the same pool of established jokes, contemporary references, Rubberfruit videos and all that.
The latest one which I really don't like is fighting game recreations. I can hardly watch these guys have a fight anymore without it being 2D, health bars on screen and the fight actually being a re-creation of pre-existing combos from fighting games. I've given up on the whole but it's very difficult not to come back every now and then and see how things have deteriorated.

As for SFM, I've never liked it beyond the meet the team videos. Production values sucked the fun and spontaneity out of the whole Gmod/SFM scene. It's what I blame for the outbreak of lore-friendly videos people make where everyone's in character and the name is always some sort of pun with "Mann" or "Fortress" in the title. Saxxies are also partially to blame for this too.

It used to be a game that people, through creative solutions, managed to use as video making software. Nowadays it's video making software and while the obstacles have disappeared, so have the creative solutions, for the most part at least. Give me chaos filled with outlandish depictions of characters and peoples' dumb OCs any day.