Imagine If You Will
July 25th, 2011

Posted by Matt

Imagine, if you will… that our new video is up. Now stop imagining, because it actually is. Here.

So where did this video come from? Well, Graham explains:

I wanted to write a video about what “the next big thing” will be once vampires aren’t cool anymore, but the tricky part was finding something ridiculous enough. I really wanted Davis (my unnamed character) to get super annoyed, so it had to to be really silly. As a result, Cthulhu!

We went to the “elder god well” once already this season with Discount Deities, but I felt this was different enough that both videos could exist so close by in our chronology. Don’t expect another any time soon though!

When I was writing, I was originally going to have Gills (Paul’s character) pitch the Siren seriously as a suggestion, and then a third silly suggestion (comedy comes in threes, you see). But, as I was writing I thought it’d be much better for Gills to be really trying to make this Cthulhu thing stick, hence him using the Siren to “make Cthulhu look good”.

Once I was done the draft, Kathleen came in to add, what I felt was, some much-needed punch here and there.

Addendum:
In videos we co-write, people often throw out the phrase, “That was totally a Kathleen line!” when it wasn’t. It was just a really silly, often awful, line that sounds like something she would write. For reference, the pedophilia line? Mine. The guy-sexing-a-pie line? Kathleen’s. The “no it was just a guy sexing a pie”? Me again.
That, my friends, is teamwork.

Unskippable’s game of choice this week was an unspeakable horror… You can find it here.

Also Checkpoint is up over at PATV. Please watch in order to help to save 3DS. Or something.

Additionally, please note the announcemnt post for the PSN Featured Game. We’ll be playing the PS3 version of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on Saturday from 4-6 (Pacific), and we’d love for you all to join us!

Finally, there are but a few days left in the pre-order period for the Lasers of Understanding tee-shirts! We’ve not quite met our minimum quota for the production of a run of these shirts yet, but we’d really like to see them happen, and we’re nearly there. If you’re waiting on buying one of these, don’t let the opportunity pass you by.

This meeting is over.

LRR Plays Duels of the Planeswalkers on PSN
July 24th, 2011

Posted by Graham

Fun news everyone!

Our good friends at Wizards of the Coast have asked the LRR Crew to be the players in a Featured Game on PSN, playing Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012. Duels is a ton of fun, and a great way for new players to get into the game. But even pros like us love playing it! (disclaimer: we are not pros)

DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND ANYONE’S CONTROL, THE EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED

 

What is it?

  • A way you can play Duels2012 with the LRR Crew on PSN. It’ll be a fun time!

When is it?

  • Thursday, August 4th
  • Between 4:00PM and 6:00PM, Pacfic Standard Time

How do I do this?

  • Anyone who wants to play a game with us, meet in the Magic: The Gathering area of PlayStation Home. We’ll be hanging out there, and you can jump into a game with us. Follow @loadingreadyrun on Twitter for other updates.
  • Here’s all our PSN IDs (I’m sure regular fans won’t have been able to guess these in advance!), so when you see us hanging around the Magic area, ask us for a challeeennnnge!
  1. Graham_LRR
  2. Paul_LRR
  3. Kathleen_LRR
  4. Jer_LRR
  5. James_LRR
  6. Matt_LRR
  7. Alex_LRR

 

     

    Hope to see some of you there!

    Graham & Paul Let’s Play!
    July 21st, 2011

    Posted by Graham

    Just realized we hadn’t blogged this, so here we go!

    After our Unskippable Let’s Play experiment, we’ve been hounded by people asking for more. More Graham and Paul subjecting themselves to horrid games!

    And you know what? We actually liked doing it! We must be ill, or something.

     

    Presenting Graham & Paul Let’s Play! (or GPLP, to its friends)

    Every so often, Paul and I (and maybe a guest) will subject ourselves to as much of a game as we can take (usually several hours, in our experience) and give you our glorious sorrow all at once. In fact, all 12 episodes of our first endeavour, Venetica, are online already! Check them out here.

    Here’s Episode 1, hope you like it:

    Other Episodes in the GPLP Archive

    Smile
    July 18th, 2011

    Posted by Matt

    This is a thing we recorded and put on the internet.

    This week’s video was shot only days ago, up at the University of Victoria. Filming was a bit of an adventure, because the script only really came together in it’s finalized version earlier that morning. Graham had some thoughts to share on the writing process for this one, so I’ve posted them below:

    A long while ago we thought it’d be cool to shoot a video entirely from the perspective of security cameras, but for the life of us we couldn’t figure out what. It was a cool visual concept, but we never really had a script that made sense in that context.

    Fast-forward many moons, probably more than a year: I was thinking again about that concept and realized that a video about video cameras made perfect sense!

    I wrote the great bulk of the video, but I wasn’t happy with the ending, and there was a problem with thematic flow around the three-quarters mark. Paul, Kathleen, Jeremy, James, Matt and I sat down for about 20 minutes prior to shooting and hashed it out, everyone throwing in ideas. Not only did this make the video much better, but I love writing as a group, and I don’t think we do it often enough.

    Actually shooting it was another crazy matter involving iPhone mics and tripods on desks, but we’ll get into all that in an upcoming LRRcast. Hope you enjoy the video!

    Unskippable this week was Dark Void. You can find the episode here.

    And the new Checkpoint, “Plants vs. EA” s viewable on PATV.

    Finally, please remember that there are now two weeks left in our Lasers of Understanding tee-shirt pre-order period!

    Cheers!

    Job Security
    July 11th, 2011

    Posted by Matt

    This week’s video is now live on The Escapist. You can watch it here.

    This week’s video was inspired by a user suggestion, so Graham has provided a brief description of what was changed and what was used from the original submission:

    Sometimes we do use ideas from the Video Suggestions forum, and this is one of those times. Forumgoer Motorwaffle (who goes by Mike in real life) submitted a brief conversation between a couple videogame ninjas, talking like day-in day-out coworkers would.

    I really liked the idea, and brought it to the LRR meeting later that week. We retooled it into a full-length video, added more characters (including a callback to Bad News), and wrote another couple minutes of conversation, but kept most of Mike’s original dialogue intact. We liked it for a reason!

    So, thanks to Mike, and we hope the rest of you enjoy it!

    Unskippable this week is Crysis 2 Part 2. You can find that here.

    Chekpoint Episode 10, “PS4Life” is alo now watchable over at PATV.

    Cheers!