The Amendment
August 15th, 2011

Posted by Matt

Friends, countrymen… lend me your clicks. I have come to you today to alert you to a pressing issue facing or nation: This week’s video!

Our video this week features our good friend Brad, who happened to have returned briefly from overseas. I believe he has once again returned to the Old World, but while he was here he did grace us with his appearance (and what a fine appearance it is!)

Since Graham is off gallivanting in England at the moment, I turned to Paul this week for a few words on the writing of this episode. Here’s what he had to say:

While not as splashy as the 1st Amendment or as controversial as the 2nd Amendment, you have to admit that a bunch of soldiers sleeping in your house, emptying your fridge, and having loud parties late into the night, would really suck. Graham initially wrote about half this script, but was having trouble figuring out where to go with it, so he brought it in to the office to show it to me. We liked the idea of Brad being confused about the meaning of “quartering” because it has the great wtf moment of the reporters all realizing how far over his head this politician is. Like any good politician, Brad does not waver, though, and quickly doubles down in an effort to dig up. I feel like if politicians are going to be corrupt and incompetent, the least they can do is be entertaining as well.

Unskippable this week features Dead Space 2. You can find that here.

Also, CheckPoint is up over at PATV. While you’re there, check out penny-Arcade’s sleek new site layout. It’s purdy.

Cheers!

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Posted in LRR, Unskippable | 4 Comments »

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.

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Posted in Community, LRR, Merchandise, Unskippable | 3 Comments »

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!

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Posted in LRR, Merchandise, Unskippable | 1 Comment »

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!

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Posted in LRR, Unskippable | Comments Off on Job Security

Lasers of Understanding Pre-Order
July 11th, 2011

Posted by Matt

Inspired by a recent episode of Unskippable, and featuring art by our good friend and creator of Name Game, LeeLee Scaldaferri, our new tee-shirt pre-order has gone live. When you need to show someone just how violently you respect their feelings, it’s time to unleash The Lasers of Understanding™!

Pre-orders will remain open until August 1, 2011. Don’t miss out!

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Posted in Merchandise, Unskippable | 2 Comments »

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