Australian Gamer Interview :: Interview with Gus Sorola

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Interview with Gus Sorola

Samo interviews Gus Sorola at the ACMI Machinima Film Festival 2007

ACMI Machinima Film Festival : Interview with Gus Sorola : Interview with Stolen Life

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Samo: I was going to say happy birthday, but you missed your birthday this year didn’t you?

Gus Yeah, it didn’t happen. I was on the plane I guess, somewhere over the international date line, so I lost it.

Samo: On the website Burnie was saying something about you being immortal now...

Gus: Yeah I gotta watch out for stakes through the heart when I get back to the office. (Laughs)

Samo: So welcome back to Melbourne, is it good to be back?

Gus: Yeah it’s great, I like coming back to Melbourne, this is our third event here now, and I hope I’ll be here for numbers four through, one hundred.

Samo: So you’re off to Adelaide next, do you have a few days to sit back and relax in between events?

Gus: Let me think, we get to Adelaide tomorrow, we have a day or two before our event there. Should be good because I’m not familiar with the city, so I’ll be able to figure it out, I hear it’s pretty small though. I have to work a little on my presentation that I’m going to do over there so I’ll probably do that on the plane ride and have a day off over there.

Samo: Have you ever been to a small Australian country town before?

Gus: No, not in Australia (Laughs)

Samo: Being Australian, we’re all pretty competitive, so we all tend to hate on Adelaide.

Gus: Yeah I hear Melbourne and Sydney have a big rivalry, and Adelaide thinks they can compete, but no-one even pays attention to them.

Samo: Word of advice, be sure to stay away from the West End Draught while you’re over there.

Gus: West End Draught, got it.

Samo: I read somewhere that you like your Boag’s while you’re over here.

Gus: Yeah I love it, but a month or two ago, I actually found out that they sell it in the States now. I found a grocery store, not too far away from where I live that carries it, so I drink it at home all the time now, I might have to go to Coopers I guess now. No, no they have Coopers over there too. It’s not just Fosters any more.

Samo: Well it’s better than drinking Bud that’s for sure.

Gus: Oh yeah, I don’t touch that stuff. There’s some worse stuff than Budwieser, I mean Budwieser’s bad, but there’s other beers that I’m sure, don’t see export. There’s this one called Milwaukee’s Best, but everyone calls it ‘The Beast’ it’s no good. I’ve had some bad Carltons before, the first time I had Carlton Cold.

Samo: Yes, I am ashamed.

Gus: The first time we came out we didn’t know anything about Australian Beers, so I tried all of them, I definitely found the ones I didn’t like right away.

Samo: So the 75 Episode curse has long been broken, Red vs Blue is up to 90 episodes.

Gus: Yeah 90, 91 hopefully next week.

Samo: Big numbers, 100 just around the corner. Speaking of big numbers, last year you’d just clocked up 400,000 users on your forum, now you’re up to 550,000, 150,000 in a year is a massive sign up rate.

Gus: Yeah, we’re closing on 600,000 now.

Samo: Really? The 550,000 user announcement was only made a week or so ago.

Gus: No, it’s been a couple of weeks, but yeah another 50,000 it’s got here pretty quick.

Samo: Wow, where do you get all the disk space to host all those users and their Journals and their Photos?

Gus: Surprisingly, the photos don’t take up as much space as you would think they would, the big one is the database, I think compressed it’s about 7GB, uncompressed it’s about 21GB and that’s really just a big text file, a big SQL file.

Samo: So it’s been a pretty big year for Red vs Blue, you had the xbox live marketplace series, how did that take off for you?

Gus: It went really well, we were really pleased about the number of downloads it received and its one of the most downloaded things on the xbox live marketplace. I don’t remember the exact numbers so I can’t tell you which demographic or anything, but it’s up there. It helps that I downloaded it a thousand times myself, but we were really pleased with it and I think for the most part, the people who enjoy Red vs Blue were pleased with it too. We did get a couple of strange negative responses to it, people didn’t like the action oriented stuff, they said it wasn’t very Red vs Blueish, they wanted more comedy and I can see that. I can respect what people say about that.

Samo: So if you do something different, you thought you might as well make it different.

Gus: Yeah, we thought, why not. It’s not really Red vs Blue main story so we thought we’d make something interesting. That was also a chance for us because that’s the first video we made in high definition, the entire series was, I believe,720p. We were testing out some new hardware that we had recently acquired and that was like our test run and we’re recording, I don’t think we’ve talked about this publicly, but we’re recording the current season in 1080p, and hopefully when it’s all said and done we’ll have an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc or something to release.

Samo: Halo 2 will let you record in 1080p?!

Gus: Yeah, the xbox outputs 1080p, the Halo 2 graphics are 720p graphics but the xbox scales them up to 1080p and it looks okay. We’ll probably end up authoring it in 720p, depending on how it looks but it still looks really good.

Samo: So with the Out of Mind series being such a success, have you looked into distributing high definition Red vs Blue on xbox live marketplace? There must be some exciting options available in terms of XBLM distribution.

Gus: It would make sense for us to do that and we talk about it and kick around ideas all the time trying to figure out a way to make it viable. Xbox live marketplace is obviously going to be visited by a full audience, there’s a lot of people on it, it’s just a matter of making it work in conjunction with our website, obviously you can’t link to websites through the xbox live marketplace, it’s a little harder to get the traffic coming across to the website from there but we’re looking at it and hopefully we’ll figure out a way to make it work.

Samo: It seems like an excellent way of getting into people’s living rooms.

Gus: Yeah, it’s on their TV, and we talked about the high def and a lot of people are getting the high def televisions, it’s definitely the way to do it.

Samo: I’m sure you saw the episode of South Park, Make Love Not Warcraft, with guys like Matt Stone and Trey Parker putting machinima on the TV, it seems its only a matter of time before we see machinima go into mainstream TV.

Gus: Yeah, from what I understand, the guys who helped them make that were the same people who made a machinima piece in Warcraft called ‘The Return’. They made that I guess two years ago and I guess they were the World Of Warcraft machinima consultants to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, and they helped them get a lot of that stuff done. Yeah I enjoyed it, I laughed.

Samo: Microsoft approached you to do the series for XBLM didn’t they?

Gus: They had been approaching us for some time about putting Red vs Blue on xbox live, like I said, we still hadn’t figured out how to do it, so it was kind of a test on our part. We said, why don’t we make something special, something a little different from Red vs Blue and put that on there. So it was mutually beneficial, they wanted content and we wanted to test the water to see how it was and I think it worked out good, it was a good middle ground.

Samo: After the series was put on the marketplace, did you see any noticeable change in traffic on your website?

Gus: I don’t think so, It’s always a weird thing to try to figure that out. Seems like things that would be really big and generate a lot of publicity don’t always do that. For example we made a video for Total Request Live on MTV in the United States about a year ago and tons of people watch that and we didn’t really see any traffic from that, we expected a huge jump but there wasn’t. Out of Mind, the people who have an xbox 360 and downloaded should for the most part already be familiar with Red vs Blue, but we find that it isn’t always the case, so we didn’t really know what kind of numbers to expect from that.

Samo: Now the other major change to Red vs Blue this year are obviously the comics. How did that come about?

Gus: The way it happened, was there was a guy on our website who’s username was Luke McKay, turns out that’s his real name too, who had made fan art of Red vs Blue characters, he drew all of them in the Spartan armour with their helmets off and we thought it was really interesting that he did a good job of what the characters would look like if they took their helmets off and um, how did we meet him, did we meet him? Then one day, we were thinking about how to branch out and do other stuff and we thought well what about a web comic, we’re all big fans of Penny Arcade and we thought if they can make it work, why can’t we? So we decided that we should make a web comic and we were trying to figure out who would draw it, because we’re all untalented, and we figured this Luke McKay guy would be ok, and right around the same time we were thinking that, he made a comic about us and posted it in his journal on our website and we’re like, oh that’s perfect, then he and Geoff’s wife got talking a little bit and she was giving him ideas for comics and they made a couple of spec ones and we thought that’s great we’ll make it a regular feature so we contacted him and that’s how that happened.

Samo: It obviously portrays a fairly crazy and out there Rooster Teeth team, how much of an exaggeration are they of what happens in the office?

Gus: Almost every comic really happened. There are some exaggerations like I think the current storyline has me in wrist braces with Carpal Tunnel, the reason that happened was because one morning about a month ago, I woke up and I went to use my computer like my normal routine, I was going to check the news websites and every time I clicked, I felt a pain in my hand and I though oh no, am I getting Carpal Tunnel? I was really worried, I mean that’s my clicking finger, any other finger it could have affected and this was the one. I was really worried that morning and I took a shower and got dressed and it went away, so that was the inspiration for that comic for example.

Samo: That would mean that there’s a fair bit of practical joking that takes place in the office then, have you ever wanted to kill Geoff?

Gus: Burnie is the one I want to kill. (Laughs) Sometimes I’ll be sitting at my desk answering e-mail or doing something and he’ll come over and he’ll put his ass right on my shoulder and sit on me, and I’m like, what are you doing?

Samo: One comic actually had you guys in hospital, has the joking ever resulted in a hospital visit?

Gus: Oh has there, I don’t think so... No we’ve been very lucky, you’d think there’d be alcohol poisoning or something by this point, but no we’ve been lucky. I think a big factor in that working for ourselves, none of us have health insurance so we had to be very careful about the boundaries we push, if we put anyone in the hospital, it could have been very expensive.

Samo: The big question on everybody’s lips this year, why is cake superior to pie?

Gus: It’s not messy, pie is normally too messy like you have apple or cherry pie, you try to eat it and it all falls out of the side. It’s not a very good food. They’re too sweet normally, pies are really just, too sugary.

Samo: I’m sure Geoff has his reasons...

Gus: I’m sure he does, and they’re all wrong.

Samo: Alright, we know Burnie is properly addicted to achievements, just how high is his gamer score? Can it ever be beaten?

Gus: We have people on our friends list that have a higher score, I think right now his score is like 17,000 and I think Geoff is a little above, like 1,000 points above. One guy on our friends list though, who’s an employee at Bungie, his scores like at 23,000.

Samo: Wow that makes me feel inadequate, I’m a games reviewer and my score’s only 2,500.

Gus: I think mine is 2,500 or so, somewhere there. Then my 360 broke the other day.

Samo: Yeah I actually had a question about that, you’re pretty much Halo’s biggest promotional rep, and you can’t even get a 360 that works?

Gus: (Laughs) No, I’m just like everyone else, I had to pre-order my 360, got it on launch day and now it’s broken. I had to call customer support, wait on hold and I got told I was out of warranty so I had to pay $150 to fix it so I told the no, I’ll pass. Because I don’t know anything, but I keep hearing rumours that there’s supposed to be a hardware revision coming out, it’s supposed to have a bigger hard drive and the HDMI output, I don’t know if its true or not, but I don’t want to spend $150 bucks now to get it fixed and then have it come out in like two months, so I figure I’ll wait until May or June and see what happens.

Samo: Yeah, I know what it’s like, I’m on my second 360 myself.

Gus: Yeah I’m surprised mine lasted so long, everyone that I know who got one at launch, theirs broke.

Samo: So what game are you playing at the moment?

Gus: Right now on the flight over I played a lot of Super Princess Peach on my Nintendo DS. I’m almost done with it, I think I’m on the next to the last stage. I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft Burning Crusade.

Samo: So the Wii, it’s obviously a lot of fun sober, but considering how good or dangerous it is after a couple of cans, do you think your old website DrunkGamers.com might have been cut off before its prime?

Gus: (Laughs) I think we probably would have ruined a couple of TVs by now, I’ve seen some bad pictures on the internet already, it’s really scary every time I have a friend over and they want to play the Wii, I’m like put the wrist strap on, hold on to it. Every time we play bowling and someone makes that motion at the screen, I just, I can’t really look, I see a shattered TV.

Samo: Has anyone or anything in the Rooster Teeth office sustained a Wii injury yet?

Gus: I think so, but I can’t think of it right now, so I’m going to say no. Someone was complaining about Wii elbow the other day, I can’t think of anything other than that.

Samo: So 2006 was obviously a big year, what’s coming up in 2007 for the Rooster Teeth team?

Gus: A lot. Well with Red vs Blue we’re going to finish up season 5 this year, we’re going to hit our 100th episode this year also soon.

Samo: Will that be in season 5?

Gus: Yeah, I think we’re currently shooting for that to be the end of season 5, I think this season is going to be an episode or two longer simply because we wanted to end the season at 100. As far as Rooster Teeth goes, we have some new projects that we should be able to show by the end of this summer in the states, so the winter down here.

Samo: Can you give us a tantalising tidbit of info about them?

Gus: Um, well this new thing that we’re working on, it’s definitely video game related but it’s maybe a little more traditional animation versus machinima, but it’s still video game humour, very video game related type stuff. We’re excited about it.

Samo: Halo 3 is obviously just around the corner, will we be seeing Red vs Blue transition to Halo 3 in season 6?

Gus: It’s hard to say, you really can’t say unless we get a chance to play the final version of the game because there’s so many weird mechanics that need to work right in the game for us to be able to film. Who knows if you’ll even be able to put your gun down in Halo 3?

Samo: True, when you wrote in Halo 2, that was a big jump into the future, what can we expect from a transition to Halo 3?

Gus: We’ve played around with the time travel idea a little bit, and you’re definitely going to see more discussion about the time travelling, I don’t know if another jump into the future would work for Halo 3, we’ll have to figure something else out.

Samo: Surely every man and his dog are asking you about Halo 3, are you sick of being asked about it?

Gus: No, no. I think people realise that we can’t talk about it. We had the chance to play it a couple of months ago, we’re not allowed to say anything. We were already under NDA with Microsoft before we went in, and then we had to sign another NDA when we played it so I can’t really say anything at all.

Samo: Can you tell us if it’s good or not?

Gus: It was fun, I had a blast. One of the rounds, we were playing four on four team slayer and one of the rounds I had the most kills. We were playing against five developers and I beat them all.

Samo: Oh nice.

Gus: I threw the controller down, stood up and started shouting in your face at all of them, I wasn’t a very gracious winner.

Samo: Alright lastly, we saw Grif get kidnapped in the last episode, ep 90. Who in their right mind would want to kidnap Grif?

Gus: You’ll see, it’s actually a storyline I’m kind of excited about. You’re going to see some characters you haven’t seen for a while and it’s going to be really really cool, the next couple of episodes, the stuff that happens in the cavern.

Samo: Thanks a lot Gus, really appreciate it.

Gus: Thank you.

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