Wednesday 23 September 2009

Permanent Death: An Announcement

So today is the 23rd of September, 11 months on from the day that Far Cry 2 was released upon an unsuspecting Australia and the world. It’s fitting then that I have an announcement to make about the Permanent Death saga.

On the 23rd of October, one year to the day that Far Cry 2 was unleashed, I will be making available the entire Permanent Death story in beautiful, full-colour PDF for your reading and perusing pleasure. For a good idea of the quality of the end product, here is a short teaser containing the first couple of pages up to the end of the first chapter (around about Episode 3 on the blog). The overall effect is something akin to a graphic novel, but is also quite obviously influenced by machinima.

The PDF will be completely free, however if you find that its multiple hundred pages of full size screenshots and artfully arranged text are worth something to you I only ask that you please consider donating something. There will be absolutely no obligation to donate, or any recommended amount - just whatever you can afford and whatever you think it's worth. It will be licensed under a creative commons, non-commercial, attribution license, so you will be free to share it with any others that may appreciate it.

While there haven’t been any new episodes posted to the blog, I’ve been charging ahead in the story and am up to Episode 10 (and still alive, to boot). I will begin posting again later this week, and will hopefully finish the game/story in time to reach the end by the planned date. Mark October 23rd in your calendars.

As an aside; sometime within the next day or two, the SLRC lifetime page views will tick over to a staggering 40,000. A sincere Thank You to everyone who’s read, commented and linked to SLRC in the nearly 2 years it's been around. Here’s to plenty more.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

That's something smart but why that game? Why Crysis?

Elliott Richards said...

Good to hear, my friend.

Though I only discovered you thanks to a suggestion off of Far Cry 2's main Website (I think), I fully intend to Follow your blogs in future, and hope that you do the same with mine.

I hope you don't feel like the Perma-Death story doesn't become a chore (as we discussed in your previous episode) because you want to complete the game for this set date.

It's a great idea though, and it could certainly get some publicity. Especially once Ubisoft discover the whole plan, and put it on their Website.

Ben Abraham said...

Well, to be perfectly honest I don't really want Ubisoft to "discover the whole plan" because of potential legal wranglings. I have no idea about the legality of basing a machnima novel on their game, using their art assets, their storyline, etc, etc...

Fingers crossed I don't get a "cease and desist" letter from them or anything.

Simon Ferrari said...

It's definitely illegal, because assets are in fact the *only thing you can copyright from a game (level design, mechanics, story you can't). You might wanna get this cleared beforehand with Clint, even if you're not gonna make money off of it.