all-along-the-watchtower
Latest
EVE Spotlight: An interview with Kyoko Sakoda
EVE Spotlight is a biweekly feature in which we interview prominent members of EVE Online's player community or development team. Twice each month, we'll be shining the spotlight on a player or developer who has a significant impact on EVE to highlight the efforts of EVE's most influential people. Whether you love EVE Online or hate it, there's no doubting that the game's community has produced some great works of art. From wallpapers and papercraft ships to music parodies and incredible cinematic videos, EVE has seen more than its fair share of creative efforts over the years. In EVE's colossal social sandbox, players often use their real-life talents to make a name for themselves in the community, and this spotlight's interviewee is no exception. Film-maker Kyoko Sakoda has popped up on our radar several times, impressing players with his awesome contributions to EVE's cinematic film scene. Kyoko debuted with the well-composed 2008 video Push Eject (The Angel Cartel). Hoping to showcase the pirate way of life, he produced this video to celebrate the future release of faction warfare and the role piracy would play in it. Kyoko went on to produce War Has Come and worked with Kale Ryoko on the incredible cinematic work Future Proof. The holographic UI components Kyoko produced in Future Proof mirror those used in CCP's own Butterfly Effect trailer, and the success of those videos may even be pushing CCP to develop similar 3-D user interface elements for EVE. In this edition of EVE Spotlight, we interview film-maker Kyoko Sakoda to ask about his previous videos and get the low-down on his next big project.
'Battlestar' composer Bear McCreary scoring SOCOM 4
The grizzly-named composer Bear McCreary, most famous for putting together the score on the recent Battlestar Galactica TV series, has announced on his blog that he'll be composing the music for Zipper Interactive's upcoming SOCOM 4. McCreary previously did the scoring work on Capcom's Dark Void (and 8-bit spin-off Dark Void Zero), and for SOCOM 4, he says he's written, "muscially, a franchise re-boot," with over eight hours of original music featuring "ethnic percussion, virtuosic Asian stringed and woodwind instruments, and the spectacular, other-worldly tones of the gamelan." Insert joke here about how that Indonesian ensemble's name actually looks like "game LAN." He also says that the soundtrack will fulfill his dream "of a video game score that would feel as if it were being composed specifically for each player, adapting and shifting perfectly to capture the mood of the individual gamer." Which sounds fun, but if we start hearing an orchestral version of "All Along the Watchtower" as our individual score, what exactly does that mean?
Stunning EVE machinima depicts struggle between New Eden's factions
The sci-fi setting of EVE Online provides a great amount of material for players interested in creating machinima. But it's not everyday that a short film as good as Clear Skies or Havoc comes along. Then again, it's also not every day that something created by a player draws accolades from the game's creators -- but that's exactly the case with the work of EVE player Kyoko Sakoda, in "War Has Come" -- which beautifully captures the game, set to a cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower." Sakoda writes, "This is one of my first thematic works. I know the Bear McCreary version of the song may sound like it is out of place for a few hardcore sci-fi fans, but I could not justify using any other cover. Enjoy, and write feedback if you wish. I'm always looking to improve my storytelling, direction, and editing and compositing skills." We've got "War Has Come" embedded for you below the cut, and it's well worth a look. We just wish Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" was a longer song...
