So here’s the part where everyone says “Wow! I’d totally watch that movie!” but I won’t because there are plenty of good, real movies I never get around to. That being said, this fake Angry Birds movie trailer is amazingly well realized. Trying to translate that game into anything with any semblance of story seems impossible, but the guys at Machinima and The Quarter Bin managed to come up with something halfway coherent and more bizarrely, halfway faithful to the game. Jolly good show. The impossibly-fake-movie trailer trend is getting just a little tired, but this is definitely good enough to get a pass.

It looks as if Vimeo is cracking down on gameplay videos, in what seems like an odd move for the service. In carving out a niche for itself in a world that is dominated by streaming giant YouTube, Vimeo has taken some interesting approaches to video hosting. You can’t repost a video you found on the Internet or elsewhere, the rules regarding non-sexual nudity and nudity for artistic expression are more lax, and there is an increased focus on video ownership. Vimeo does not like gameplay videos, though.

The Vimeo Upload Guidelines definitely do say that gameplay videos are not allowed, although game developers are allowed to post progress videos, and machinima is acceptable if there is sufficient story involved. While this apparently hasn’t been a problem before, it looks like Vimeo is starting to crack down. However, there is a course of action for Vimeo users with gameplay videos who don’t want to migrate to YouTube: Pony up for $200 for a year of Vimeo PRO. That’s where things get a little weird.

A word to the wise: in the real world, climate change means severe weather patterns, drought, floods, and other nasty stuff. In an MMO, it just means new content!  Woo!

(via WoW Insider.)

What begins as an amusing video of Raptor Team operative Sergeant Michael “Psycho” Sykes dancing in the Crysis sandbox editor to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” becomes a horrifying, full-length music video, complete with synchronized lip movements, lit up bartender scene, and glowing nanosuit. Well done, VeliPetter.

Just give thanks you weren’t Crysis Roll’D. We seriously considered doing it. See the video at your own peril after the break.

Red vs. Blue masterminds Rooster Teeth do a lot of stuff with machinima — enacting real-life scripts with machinima — but in a pilot for their new show “Immersion,” they switch things up: by driving a real-life car in the third-person style popular among racing games and Grand Theft Auto-style action games. The driver inside the car has his windows covered up, forcing him to use a monitor hooked up to an external camera.

While it’s good fun to watch and must have been good fun to create, it’s a little scary how badly it goes from a ‘not hitting things’ perspective:

So: Remember the patently insane machinima video describing the whole Tiger Woods affair? And how the Internet came together and laughed at it, because, wow, it looked like someone was using The Sims 3 to report the news? And how all the stars of America’s celebrity firmament tumbled directly into the Uncanny Valley?

Well, after Tiger Woods’ press conference today, we now know that that the video’s portrayal of marital fisticuffs was false. Who knew that weird Chinese tabloid videos are not to be trusted?

Remember Apple Daily, the Taiwanese tabloid that produces CGI videos depicting the events of major Western news stories? And how their segment on the Tiger Woods scandal started a mini-empire of Internet virality? Adult Swim is now airing the videos as “Adult Swim News” segments. Can a show composed entirely of “viral” “internet” “vids” be far behind?

(That is, one that isn’t on G4?)