"This is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas."

Thank you Jeff Goldblum. I couldn't have said it any better myself.

thanks Matts and Jeff! I am encouraged that a video game expert sees it the same way.

When they can map Bill Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Jim Doohan's faces onto videogame bodies, so I can have Star Trek videogame characters Spock and Scotty playing keyboard and drums while Kirk sings "Rocketman," give me a call.

Mike, send the show your suggestion!

Eric, that's an idea too terrible to contemplate.

We should have a poll.

Which do you believe is the bigger disgrace to the game industry?

a: MTV's Video Mods
b: Bloodrayne in Playboy magazine
c: Spike TV Video Game Awards

Cast your vote now!

how about a live-action movie with Laura Croft?

Just happened to catch this late this evening. Some thoughts:

1/ The novelty wore off way fast. It's like once I saw one, it was "Oh, OK." and that was it.

2/ Bloodrayne was a let down! She didn't do more than a couple of poses and some gyrations. Amy Lee of Evanescence is hot enough not to need "improving" with some bustiered cyberdoll.

3/ The Missy Elliot / Tony Hawk Skiing mod showed some possibilities. Imagine the usual line of backup dancers in rap videos replaced with orcs, zombies, faeries, hellbeasts, etc.

4/ Surprisingly, there was a dearth of imagination once you get past the idea of video-gamed music videos. Wrestlers rapping and doing their moves. Videogame characters playing musical instruments. Video vixens gyrating. Woo. A shot-for-shot remake of "Stacy's Mom?" Jeez.

In the Missy Elliot / Tony Hawk video mod, when they showed a chopper in the background, I kept waiting for the dancers to jump on spinning blades like it was a plate and keep on bustin' moves while the chopper took off, or for the Missy clones to rap while downhill skiing on their boards. Ah well....

5/ Like I said above, put some real people into the game mods, singing / playing the songs in a game environment!

6/ Does anyone know the technology of this? Did the game designers help with porting the game engines into larger computers? Or did MTV use standard engines with some extra code provided? Or what?

7/ I have no idea if this kind of video modding has already been done and MTV is just jumping on an underground trend. I'm not a gamer. (Civ2 is my game. I'm so lame, aren't I?) But it strikes me that now that it has been done, and splashed all over television, lots of folks will jump on this hard. Watch for a lot of similar stuff to come along.

Now that the door is opened, you'll see lots of wilder and more imaginative stuff. Once people see that something can be done, more will do it. The imaginative leap has been made, now the craftsmen and artists (and fans) come along. Of course, copyright will keep most of it off television.

Is anyone doing game-modded porn yet? Wait for it.

8/ Move these things to more powerful computers, up the pixels, and you get better textures and detail. More fluid movement, more realistic backgrounds. More things going on all at once. Photo-realism. Should be fun.

9/ There's been something like this going on in genre fanfiction for a while. Fans take snippets from their favorite shows' episodes (Star Trek, Angel / Buffy, Smallville, etc.), re-edit them and set them to popular songs (usually love songs), making "music videos." It's been going on for several years now. Lots of crap and some very impressive ones too.

10/ Not to mention all the fan-made superhero films! Something is right on the edge of exploding, just like fanfiction did with the arrival of the Internet. Cheap digital cameras, game engine modding, cheap editing and photoshopping tools, expanding broadband access; cheaper, faster and more powerful computing. If only copyright law and practice was in line with the coming revolution....

Exceptional and perceptive review Mike, you should post it! ANYTHING done creatively is of interest and you are right that this may open the door to creative things - I hadn't thought of it that way. Thanks!

UPDATE - pretty cool eCard available above with clips, contest, etc, etc

Anybody know who plays the lead song on Video Mods? Seems cool..would like to track it down. -T

The band is the eye or something. findtheeye.com.

this is a trend how ever video mods is to not recreate characters but to import there models and use them in a motion capture software, i have experienced these things before, as i am a modder of xbox games. but i guess some ppl have other opinions.