by Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and Cody "Micajah" Bye


December 27th, 2007 - Though we've long heard rumblings that the EverQuest and World of Warcraft IP coming to the silver screen, it seems MMORPGs may make their cinematic debut far sooner than any of us expected - except that actual players, not the fantasy storyline, will be the focus. Pure West Documentaries, a award-winning company that previously focused its viewfinder on industrial and not-for-profit fundraising films, wanted a premier topic that they could call their own. The culmination of their efforts is Second Skin, two years in the making and released just this week to start the festival circuit with March 2008's South by Southwest Film Festival.

In part one of this two part series, we discussed the background of "Second Skin" including the difficulties of maintaining a neutral bias throughout the documentary, the technical aspects of making a film that preserved the human-ness of gaming in a digital world, and the approach they used to film the powerful segment dealing with gaming addiction.. Part two of our interview with Pure West Producer Peter Schieffelin Brauer, Director Juan Carlos Piñeiro and Producer / Writer Victor Piñeiro begins with a look at the "ethical" Chinese gold farm segment, developer relations throughout the making of the film, the film's look at the second lives of disabled gamers, how the documentary treated the topic of cybersex, and the path to theatrical and/or general release for "Second Skin."


Jeff, Ten Ton Hammer - About the gold farming portion of the film, just from a quick read of your website, Frederick, one of the film's subjects, moved to China to set up what was referred to as an “ethical” gold farm, and you tell his story in the course of the film. Apart from the obvious developer concerns about ToS-violations and so forth, a lot of gamers feel that the secondary market works against the spirit of the game – that players can buy their way into aspects of the game that they didn’t earn passage to. Do you present this side of the story too?

"We really tried to take an approach that wasn’t slandering the gold shops themselves; calling them sweatshops or whatnot. It was really just trying to define them in terms of an economy, with the idea that an economy exists within the games themselves.."

- Juan Carlos Piñeiro, Director

Victor - Of the seven characters we have as the subjects of our movie, I’m going to say that 6 of them are against gold farming. We actually show gold farming from the perspective of, you know, we are definitely not down with this – don’t put us down as saying we’re for gold farming, because we’re very against it. But then, it was just such a fascinating place to go, and when I found this friend of mine whose brother was a gold farmer, I thought, ‘Okay, we’ve got to visit this.’ We definitely include the aspect that none of these guys are into gold farming, but then when we go to China and see this gold farm that’s so different from anything we’ve seen in the paper or the New York Times, we were like ‘this is too crazy to pass up, we’ve got to throw this in even if it’s just for a couple minutes in the movie. It’s a neat little segment, I really love it.

Juan Carlos – The other thing about the gold farming is, we really tried to take an approach that wasn’t slandering the gold shops themselves; calling them sweatshops or whatnot. It was really just trying to define them in terms of an economy, with the idea that an economy exists within the games themselves.

Peter – At the same time, there are a lot of gamers who gripe about gold farmers then buy it themselves. We don’t talk about this in the movie, but if you look at some of the research, there’s a lot of people that really complain about it and are hypocritical in their actions. We talked to one guy who purchased a character then complained about farmers taking his loot. It’s a complicated question for sure. But we don’t focus on the American lives, we focus on these guys in China that have the joy of being able to play World of Warcraft 12 hours a day instead of some horribly dangerous construction site. These are young kids that love playing WoW, and they found a way to get paid to do it. You can’t dislike them too much, they’re pretty likable guys.

Jeff, Ten Ton Hammer – We see that you talked with Rich Vogel and Gordon Walton from Bioware, who may or may not be working on an unannounced MMORPG. In general, what’s been the reaction from developers you’ve talked to? Are they helpful, a little frightened, what’s their take?

Peter – We also talked to Scott Hartsman [former EverQuest II producer] and Matt Firor, one of the producers on Dark Age of Camelot. Blizzard is a juggernaut, we didn’t get to talk to them, but Sony Online [Entertainment] was very helpful; we got to talk to a lot of people from there.

Juan Carlos – Sony’s really been a dream, to be honest with you. They’ve just been so helpful and so giving with the machinima and just helping us get really good access at FanFaire. Peter hung out at FanFaire for a couple of days and he got some great footage there.

Jeff, Ten Ton Hammer – You talk also with disabled gamers, and I’ve always thought that would be a neat angle. How did you come across these folks? Is there an organization devoted to them, are there guilds?

"Most disabled people we’ve talked to, you end up meeting them and you already have reservations based on the fact that they’re disabled. To be able to lose that wall from the get-go just by meeting someone online; that’s essentially the greatest boon that exists inside these games. "

- Peter Schieffelin Brauer, Producer

Peter – There are some places where there’s a group of disabled gamers that’ll meet in communities such as Second Life. But the way that I came across the disabled gamer that we ended up following is a guy by the name of Andrew Munkelban, just a great, great guy, was randomly through a film friend that I had met, just said ‘I know a guy.’ I just started talking to him, and just an amazing conversation the began between us.

We ended up going up to Buffalo to meet him – it was just so interesting, going from a purely online relationship to having a real-life relationship with someone who, you know, you couldn’t tell at all that they were disabled online. You had this fluid conversation with someone. And then to be able to actually meet him – one of the disabilities he has is an inability to talk, so he would actually type everything out to us while we were there. To have that come so late in the game in terms of getting to know him, it really added such a different angle because you didn’t come into it the same way that most disabled people we’ve talked to, you end up meeting them and you already have reservations based on the fact that they’re disabled. To be able to lose that wall from the get-go just by meeting someone online; that’s essentially the greatest boon that exists inside these games. You don’t base people off of race, color, creed, anything – you base it off of who this person is, and it really allows for people to be free.

Victor – It was also pretty fascinating because inside the game, he’s a guildmaster, on the side he edits music videos and submits them in Second Life and shows people. It was just fascinating; this really multi-faceted guy who was just the most down-to-earth, chill person. I really didn’t go into any detail asking him about his disabilities, so it was this huge surprise when we got to his house and like, ‘Oh, this is nothing like I pictured it. I’ve been hanging out with this guy on Second Life who kind of looks like you but he walks and talks and jumps and hangs out.’ It was definitely one of the most powerful experiences in making this movie.

We actually hung out with a bunch of disabled people throughout the making the movie, and every time they’d mention that it really feels like a second life to them, they really feel like they’re such a vital part of the community for the first time. What we took away from it was, you push back a layer and you think that MMOs aren’t just a boon for disabled people in this vein. You’ve got people from small towns all over the world that can’t find like-minded people and then, here you go, you jump into a virtual world and you’ve got a guild full of friends. It’s a really powerful experience.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game he could since.

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