History of Game Over Studios
By Kenburn
When I was 13 my friends and I spent a lot of our spare time making backyard movies. It was during this time that I learned my way around a camera, a capture card, and an editing system (imovie '04 at the time). Most of the movies we made were about 3-5 minutes long with no real storyline, just a lot of sword fighting. It was around 2005 that we actually started incorporating a story to our movies. in 2006, we made our last live action backyard movie which was 30 minutes in length, after we made this movie (which took 2-3 months to make) we decided to take a break. That's when Halo came along.
In late January of 2007 I received my first xbox (an original xbox) for my 16th birthday. With it I was given many games, including "Halo: Combat Evolved" and "Halo 2." For many years I was skeptical of the xbox, I hated the controllers and most of the games. That is, until I played Halo 2 for the first time at a nearby Lazertag arena (which had xboxes in it's lobby) I was instantly hooked and so I asked for an xbox on my birthday.
I didn't have xbox live for the first few days, but that changed quickly. I began playing online for several weeks with my real-life friend TNS Tasadarr. It wasn't long until I met Rushspartan and then Brujin in matchmaking and miscellenious custom games (mainly cops and robbers at the time)
One night in March I began to think again about our backyard movies, most of us were around the age of 15-17 now so we didn't have much time to do backyard movies anymore what with jobs, homework, and relationships. I had also been watching a lot of Hollywood Halo and CM-Xwing productions recently. I put 2 and 2 together and decided that I wanted to make a Halo Machinima clan. With this we could continue making movies and it wont interrupt our social lives as much. Quickly I got onto xbox-live and tried to make a clan. Once I had to choose a name I could only think of a few titles, I was originally going to name our clan "Halowood Productions" which now that I look back on it I realize that is a complete rip off from Hollywood Halo. After I couldn't get the name I started to think of in-game quotes that are often used such as "Press start" or "1up" then I thought of "Game Over." I didn't like the sound of "Game Over Films" or "Game Over Productions" so I stuck with "Game Over Studios."
And so it began, sort of. What I soon realized was that I had practically no space on my computer to make videos (imovie makes the files HUGE) so I couldn't be the camera man. This stalled my plans for quite a while. I decided to recruit people I liked so when we do get a camera man we'd be ready to film. Eventually TNS Tasadarr introduced me to Hercules117, whom Tasadarr knew in real life. As we talked we realized that we actually met 2 years previous in Drivers Ed. I eventually told Hercules about our predicament with not having a camera man and he told us that he could film, he had enough room on his pc for it and he had a capture card.
On March 31st Hercules, Rushspartan, and 2 other guys filmed GOS' first video (Unofficial). I wasn't in it because I was busy all day so they couldn't contact me. After we made our second introduction video my father bought an external hard drive for our macintosh, this allowed me to begin filming our videos.
On September 28th 2008 we were sponsored by Machinima.com, since then we have adopted the title of "Studio" in place of "Clan." Though we started out as such, we now consider ourselves more than that. Our shows have grown in popularity, and a sense of "Fame" is just now beginning to dawn on us. Several times our staff have been recognized in matchmaking, and in real life!
Writing this, I remember a conversation I once had with Brujin right around the time we first started filming. We spoke of this day, that perhaps we would one day be paid to do this, that one day our videos would receive hundreds of thousands of views, that one day we could be revered by our fans, and that one day we could be recognized for our work. We have finally reached that point, and now our aims are higher, Brujin and I speak of days with even more outrageous goals, and we now realize that it is possible!
Milestones
Clan Creation: 3/17/07
First Episode of Halo 3 Forges: 12/31/07
Machinima Sponsorship: 9/28/08
First Episode of Greetings from Riverside: 5/16/09
First Episode of Halo Reach Forges: 10/1/10
We finally made it.
Thank you to all of our fans for making this possible.
Sincerely, Kenburn