Thursday, October 4, 2012

Save City of Heroes: a Second Incorrect Meme



The above is a video of the Atlas Park protest, right? Wrong.

One of the pieces of misinformation that has been going around is the inclusion of the above video in discussing the Save City of Heroes campaign, the implication being that this video is footage of one of the Atlas Park protests that have been ongoing in the game. It isn't.

This video, created by the genius of Leandro Pardini, is a proof-of-concept video he put together for his  City of Heroes demo file crowd assembly script. On the official forums, he asked people to send in their costume files so they could be added to the demo video. And as you can see, it came out very impressively!

One small problem. Those reporting on the closure of City of Heroes, and many people not connected with the Save City of Heroes campaign took the video to be of the Atlas Park protest that had recently taken place, not realizing the amazing but true origins and purpose of the video, and those who did understand, made no effort that their readers knew that this video wasn't of the protest nor was it connected with Save City of Heroes, but was a personal project of one very creative player. D'oh!

To clarify, the Save City of Heroes campaign never misrepresented the video. That was done by various gaming sites, YouTube channels and Tweeters. Basically, those who didn't know the game well, but heard about the closing, saw this video come out around that time, and made the erroneous connection.

Still, it is an amazing video and Leandro Pardini is one amazing City of Heroes player!