War of the Servers is a full-length Machinima Film made using Half-Life 2 and the Garry's Mod add-in to HL2. It is a parody retelling of H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds done within the computer environment of these two programs.
The film opens with the narrator and protagonist describing the Garry's Mod environment in Half-Life, used to play with the physics engine or to build constructions inside it. The trouble begins when a strange fog envelops the world: one that the administrator of that particular server neither enabled nor is able to stop: and a new contraption appears, which eventually starts vaporizing every player in the game, except for a few fortunate to escape.
Administrators of various servers ("admins") begin a concerted effort to mount a war against the invading hordes of new users, called "mingebags." As the movie progresses, the admins are unable to stop the mingebags, and various efforts are made to try to attack their contraptions, by air and by any attempt the admin military forces can devise.
For a film constructed using machinima, it is very well done, and does a fairly good translation of the Wells story, even to the ending where the mingebags are defeated, basically they're a bunch of kids, and quit when they have to go back to school on Monday.
You can see the film here
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This film gives examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.
- Badass Normal: Steinmann, the protagonist, is one of the few players to survive the invasion, even after a face-to-face battle with the invaders themselves.
- Children Are Cruel: The Mingebags are basically 12 year old kids playing a video game. What makes them cruel is what they choose for fun.
- Cool Boat: Renamed "The Admin Boat: Thunder Child".
- Inside a Computer System: The whole point of the film
- Jerkass: Arguably the Mingebag players. Either they don't know that they're effectively perma-banning hundreds, possibly thousands of innocent gamers, or they just don't care.
- Not So Invincible After All: The Mingepods could easily be taken out with Lua coded bricks which undoes the welds holding them together (The Artileery guns use them, Two Admin planes use them as bombs, And one could believe that the Thunder Child uses them for her ammunition.) What makes them hard to stop is how quickly they destroy players.
- Run or Die: By the midway through the movie everyone, including the Admins, realize that this is the only thing you can do against the Mingepods.
- Sequel Hook: Despite the increased security to ensure nothing like the Mingepods ever happens again, it appears that there are some remnants of them left.
- Serious Business: Steinmann seems to take the game rather seriously (presumably being crashed by the remover gun somehow makes you totally unable to log in again, but he stays up all night playing the game just running away...).
Fridge Brilliance, in that Steinmann comes from R.J's Serious Build Server. - Soundtrack Dissonance: Lemon Jelly's upbeat "Nice Weather For Ducks" plays during the credits, while the rest of the soundtrack is much more serious in nature.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When Steinmann regroups with some survivors, one of the players suggests they hide underground, following the WotW script....Except an admin points out they're on a map, so it wouldn't work, and then promptly uses Table Fu on him.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Eventually happens when The Green Mafia get into a fight with the Admins over a Pizza Tip.
