Giant Bomb Video Game News

I was originally quite excited when, about a year ago, Microsoft first revealed that it was working with a number of horror directors, including James Wan (Saw), David Slade (30 Days of Night), Adam Green (Hatchet), Lucky McKee (May), and James Gunn (Slither) to produce original horror-comedy shorts, for free, to be released via Xbox Live. James Gunn had me excited in particular, as he has a terrific capacity for making the sight of a man being cleaved in half incredibly funny. I was also curious to see how Microsoft would handle original content.

The shorts ended up coming out around the turn of the year, and the few that I watched were pretty underwhelming. There were some fun ideas, but they looked cheap, and everything felt tame and restrained. It would seem that some of the blame for this falls on Microsoft, at least according to Gunn, who described the experience as "painful" on his blog over the weekend.

The bait, he says, was the promise of "complete creative freedom," which prompted Gunn to produce HUMANZEE!, which he describes as "the most balls-out, fucked up thing I’ve ever shot." Apparently Microsoft freaked out, and wanted so little to do with HUMANZEE! that it released the rights to Gunn and asked him to try something else. Their sole guideline was that it should be "PG-13, with no sex." His second effort, Sparky & Mikaela, ended up getting released, though not before Gunn and Microsoft both made significant cuts to it, despite Microsoft's earlier promises of creative freedom. While his original vision for Sparky & Mikaela was along the lines of "Sid & Marty Krofft gone rancid," the end result was "barely a half-step removed from something you’d see on the Disney Channel."

Gunn described Microsoft as "the most dreadful, non-talent friendly company I've ever worked for," which, as fan of the platform, he finds particularly disappointing. He saw a lot of potential in the Xbox Live distribution model for original content, and I tend to agree with him. Luckily for fans of Gunn and James Wan, it sounds like the uncensored, uncut versions of their shorts will make it out via the internet and "other media" before too long.

On a certain level I can understand Microsoft being a little fussy about the way the original content it bankrolls reflects on the company, but I'm baffled at what it expected from these guys. If you want to see what James Gunn can do when given a little legroom, check out the PG Porn shorts he's been producing for Spike, particularly Helpful Bus.