Deep: A feature length machinima powered by Source

The revelation that Indie Game: The Movie would be coming to Steam was a very interesting one, and it left a lot of people wondering what was next. Well, the answer is kind of surprising. Brown Bag Studios, a European animation studio, has licensed Valve’s Source engine for use in their upcoming project Deep. The film tells the story of a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world. This particular apocalypse was caused by World War III, making Deep the first Source engine product to acknowledge the number 3.

Harumph.

Anyways, I don’t really understand the motivation for this. The Source engine has never been breathtaking and that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. Since they don’t have to worry about real-time playback on weaker hardware, the team should really try to license the Unreal Engine 4 and make a movie with that.

That being said, there is one thing that Valve has that nobody else does: Steam. A partnership with Valve could mean a potential distribution through the immensely popular gaming platform, which would be huge for Brown Bag Studios. I imagine that the public at large is far less likely to accept dated visuals in an animated film than machinima-loving gamers who are used to that sort of thing, so selling the product directly to gamers would absolutely be in the company’s best interest.

I’m very curious to see what machinima with a €15 million budget looks like. It could very well blow everyone away. If nothing else, Deep is definitely something to keep your eye on.