I was lucky enough to have a phone conversation with Brent Triplett from Battlefield Friends. The show is featured on Machinima’s Happy Hour and has moved into season 3. I can’t stress how good the show is, fans of any shooter should be watching this for the ridiculousness that is the show. Without further ado, the creator, animator, and voice of the n00b. Brent Triplett.
For those who would rather read
BSR: Hey guys, this is Tom also known as Zombietron from Big Shiny Robot! Here with Brent Triplett the creative genius behind Battlefield Friends, one of my favorite web series.
Brent: Yup, writer, animator, voice actor, well one of the voice actors we have several people on our team that write and voice act and 2 animators at the moment.
BSR: That’s bigger than your intial start up right there were only a few of you to begin?
Brent: Well, my whole team always wrote and voice acted, but in the me it was just me always animating. We’ve grown in the animating department.
BSR: Oh I see, based on the bio I read you have a degree in recording is that audio recording?
Brent: I went to a school called Full Sail and they had a few tracks, I picked video recording for my track. I believe they do audio recording now, they’ve expanded since I attended in ’93.
BSR: Looking at the series you’ve created, I’ve watched a few episodes of Doraleous and Company and I blew through every episode of Battlefield Friends. How do you create these ideas?
Brent: Pretty much as I’m playing Battlefield I have a note pad next to me, if anything frustrating happens we write it down and then try to write a story around it.
BSR: With Doraleous are you a pretty big RPG gamer as well?
Brent: No, not really, we just wanted to tell stories and this was a pretty fun world to be in so we picked that genre.
BSR: Are there any other web series you watch that inspire you on this? Or is this unique.
Brent: We always like to shoot film and tell stories, but we moved to animation because of budget. This gave us access to big locations without having them. But Venture Bros. is what got me into animation.
BSR: Who are the characters from Battlefield Friends based on? Is it a group of friends, or people you know?
Brent: Yeah it’s based on the classes in Battlefield, my friends and i, or business partners picked a class and we try to play those set classes. I was pretty new, this is the first time I played Battlefield 3, I had never played before. It was really easy for me to write things from the n00b perspective because I hadn’t played, so I could speak to the overwhelming feeling and sensory overload.
BSR: Which character do you voice then?
Brent: The n00b.
BSR: Along with you I connect with the n00b very well, I left them around Halo 3. I find it interesting that even myself who doesn’t play Battlefield I can find that group of friends. Here at Big Shiny Robot we have a group of four that plays Battlefield, and in your writing I can see their personalities come out.
Brent: As far as?
BSR: I feel like you’ve perfectly captured the usual group of players with after game talk.
Brent: That’s kind of a natural thing, because all of the writers play together and work together. So you know we have the one guy who can’t stay focused and we have to be like “okay, play as a team this is what we’re doing”. And we have the guy who grabs a helicopter and he’s off, and now we’re a squad of 3. And these are things that happen to everyone, so we connect by writing stories about what happens to us.
BSR: Have you been following E3?
Brent: A little bit here and there, I spend so much time animating that I haven’t seen much, but the other members have been sending me emails and clips of Battlefield 4. I hope to find more time to watch it and maybe even attend it.
BSR: Do you plan to move this into Battlefield 4?
Brent: Oh yeah, if there’s still an audience and demand for it we’ll keep creating. It seems that we’re picking up momentum and everyone is excited about Battlefield 4 so it’d be the right decision.
BSR: What’s next for the friends? Do you have more storyline invisioned?
Brent: This season we want to try to cover everything that we’ve missed. We haven’t had a chance to do much in game with season 1 and 2, so we’ll try to cover as much in game as we can. By the time we’re done with that we’ll have all these different topics so yeah.
BSR: During season 2 you did an episode about the Battlefield patch, where this old man describes how they ruined the game.
Brent: Yeah I think there had just been a patch and for me personally playing tank, you could switch from shell to cannister and just clean up the map. After the patch there was some excitement, personally I was frustrated. You know you could hit someone with a direct hit and they wouldn’t die. How can a direct hit from a cannister not take out a guy. I was also reading all these comments on line about losing their second player and whatnot and wanted to do an episode about that. I couldn’t picture anyone better than the old grumpy guy.
BSR: I love that episode, that and bunny snipers were pretty much top 2. Like I said earlier you have so much that ties into peoples lives we have a group here at BSR that plays and when I see that old man complaining I instantly think of Arse Bot who hates everything, so thank you for the ammo.
Brent: The bunny sniper thing is funny because I was frustrated not being able to shoot these guys, so the bunny sniper was in the first episode in season 2. I don’t know if you noticed but he’s hidden in every episode after that. Sometimes he’s easier to find then others but he’s in every episode.
BSR: I love how you use recurring jokes, there is the helicopter guy with the n00b rivalry. I can’t remember his name he has black hair and square glasses Kevin maybe?
Brent: Randy
BSR: I love how you use recurring jokes with him and the series.
Brent: We try to keep it that way on purpose, Doraleous is very linear and you have to watch a few episodes to get the story in line, but with Battlefield we want you to watch from anywhere.
BSR: Brent, thank you so much for your time, before we let you go tell us what’s going on with season 3?
Brent: The first episode premiered June 9, on Machinima’s Happy Hour, about capture the flag. We’re going 13 episodes this season and then we’ll see what Battlefield 4 does.
BSR: Thank you so much for your time sir and I wish you all the best in your adventures.
Brent: Thank you.
Thomas Winkley is the video game editor for Big Shiny Robot! Reach him at thomas@bigshinyrobot.com or on twitter @thomaswinkley