Accursed Farms

Ross Scott (born: ), better known online as Accursed Farms (formerly known as ChilledSanity) is an American machinima creator on YouTube, Blip.tv, ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, and formerly Machinima. He is most known for his Freeman's Mind, Civil Protection, and Ross's Game Dungeon series.
==History==
=== Early life and starting on YouTube ===
Prior to YouTube fame, Scott worked many different "hell jobs" as he describes them, at one point working as a security guard. Scott also has a degree in criminology.
Ross began his YouTube career while under Machinima's wing, uploading a large amount of content. Prior to Freeman's Mind, Ross had created a different series, set in the Half Life universe, called Civil Protection. However, on May 4, 2013, Ross had a falling out with Machinima over changes their legal contracts that he found unacceptable. He later had a feud with Machinima and got into some financial trouble, but was able to get his career back on track after a proper meeting with Machinima. He currently uploads on YouTube, as well as Blip.tv, and ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.
=== Early career, joining Machinima and Freeman's Mind ===
Ross started creating videos in 2007, while Let's Plays were beginning to become popular. Machinima hired him, and he began creating machinima series such as Freeman's Mind and Civil Protection. Civil Protection centred around two Civil Protection officers in the dystopian world of Half-Life 2.
Due to the lengthy amounts of time it would take to produce episodes (principally owing to creating the series in the Source SDK), Ross decided to create a simpler, smaller-scale machinima series that would act as a stopgap between episodes. This series would be Freeman's Mind, in which Ross took on the role of the silent protagonist, Gordon Freeman, and his thoughts during the Black Mesa incident.
The series quickly became immensely popular and inspired other YouTubers to create their own Mind Series videos, based on the same formula. Two notable examples of Mind Series are Barney's Mind and Shephard's Mind (recorded in Half-Life's expansions Blue Shift and Opposing Force, respectively), whose creators would appear in brief cameo appearances in Freeman's Mind.
When Freeman's Mind quickly overshadowed Civil Protection in terms of popularity, combined with its simplicity and comparative ease of production, and finally the release of Source Filmmaker rendering use of the SDK impractical, Ross decided to cancel Civil Protection and dedicate the focus of his machinima production fully to Freeman's Mind.
He would later recount his time under Machinima as "a mess". When Machinima offered him the job he told them he would need a computer and that his recording sessions would be loud. It took Ross nine weeks to get a computer to work on and he used a little notebook that he bought to play games on the bus so he could work on Freeman's Mind in the meantime since it could barely run Adobe Premiere. He also used their conference rooms to record his lines cause they had no space for him to do it, hoping that there were no meetings. Eventually, the staff complained about Ross recording in the conference room so he would bus in at night to record lines by himself.
=== Escape from Machinima ===
After the release of Episode 44 of Freeman's Mind, Ross had multiple problems that all came from Machinima. They had changed their contract terms and had never contacted Ross about the change. Ross had a dispute with Machinima for a whole year, delaying the 45th episode, and enraging fans. When presented with the new contract terms, Ross denied, stating that what was said on the contract 'was too much', and that he wouldn't be able to gain any profit from his videos. However, on April 1, 2013, Machinima actually uploaded one of Ross' videos, Doom Guy's Mind: Episode 7, which caused confusion among the fans who actually knew what was occurring. Even Ross himself was dumbfounded on this being uploaded by Machinima.
Eventually, Ross was able to escape the grasp of Machinima and was able to quit, as Machinima threatened him with legal trouble if he did. He finally talked to Machinima one last time, and joined ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, and began uploading the next episodes of Freeman's Mind, on YouTube, Blip.tv, and ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.
=== Continued success and Freeman's Mind 2 ===
Today, Ross uploads one or two videos a month, it being Freeman's Mind, or Ross' Game Dungeon, in which he reviews games that were released decades ago. 
Ross has completed Freeman's Mind with the 68th episode, and so far have 58 Ross's Game Dungeon videos and 12 Civil Protection videos. Scott has continued to work on Freeman's Mind 2; as of November 2023, he has released 19 episodes.
=== Dead Game News and possible legal action against Ubisoft ===
One of Ross' video series is Dead Game News, a series devoted to reporting news updates on video games that can no longer be played, typically because they rely on central servers that have since been shut down. Ross has been a long-time proponent of game preservation and attempted to rally support against the practice of preventable video game destruction, with limited success due to his relatively small audience and the scope of the issue. Because of the sheer scale of the problem, on February 16, 2018, Ross elected to only post Dead Game News videos about major updates, passing the baton for more in-depth coverage to fellow YouTuber Jesse Robert Cox (not to be confused with Jesse Cox) under the title Video-Game Oblivion on his YouTube channel Rezalon, though Cox later discontinued the series due to ongoing health issues.
On December 14, 2023, Ubisoft delisted online-only racing game The Crew and announced that it would be shutting down the game's servers. In response, on January 18 2024, Ross released a video entitled Dead Game News: The Crew. The last portion of the video featured Ross stating that the incident was probably the most clear-cut case of a consumer rights violation in any recorded shutdown, and that he intended to begin a discussion on the possibility of starting legal proceedings against Ubisoft should a clear avenue present itself. Ross noted that his resources for attempting this would be limited, and that he would consider crowdfunding the case only after the most effective route had been identified. The following day, gaming outlet PCGamesN posted an article on the subject, and several other outlets followed in the days after, including NME, Metro, TechRadar and GamingBible among others. The coverage of the story brought more attention to the video and the man behind it, and Ross spent much of his next monthly livestream discussing the possibilities for legal challenges with both returning viewers and new viewers drawn by the news stories. As of January 2024, planning is still ongoing, and no legal action has commenced. Ubisoft has been made aware of Ross' announcement and have not publicly commented.
On February 24, Ross released an update video entitled Dead Game News: Early plans for stopping companies from stopping games, in which he outlined the key details of his plans and what viewers can do to help. In the video, Ross noted that legal action in America looked unlikely due to the ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg legal ruling, which set a precedent for treating EULAs as law, and therefore stated his intentions to focus his attention on legal and regulatory bodies in France, Germany, Australia, and the European Union as a whole.
== Content and style ==
The Freeman's Mind series is known for its witty and observational style of humor with a more realistic approach to the game, all portrayed through Freeman's actions and dialog. The main character, Freeman, is also a remarkable feature of the series, as he is not only an intelligent physicist but an unstable and deviant protagonist. Freeman usually does not rush through areas and tends to handle situations as a normal person would, given the circumstances and his personality. Scott has also stated that if a modded Half-Life 3 is of decent quality he will continue Freeman's Mind with that mod.
Ross's Game Dungeon is a game review series which Scott describes as a 'gaming tour', featuring his thoughts on the game interspersed with comedic interludes, and a collection of highlights on the game in question. Scott tends to cover most bases on the game with an objective lens, that is to say he notes the good qualities in games and bad qualities in games (Even if it is generally considered to be a good game or a bad game). He tends to describe the music, gameplay, features, and sometimes graphics. He does not take nostalgia into account, claiming that if an old game was good then, it should be good in the present. The series is known for its dead-pan style of humor.
Ross has also collaborated and been in other projects other YouTubers have done. During his time at Machinima, he made a short film in the Source Engine named Stranger in Need, for the Machinima Interactive Film Festival, and during the Machinima incident, he appeared in a Sven Co-op video alongside two other YouTubers and was interviewed on the radio.
Scott has also confirmed in 2015 that he is working on a full-length Machinima movie. No trailer for this movie exists yet. The movie will be made in Unreal Engine 4 and he is still currently working on it.
As of March 7th, 2018, Scott merged the Dead Game News channel with his main channel.
Almost every month, Scott hosts a live video chat where he will give announcements, answer questions from the Accursed Farms Reddit, or answer questions in the live chat. He also does monthly play sessions of games such as Zombie Panic! Source and Team Fortress Classic with fans.
Category:Gaming YouTubers
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2007