By Robert Scucci
| Published
South Park’s “Make Love, Not Warcraft” was a critical hit and fan favorite immediately upon its release, and even won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 2007. But behind the scenes, series creator Trey Parker literally begged producer Anne Garefino to not let the episode broadcast because he thought it was the worst thing he had ever produced at the time.
In fact, Parker thought “Make Love, Not Warcraft” was so bad that it would ruin South Park’s legacy, and at the time said, “I’ve lost it. I don’t know how to do this anymore.”
Second only to “Scott Tenorman Must Die” on the IMDb user ratings, “Make Love, Not Warcraft” is celebrated to this day for being one of the best episodes in the series, which was a huge relief to Parker, who couldn’t even sleep the night before it went on the air because he was so worried about putting out a less-than-satisfactory episode to kick off Season 10’s mid-season run.
We Can’t Give Up On The World … Of Warcraft
“Make Love, Not Warcraft” is a unique South Park episode because Blizzard Entertainment, the company who produced the influential MMORPG, actually helped out with a substantial amount of the animation after being approached by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Given South Park’s six-day production schedule, animating the 3D gameplay from scratch would have been a monolithic undertaking, but thanks to Blizzard’s willingness to help with the gameplay sequences, became a possibility.
In an all-hands-on-deck fashion, South Park animators were able to import actual character designs from World of Warcraft into their animation software and lip sync them with the dialogue that they had recorded for the show.
What’s even more impressive is the fact that the gameplay in “Make Love, Not Warcraft” was actual gameplay that was captured by Blizzard and South Park Studios with Parker directing their movements. Parker described the entire process as directing a live-action film, but instead of working with actors he was telling Blizzard employees where to walk on the maps so he could set up shots and execute the scenes as he had written them.
The Animation Process Inspired The Script
In the typical South Park fashion, “Make Love, Not Warcraft” was produced under a tight schedule, which often requires frequent rewrites as the episode begins to take shape. Funnily enough, the collaboration with Blizzard actually helped Parker finish writing the episode because something unique happened while shooting the gameplay scenes: somebody broke into the private server Blizzard had set up for the episode, and started killing their characters while they were trying to shoot scenes.
If you’re familiar with the episode, this is actually a crucial plot point, as Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, and Stan find themselves in a similar situation after a high-ranking griefer keeps running around and killing their characters when they’re trying to work their way through various campaigns.
As it turns out, there’s actually a secret “death touch” that high-ranking Blizzard employees could use with proper approvals to prevent such instances from happening, which led to the creation of the in-episode weapon, the Sword of a Thousand Truths, which helped the boys (and Randy) defeat the kill-happy griefer once and for all so they could finally play the game as intended.
When In Doubt, Just Let It Go
Though Trey Parker absolutely hated “Make Love, Not Warcraft” when the episode was near completion, he was talked off the ledge by South Park co-creator Matt Stone and executive producer Anne Garefino, who are all too familiar with his creative process. As stated in 6 Days to Air and countless other interviews, Trey Parker admittedly gets too close to his own work and has trouble seeing any redeeming qualities when production comes down to the wire and he has to turn something into the network for broadcasting.
South Park’s production schedule forces Parker, who’s well known to criticize his own work, to push through the doubt because he simply doesn’t have any time to question the creative process when a deadline is fast approaching. Thankfully, he has the right people in his corner because if he wasn’t encouraged to just let it go and release his creations into the world, we wouldn’t be blessed with groundbreaking episodes like “Make Love, Not Warcraft.”
