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Machinima
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Machinima is a technique that relies on the use of 3D game engines to generate a
recorded performance in virtual worlds. It is rooted in the gaming community and the
interactive access that is part of games’ nature but it also applies cinematic
language. Technically, it can be realized as a linear video, a recorded event-world, or
a ‘live performance,’ with each form offering different possibilities and limitations. All
three forms are interconnected and share some key elements. Four of these
elements are the remediation of cinematic effects and of the underlying game engine
that leads to a form of virtual puppetry and hyperrealism. These features describe a
wide range of expressions – especially concerning the rich visual stylization – as well
as severe limitations – particularly in the actors’ controls and animations. They
position Machinima in a rough framework of expressive features. Offering the highest
level of interactive functionality, the ‘live performance’ Machinima has the most
potential for interactive storytelling. Three main examples from different fields
exemplify this potential. It is here that Machinima offers access to new forms that
combine cinematic visualization and live performance.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Given that machinima shorts are free publicity for the games they're made from, you'd think that game companies and machinimist would be trading high-fives. You'd be wrong. Relations between the game industry and the machinima community took a big hit in August when Microsoft ... published explicit rules for what machinimists can and can't do with most of Microsoft's stable of games.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Machinima are computer-animated films shot within video games that reveal possibilities and pitfalls in the growing convergence of cinema and video games. By satirically dramatizing the inner lives of video game characters, the machinima films Deviation and Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles undercut the cycle of combat and death that impels first-person shooters. Performed through standard avatars provided in the online multiplayer video game Counter-Strike, Deviation imagines the existential horror of actually living one's life within the bloody, militaristic, single-goal-driven universe of a first-person shooter game. Although it celebrates the radical possibility of filmmaking distributed across a network of remote collaborators who meet in the virtual space of an online game, Deviation soundly condemns the pointlessness of video-game violence and displays no enthusiasm for game play. Deviation's serious-minded critique of repetition and futility within the gaming world is indebted for its "Why are we here" theme, if not its tone, to the best-known machinima work to date, the ongoing comedy series Red vs. Blue, which, unlike Deviation, remains unabashedly steeped in the lowbrow world of game culture.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
To be able to say something about such a complex phenomenon as user-produced game modifications, it is important to consider modders as neither totally autonomous in their productive actions nor completely vulnerable to the game industry.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
The history of electronic games, as relatively short as it may be, can already be divided into several distinct personalities. To the game developer, this body of history represents a list of successes and failures compounded by the belief that if only he or she would have had as much polygonal power in 1987 as exists today, the failures would be fewer. To the game-consuming public, the history is a dull lesson that drops off just short of the second-to-last game system actually owned. The future, to game players, is possibly more important than the past. To the collector, the electronic games history is a bible to be revered and a reference to be digested and divulged at classic game conventions. To the academic, this history is a disorganized, infantile beast--full of discrepancies and confusion--that's waiting to be collected, sorted, observed, tamed, and pushed into the realm of true innovation.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
I first meet Britta Pollmuller in Second Life through my colleague Andrew. When I heard that Britta was teaching machinima classes in SL at the Open University’s Schome Park, I asked her if we could talk about the work in SL, and how it differs from the experience of teaching in more conventional settings
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
During machinima production a computer game’s protagonists become actors, its dungeons or domestic interiors become virtual sets, and the player takes the role of director. Creating machinima can be as simple as logging into a game and recording the action as it unfolds in real time.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Video prototyping is an established technique in HCI, often used early in the design process to show the context in which a particular interface might be used. Unfortunately, even with falling costs, video production is expensive and demands many tangible resources. Machinima appears poised to offer a new approach to video prototyping. To understand how well machinima serves this need today, and to discover insights about how future machinima platform designs might support this approach, we categorize and evaluate a number of machinima platforms for video prototyping.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
The modern era of digital video cameras and cheap home computer editing systems (that are more powerful than the avid systems of six years ago and sell for one tenth the cost!) is often lauded as the great digital revolution of the cinematic form: the delivery of cinema-making tools into the hands of the masses.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
In computer and video games, the player resides at the interface of viewer and actor. This position makes possible the playerʼs creative participation in these interactive media, a contribution that cannot be described in terms of the traditional roles of creator or consumer. The player is more than a consumer of what game developers and designers have created, and more than a reader or viewer. A game designer “creates a context to be encountered by a participant, from which meaning emerges” (Salen and Zimmerman 41). In the last decade or so, game players have used computer games as platforms for creating their own games, narratives, texts, and performances. They have reshaped the context of computer play, not simply by creating personal artifacts equivalent to a home movie, doodle, or diary, but by fully exploiting games as a new medium for performance and artistic expression. These efforts on occasion have challenged storytelling technologies such as frame-based animation, and have entered the mainstream through music videos, web-based serial programming, and other popular formats. The performer has pushed forward into the spotlight of game culture. So, how might game studies reveal players as performers? Learning more about the meanings players attach to play gestures, studying high-level competitive play, understanding what it means to watch others as they play, examining more closely the significance of replays and game movies in game culture, describing the formation of player identities, documenting in-game social dynamics, and tracing the networked virtual communities that thrive around computer games are but a few of many topics that might contribute to better understanding of game performance. This article presents a few ideas about playersʼ active participation in game culture through one mode of visible public performance: machinima and related game movies.
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