Marvel at Machinima Part I_a

What is machinima? First, of all, machinima is misspelled. While this seems to be a minute detail, the correct spelling machinema that fell victim to a typo, might give an early indication of what machinima is meant to be: an amalgamation of machine and cinema. Machinima is most often cited as the “art of making animated movies in a 3D virtual environment in real time” (Marino, 2004, p. 2). In other words, a player finds herself recording her performance while playing a 3D game, and then transfers the footage into a film editing program to create a video film about her performance. This very simple description of course only scratches the surface of a process that proves to be much more intricate than the final product might suggest.

It might be interesting to explore in more detail how machinima came into being. Henry Lowood points to the fact that machinima were first created in the context of competitive multiplayer games from the mid 1990s, like Doom or Quake, both first person shooter games developed by id Software (Lowood, 2008, p. 1) Players then carried the production of game videos on to massively multiplayer titles like Warhammer or World of Warcraft. Those early productions focused mainly on the performance aspect of the game. After the introduction of this game genre, players had advanced skills in mastering not only the gameplay and performances practices, but also developed an understanding of the game engine behind the game. The next step after the mastery of those elements was to appropriate existing game text and re-work it into filmic performance documents.

Earlier examples of machinima evoke memories of the silent era in film because of their “choppy” appearance, simple camera movements and limitations with regard to voice and sound. Those early works focused mainly on performance aspects, giving practical advice to other players. Topics included the advancement of the characters’ level, or strategies and tactics most appropriate for certain tasks within the game. Stanford University’s How They Got Game Project, The Internet Archive, The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, and Machinima.com founded “The Machinima Archive” in 2003 as a source of more than 500 machinima projects as of 2008. The number of existing machinima projects as of today is unknown but game videos can be found on numerous online sources. Lowood and his team at Stanford University created an excellent archival movie about the history of machinima that gives a impression of the development in the production of game videos. Please watch.