In the meantime, I leave you with Dennis Brännvall's (albeit Quake-biased) verdict from his Facebook page:
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What is machinima?
Wikipedia definition:
Machinima (pronounced /məˈʃiːnɨmə/ or /məˈʃɪnɨmə/) is the use of real-time graphics rendering engines (a game engine), mostly three-dimensional (3-D), to generate computer animation. The term also refers to works that incorporate this animation technique.
Paul Marino: visual narratives “created by recording events and performances (filmmaking) with artistically created characters moved over time (animation) within an adjustable virtual environment (3D game technology platform or engine)” (3D Game-Based Filmmaking: The Art of Machinima, Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph, 2004)
Henry Jenkins: "Machinima refers to 3-D digital animation created in real time using game engines." ("Taking Media in Our Our Hands", Technology Review, 9 Nov 2004)
It is both the process and the product (like film!)
The crux of machinima lies in these words:
"Game Engine"
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What is a game engine?
Wikipedia: "A game engine is a software system designed for the creation and development of video games."
- Physics engine
- Rendering engine (graphics)
- Sound
- Scripting
- Artificial Intelligence
"The game world became a stage for players to act, and an environment with which they could interact."
--> For more about narrative and architecture, see "Game design as narrative structure", Henry Jenkins. Also see Jim Barrett's HUMlab seminar, "The Sims as narrative engine".
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Machinima as opposed to
High-end complex 3D professional animation
Live action***********************************************************
History of machinima
- Machinima (machiniema) = machine + cinema (Anthony Bailey, Hugh Hancock).
- More apt? --> Machinima = machine + animation
- History of machinima traced to games. Interesting - where is cinema in this?
- But anyway. 2 elements: (i) Game design; and (ii) Game play.
Game design
- id Games, John Romero and John Carmack --> FPS - Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM --> "building realistic and immersive virtual worlds as settings for three-dimensional action games"
- FPS: "depict the game’s action (mostly shooting) as the player’s character would presumably see it by simulating the player’s perspective into a three-dimensional virtual world."
- Breakthrough of Doom:
- a superior graphics engine
- fast peer-to-peer networking for multiplayer gaming
- a modular design that let authors outside id create new levels, and
- a new mode of competitive play devised by Romero called ‘deathmatch’
"id Software didn’t stop there, the team of innovators also made DOOM’s source code available to their fan base, encouraging would-be game designers to modify the game and create their own levels, or ‘mods’. Fans were free to distribute their mods of the game, as long as the updates were offered free of charge to other enthusiasts. The mod community took off, giving the game seemingly eternal life on the Internet. In fact, id discovered many of their current employees and development partners based on mods that were created and distributed over the Internet."
- id Software Background
- id’s self-conscious advocacy of the modification of its own software by the player community loss of authorial control not a dilemma for game designers. Randall Packer: "The letting go of authorial control has been the big dilemma of interactive works as an art and/or entertainment medium, games being the exception."
- "Indeed, they embrace subsequent modification of their work by others as the seed of an ongoing relationship with the player community." (Lowood)
Just as important as the improvements in graphics and networking technology, DOOM revised notions of authorship by allowing for game modifications, third-party level design, and the creation of independently developed software tools.- DOOM then gave way to Quake, from which arose the first machinima film
- Fan culture/community
- Deepens player involvement
- Increase game's commercial life
- Red vs Blue - Microsoft's Halo
- Editing software
- Valve - Half-Life 2 - "Faceposer"
- Sims 2 - Electronic Arts - upload movies
Gameplay
It is...important to recall that the origins of machinima lie not in content production, but in gameplay. ... Without a doubt, 'play was the thing' in the early history of game movies.
- Henry Lowood
As a practice, machinima can be seen as an offshoot of the broader phenomenon of game modding, where fans seek to modify game engines to extend and customise their gameplay experience (Polak 2004; Humphreys et al. 2005). It can also be placed within a history of gameplay demos, replay and recam production, where players seek to record their gameplay to celebrate or share their experiences (Marino 2004: 1-21).- Leo Berkeley, Situating Machinima in the New Mediascape, Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2006, pp: 65-80)
- Multiplayer gaming - collective play - strong social network, chat options
- Rangers - Quake: "The machinima community always begins its historical reflections with the publication of Quake in mid-1996" (Lowood, "High-performance play: The making of machinima", p. 31)
Arguably the most famous clan of all, the Rangers’ top-notch players contributed visibly to the technical community that grew around the game. They had participated in the first pre-release test of the Quake engine distributed to the Quake community. One member designed the original Capture the Flag mod; another founded one of the major sources of information about Quake development, Blue’s News; in all, about half the 25 members or so members remained active in game development or went on to work in the game industry (Hancock n.d.). With their reputation for stellar performances as players and programmers already firmly established, they surprised the Quake community in October 1996 – barely a month after the commercial release of the game – with an exploit of another sort: the first machinima movie, Diary of a Camper.
The Rangers’ animated short resembles the demo movies of DOOM gameplay, with short bursts of frantic action punctuated by flying blood and bits of body parts. With spare visual reference to the Quake storyline, the plot offers little more than a brief sequence of inside jokes... Yet, Diary of a Camper breaks with the demo movie as documented gameplay in several important respects. First and foremost is the independence of the spectator’s view from that of any player/actor; the movie is not ‘shot’ from the first-person perspective of the shooter. An independent camera view now frames the action. This innovation illustrates Quake’s significance as a platform for high-performance play: It could be exploited as a ‘found technology’ for purposes other than those envisioned by the designers.
We can see this in 2 vectors:
- transforming gameplay - found technology - subversion
- transforming filmmaking - the apparatus - a computer game "is as much a set of design tools as a finished product"
- Collaboration - Evolution - Subversion
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Development of machinima
- Vanilla machinima: Red versus Blue
- In Second Life (Mirror, China Tracy):
- The Movies (The French Democracy, Alex Chan, 2005)
- Modding (The Journey, Friedrich Kirschner, 2004):
Friedrich Kirschner: "may be one of the few Machinima creators who can genuinely be described as a genius" (Machinima for Dummies)
Synopsis (from its website)
"for we are many walking down the dry riverbed...
but let me tell you about the one
who suddenly broke away
to discover what lies beyond the hills
that rule our lives..."
Go to Part 2 of the course by Jim Barrett here.
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