World of Warcraft and Machinima

South Park machinima

 
In this article, the author shows the framework, content, and the use of game movies based on MMOG. The machinima raises new questions about contributions game-based performances make to player communities. Henry Lowood emphasizes on the history of WoW Machinima and its successful WoW movie, Tristan Pope’s Not Just Another Love Story. According to Wikipedia, Machinima, also known as game film, is defined as ‘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. Some machinima-based artists, sometimes called machinimists or machinimators, are fan laborers and often use graphics engines from vide games”. Excerpt from the reading, “Players of competitive multiplyaer games are certainly consumers who also produce and spectators who also participate”. In short, players improve and enhance the fun parts of game in a way that other players would find game very entertaining. Machina creates an atmosphere where both players and game benefits from each other.  

  There are a numerous websites out there that are specifically for WoW machinima. These websites provide tools and examples of some of the successful machinimas, so that people could watch them and learn more about the machinima. The websites also teach people how to create a good machinima. Blizzard has watched enthusiastically as the community pushed movie making in Azeroth from an unexplored, unproven experiment to a broadly utilized and intricate craft, producing thousands of videos ranging across every type and genre. Since the game film culture in WoW has grown large, opportunities such as BlizzCon and other movie contests challenged community artists to push the limits, and time and time again, players stepped up to the plate and delivered memorable works that turned heads not just in the Blizzard community, but in the digital film making community as a whole. These machinima contests and communities prove Blizzard’s passion on game films. There are so many WoW films offered on warcraftmovies.com. They support 18 million Machinima downloads in its first year, an average of 52000 per day.

  I have never enjoyed watching machinima before because I was never into it and didn’t have much knowledge about it. Now that I know about it, it is interesting to see how people create their own small game film by themselves with a limited film making tools. I assume that creating a film would take many hours and require persistent efforts.

  Knowing that film making is a difficult process, I want to ask class if anyone has ever created a game film before.