In the article "Storyline, Dance/Music, or PvP? Game Movies and Community Players in World of Warcraft" Henry Lowood talks about the history of player created videos in the World of Warcraft. He starts by talking about how these movies are most common as player guides. They are players showing other players how to preform certain accomplishments in the game or showing different player strategies.Often these videos can be a way to excite current players of future players about the game and its possibilities as shown by Lowood's example of the "Ironforge Bank Robbery". With the user "Daddar" making a movie of his robbery of this bank in the game world he was able to excite players by showing them something that they once thought was impossible. It showcased a specific player type, the undead rogue, and got many players excited for the retail launch of the game.
Lowood also talks about the use of machinima in WOW with Pope's "Not Another Love Story". It is a video created using the WOW game engine to tell a cinematic love story. What I found impressive about that was the level of coordination required by multiple players in order to film some of the bigger scenes in the movie. It really shows how much a player community is needed in order to make something like that because one guy can not control every character at once. Machinima to me is just the further blurring between the worlds of movies and games. It is a creative outlet for players that allow them to use a game world to tell their own stories and share a connection with other players.
Do you think that there will ever be a specific game just for machinima? Do you think something like that would ever take off or would it just always be a small niche thing?
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