Machinima and Other Content

Video games have been a huge part of my childhood and teenage years. Now, as a college student, I find myself playing them less and less (it's more of a time thing rather than an interest thing). Regardless, I still appreciate the value video games have when it comes to creativity and storytelling. One unique things video games can be used for is to create machinima.

We talked briefly about machinima in class. It is essentially using real-world filmmaking techniques and applying them to interactive virtual spaces, which in most cases is a video game engine. One could think of it as a hybrid between animation and traditional cinema.

The types of videos created using machinima vary from features to music videos. Yes, there is even an academy for machinima arts and an international machinima exposition. I personally don't know of any long-form machinima, but it most certainly is a legitimate form of art/filmmaking.

Some of the only machinima that I have watched is not even true machinima. There is a fantastic YouTuber, Captain Sparklez, who produces video game content as well as music videos about games such as Minecraft.

While some of his earlier work is done mostly through the actual game, some of his stuff (like the video above) does not use the physical video game engine at all to produce machinima content. The style and look is almost exactly like Minecraft, but is actually animation. I personally like it better.

The ability to tell stories through non-traditional ways is really interesting, and machinima is a great outlet. There are many popular series, such as Red v Blue (done using the Halo games). I am excited to see where this form of art can go.