Machinima

Good morning!

Today I would like to talk a little bit about machinima. Although this was covered in the lecture Dr John Banks gave in week three, I found it interesting and definitely worthwhile mentioning! Machinima, also known as ‘machine cinema’ has become increasingly popular amongst MMOG and many other gaming fans across the world. According to Jenkins (2004), the emergence of Machinima, or 3-D digital animation created by players in real time using game engines, is representative of the shift in commercial power from media producers to consumers. The use of game engines in Machinima is extremely time and cost effective, allowing players to create all different types of movie narratives through using tools provided within games and redesigning games to change backgrounds, textures, characters and props (Jenkins, 2004). There are also organisations that support the development of machinima art, for example The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences. Examples of contemporary machinima include My Trip to Liberty City by Jim Munroe and based on Grand Theft Auto 3; Red vs. Blue, a science-fiction comedy based on Halo; and The Strangerhood - a machinima sitcom based on The Sims 2 (Jenkins, 2004; Moltenbrey, 2005; Stern, 2005). Whilst the narrative of each of these machinima differs, I think the application of using pre-existing art tools (e.g. camera angle, demo recording) and resources (e.g. skins, levels) to create characters, settings and movement is extremely clever.

Unfortunately, legal issues have arisen whereby game enterprise has been dissatisfied with the way machinima directors have played out narratives between characters. This is illustrated in another popular machinima movie called Not Just Another Love Story. Created by a World of Warcraft fan, Tristan Pope, the machinima film’s distribution has caused great controversy, particularly in regards to the appropriation of Intellectual Property and Copyright Law infringement. In response to such suggestions, Pope stated on his website, Crafting Worlds,“I only executed what the pixels in World of Warcraft suggest …” (cited in Lowood, 2005).
However, World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard was definitely unhappy about the events that unfold within Not Just a Love Story’s narrative. Pope uses his Troll character, Tristanmon as the protagonist who falls in love with a human female character and ends up marrying her. Using the game’s editing tools, Pope implies sexual activities between the two characters. Blizzard took great issue with Pope’s implication of sexual acts – particularly because a large fan base of the game is minors. Additionally, in the real game, Horde characters (e.g. Trolls) and Alliance characters (e.g. Humans) are enemies, whereas in the machinima film, these characters are friends and even attend a collaborative rave party. Therefore, the game-twist Pope created goes totally against the original narrative developed by Blizzard for the game. In response to Blizzard’s upset, “rather than asserting his right to subvert the game’s content, Pope turned this argument on its head by reasoning that he had in fact created nothing” (Lowood, 2005). Eager to support its fan base, Blizzard did not ban Pope from using the game, yet according to Lowood (2005), it caused ‘Blizzard to cite the user agreement concerning language or images that are “pornographic in nature” and lock the discussion thread’ in which the film was being distributed. ‘Blizzard also barred links to any of the movie’s download sites in subsequent discussion threads’ (Lowood, 2005).

When taking the average age of World of Warcraft’s players into consideration, I do not believe the actions Blizzard took were unnecessary or harsh. Their actions are reflective of how protocol controls the architecture of community networks, even in the ‘decentralised’ realms of the Internet. However, if I were a parent, I don’t think I’d want my child watching characters performing ‘artistic’ sexual favours to each other! I think Henry Lowood (2005) sums up the Not Just Another Love Story episode succinctly:

By acting as a lightning-rod for commentary on the contested boundary between developer and player control of a complex, multiplayer game world, Pope’s “Not Just Another Love Story” demonstrated that game movies could function as a medium for public discussion and negotiation of issues important to the player community.”

I hope that I have provided some insight to the legal issues surrounding the gaming world and the emergence of Machinima as an emerging form of artistic film-making. Hope you have a lovely day and I’ll post to you soon!

Em :)


References
Jenkins, H. 2004. Taking Media in Our Own Hands. http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_13905,312,p2.html (accessed May 10, 2006).

Lowood, H. 2005. Story-Line, Dance/Music or PVP? Game Movies and Performance in World of Warcraft. http://www.aestheticsofplay.org/lowood.php (accessed May 11, 2006).

Moltenbrey, K. 2005. ‘Out of Character’, Computer Graphics World, 28 (11): 24-28. (accessed May 10, 2006 from ProQuest: Multiple databases).

Stern, A. 2005. Inside Rooster Teeth. http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2005/08/10/inside-rooster-teeth/ (accessed May 10, 2006).