Machinima Study

Since this is a Machinima project I decided to look at some Machinima that I used to watch when I was younger, at the time I didnt have as much of an insight into the subject as I have now and just thought it was an entertaining waste of time but over the years have come to realize that it can also be considered a profitable and quite interesting, if not a little goofy, subject.

Halo Machinima is one of the most common types of in game movie making as the game has a very wide customizable library of maps, game types and recording software built in which makes it very easy to make and record your own videos as everything is set out neatly in a little sandbox mode for you. The films made are most of the time about Halo and Spartan related things as it may be hard to imagine any other story plot when all the characters are wearing the signature armour of Halo, but there has been a few other characters and themes incorporated into this kind of Machinima. For example there have been voices from other games added over the image of the Spartans talking which if you understand what games the voices are from and have played a little of both games can be found very funny.

This makes me think about how a lot of people do not understand Machinima and think it is childish and internet humour, I must agree that Machinima is a form of younger generation humour than it is older generation, this is because of the boom of the internet and the increasingly easy and quick ways there are of creating videos and uploading them.



The thing I found interesting about this video is the camera angles and the story to it, it is obviously a fan made piece and shows how an amateur can make something half decent with a game sandbox, six actors and a bit of direction, and to get this much attention as well.

I think Machinima used to be frowned upon by the games industry because it brings into question the copyright factor, and games didnt like people using their property to be gaining fame and renown for themselves but more recently like in this Machinima the game has a built in recording program so it is obviously more encouraged and games developers have turned this problem around and made it work to their advantage and consider it to be a sort of free marketing scheme.