ABSTRACT
Machinima emerged in the late 1990s as video game players started to record their gameplay and then post these clips to aficionado websites in order to show off particularly nimble or audacious on-screen moves to other players.To make this raw footage of gameplay more compelling, players started setting their clips to music, adding their own commentary and voice tracks, and even staging elaborate maneuvers that involved multiple players. Players discovered what game designers now build into the gameplay experience-that adding strategic editing, propulsive soundtracks, and snappy wisecracks to video game footage amplifies the affective drama of having your tautly coordinated team maneuver suddenly sabotaged by one player’s misstep, or of pulling off that perfect comeback attack while tottering on the brink of death. Players also turned their recordings to tricks and glitches within the game environment that are irrelevant to scoring points or leveling up. Instead of simply playing the game to win, players started to test the boundaries of the simulation itself, using the game as a playground, laboratory, or stage. Gamers orchestrated and captured virtuoso in-game stunts such as the synchronized hip-hop dance routine of two alien fighters who are usually attacking each other; the stratospheric pirouette of a military jeep when a live grenade is placed beneath it just so; or a programming bug that results in the disappearance of all vehicle animations from a freeway so that the drivers look like Wonder Woman flying her invisible plane.2 Machinima thus arose from the desire to
document specific moments experienced in the sprawling, open-ended, imperfectly coded virtual worlds offered up by contemporary video games, and to share these experiences with other players. In the irreverent modes of gameplay enacted in machinima, the original game’s directive to kill enemies is not only abandoned but rendered absurd.
