Machinima & gamespaces
From Institute of Intermedia
Machinima & Gamespaces (2000 - present)
Machinima is the practice of making movie documents using videogames. It's origins are in the 'ready-made' (Marcel Duchamp) or in appropriating existing audio/video material for your own purposes. early examples of AV appropriation or 'sampling' are:
Joseph Cornell who in 1936 created his own found-film montage and made the cinema work Rose Hobart from existing material.
Bruce Connor's film from 1958 "A Movie" is another early example of what is seen as commonplace today:
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/3-9tCeFX0Eo/
An early excellent example of machinima (using a game engine to animate characters/scenes to create a film rather than a playable game) is Red vs. Blue
Episode 1 Why Are We Here?: http://redvsblue.com/archive/?sid=rvb&season=1
It poses existential questions that the game characters have some trouble answering.
Much of the information and links are based on the work of Berlin artist Julian Oliver:
http://selectparks.net/~julian/
Julian Oliver has well described Machinima and Game Modding: 1. Machinima is the practice of making movie documents using videogames. 2. Machinima began with the Quake engines and used the still existant 'demo' file format to record battles. 3. Machinima usually employs 'in-game actors' and camera operators, that use themselves or cameras in the scene as viewpoints. 4. Some games have started to ship with tools to help the making of Machinima ('Doom3' and 'The Movies' are examples). 5. Content is usually captured out to a video camera or saved in the 'demo' file format. 6. Machinima has grown quickly. Now an established art-form in itself with several film festivals supporting the medium.
Trends in Machinima: Music Videos / Choreography Anomalies of gameplay Experiments in virtual being Comedy Historical re-enactments Appropriations of TV shows and films.
Game Mods:
level editing ('mapping')
1. involves creating (editing) game levels and perhaps some modelling, sound and texture creation. 2. artist only, generally without programming required. 3. practice arguably initiated by Bard's Tale Construction Set and popularised by idSoftware's Quake series. 4. with Quake, the user became a developer. first entry point for user driven, community distributed content creation. 5. Pragmatic to release tools to do this - extends the shelf-life of the game 6. 'Maps' and other art are distributed in an archive format. 7. Creator is copyright holder of the map only. map creator cannot distribute the game with their work.
Modifications
1. Modify an existing game, working with gamecode and scripts (if available) to produce gameplay features otherwise non-existant in the existing game. 2. Programming required, will also engage level-editing 3. Some games ship a Software Development Kit (SDK) to make Modding easier. 4. 'Total Conversions' are an expression of the challenge to defy the inheritance of the original game. 5. Mods are usually distributed within the community as archives containing the art, scripts and binary modules required to play the modification. 6. The existing game engine must already be installed.
Modifications typically engage modiication to rendering and/or audio engine performance creation of new gameplay dynamics manipulation of existing gameplay dynamics Example artistic/exploratory modifications
Here is a video documenting a workshop that allowed beginners to learn how to modify a simple pong type game:
Brody Condon
Worship Suicide Solution
game engine to make music from Julian Oliver http://selectparks.net/archive/q3apd.htm
Quilted Thought Organ ('QTHOTH') Game based performance environment, 1999 - 2001:
http://julianoliver.com/qthoth/
Maps and Legends using a gamespace to navigate a multi-channel sound system CCRMA:
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/biblio/maps-and-legends-designing-fps
Fijuu2 by Julian Oliver & Stephen Pickles fijuu is a 3D, audio/visual installation. Using a PlayStation-style gamepad, the player(s) of fijuu dynamically manipulate 3D instruments to make improvised music. fijuu is built using the open source rendering engine OGRE and runs on Linux.
http://www.soundtoys.net/toys/fijuu2
NPR Quake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C78PDSRbpC8
self playing game: http://www.lowstandart.net/static.php?page=notbot
Julian Oliver's 2nd person shooter: The object of the game? Shoot yourself to live!
http://blog.game-play.org.uk/?q=2ndPersonShooter
Stole My Car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CFMOb4E8vQ
http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/1k-project-ii/12321 1000 cars in modded game space
An Unfair War: An animated film made entirely in Sims2 depicting the monologue of a victim of the American invasion of Iraq. http://www.spike.com/video/unfair-war/2757664
talk show from fighting game: http://www.mdickie.com/vid_mdshow.htm
Rube Goldberg device: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8926325136071596338&q#
Ben Fry (creator of Processing) code in Atari Games: http://benfry.com/distellamap/
