Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/371911
28 cgw j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 4 G A M I N G . C I N E M A types of agreements that take machinima into account. A N D T H E A W A R D G O E S T O … No media movement would be complete without an organiza- tion created for the purpose of awarding their best and bright- est. In the case of machinima, this took shape through the inception of the Mackie Awards. The Academy of Machinima Art and Sciences, which was inau- gurated at the Game Developer Conference of 2002, became the organization that would be responsible for producing the fi rst fi lm festival dedicated to machinima and, along with it, the Mackie Awards. Marino and Hancock were both founders of this organization. They then moved quickly to hold the fi rst festival in early August of that same year, in Dallas. It was tied to a QuakeCon being held in the same locale, and with it, the fi rst Mackies were awarded. The festival and awards con- tinued for several years before fading out. Because the organi- zation was a volunteer eff ort, it became too diffi cult to produce the event every year. "We were all sad that we were unable to continue it," Marino laments. The last event and awards show was held in October 2008, and that event was produced by board member Friedrich Kirschner in New York City. Onward and upward, machin- ima continues to be a force in the wilds of the entertainment landscape. Valve's Source fi lmmaker tool set continues to have a very active Reddit page, with numerous people submit- ting their narrative cinematics to share with the rest of the community. Even Hancock is still engaged, working on his latest masterpiece, "Death Knight Love Story," and can be found blogging away on his strangecompany.org website. Beyond this activity, and in spite of the retirement of the Mackie Awards, many other avenues for the art form exist and continue to transform both the medium and the term itself. Specifi cally, the name "machinima" has stretched to the point where it now includes the new wave of gameplay videos shot by tens of thou- sands of gamers. The actual Machinima.com website titles itself as a "next-generation video entertainment network for the gamer lifestyle and beyond." It's clear from this description that machinima is no longer just narrative real-time cinema, but a growing culture of digital content. With two billion monthly video views and over 12,000 machini- ma partners worldwide, Machin- ima.com has become one of the most-watched networks online. In March 2014, the company collected $18 million in venture round funding and is planning to roll that into the expansion of its network of content. Hancock sees VR as one way forward for machinima. "With the Oculus Ri just having been bought by Facebook, motion capture will become a steadily bigger part of the machinima production methodology, and we'll see more and more machin- ima techniques embraced – with or without knowledge of the machinima movement – by major Hollywood players, like Lucasfi lm," he says. Marino agrees and thinks that the sophistication of works and platforms will become more widespread and will include more aff ordable mocap and animation solutions, as well as in-world physics and weather simulation. "This will make machinima even more accessible to artists and story- tellers, and may even supersede traditional fi lmmaking as a path to personal storytelling," he says. Margo, on the traditional fi lm side, seems to agree when he says, "If you can democratize the cost and access of these tools, out of this can come a ton of unique entertainment expression." He further adds, "I want to see the PT Anderson of virtual production." ¢ "I FEEL LIKE THE LINES BETWEEN FILM AND INTERACTIVE ARE GOING TO BLUR HEAVILY. THE IDEA IS WE ARE ENABLING THE SAME ALGORITHMS TO BE USED IN REAL-TIME AND OFF-LINE SOLUTIONS." MACHINIMA PIONEER HUGH HANCOCK'S NEWEST ANIMATED MOVIE IS TITLED "DEATH KNIGHT LOVE STORY." CREATED BY ARTISTS FROM THROUGHOUT THE FILM, TV, AND THEATER REALMS USING WORLD OF WARCRAFT, THE MOTION-CAPTURED PROJECT ATTEMPTS TO PUSH THE STATE OF MACHINIMA FORWARD. Carey Chico is a freelance writer as well as an 18-year veteran of the games industry. He can be reached through LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/careychico/.