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Noble Six ROCKS 3 days, 2 hours ago.
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Recently I made a Informative speech about Machinima for my College Human Communication class, and it went pretty well with the audience (I got an 98% for a grade). The reason I brought this up is because I found it interesting how people responded when learning that such a type of media existed. How they seemed generally pleased with this “new” discovery. I had a couple people there, who weren’t gamers, who raised their hands when my professor asked if others had seen anything like it before, and they enjoyed watching them. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, do you think people would be open to Machinima, whether they are gamers or not,if they were introduced to it?
As long as the content is good, I’m sure people will enjoy it, regardless of the medium it is presented in.
That is true, but how about those who dislike the look/design of the content? They may like the plot and the actor, but they might not be a fan of the art.
RictalspaceIt’s a tough one. My girlfriend found Red vs. Blue quite funny, but had no connection to Halo or anything. But the problem is getting the video to the non-gamers. Why would they click on something that looks like a game if they aren’t interested in games in the first place, since it isn’t live action.
I did a similar presentation in college and it went past the end of class and a few people even stayed behind to hear the rest of it. I think it definitely can have wide appeal. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to turn their noses up to it but at the same time, I turn my nose up to those people.
Also, interesting fact, today El Ray (Robert Rodriguez’s channel) started showing Red VS Blue as a part of their programming. I hardly consider Rooster Teeth a part of the machinima community but pretty cool that machinima has hit that point. It’s a pretty decent milestone I’d say. And I know G4 showed a bit of machinimas on some of their shows back in the day.
I think that there is a definite boundary between people who will watch machinima and those who won’t, but I don’t think it really has to do with gaming. It has to do with their willingness to try new things, rather than how the thing looks. I think once most people understand the extra effort it is to make content as good as many feature films within the confines of a video game, they will generally appreciate it more. Another holdup is that I think most people would generally think machinima is really easy, just like misconceptions over stop-motion. Most people would probably enjoy machinima if they gave it a chance, the hard part is getting them to give it that chance.
I imagine for a lot of people on the outside who aren’t gamers, watching Machinima for them lands similar to watching animation. They don’t know how it’s made in both cases and obviously they know it’s not live action. The real stopper that’s making it difficult for people to find/get into watching Machinima in my opinion is that unfortunately, the face of the word “Machinima” is the atrocity known as Machinima.com, which only does gameplay stuff. I’m sure if people knew it existed and found ones they liked, we’d have a larger audience out there.
That’s true too. I hope that machinima groups like BPS with their own pages and their fans spreading the word can help. However, if we want to convert the world to think of machinima as the art form it is, we first need to convert the gamers. In my experience, there are actually a lot of gamers who don’t know what machinima is, or only know about RVB. Even though a bunch of these are COD and fans of games that don’t generally make machinima, there are a few out there and their creators need some support. The only solution is publicity. If we want to make machinima popular, we need to find ways to share it. Create websites, go to conventions, even just discuss new machinima while you’re playing online.
This is a really interesting topic.
As for the question posed: I think it’s largely dependent on the game. Halo is great for actually doing machinima, but possibly one of the worst for showing others. I find that the armor is what alienates most non-machinima viewers. My parents thought they were all robots. They also don’t understand why people are always holding guns in eachother’s faces.
Things like Gmod on the other hand I feel would be much better received.
RictalspaceProblem with Garry’s Mod is that you need to be exceptionally good to be able to make something professional. If you’re making something for comedy it’s a bit easier, but in terms of lip syncing it’s quite difficult to get right. SFM is a bitch to make long term things with.
Probably the most well recieved machinima is, in my experience, Minecraft. Everyone can tell that this is a game, but so long as the skins are quality and not confusingly-detailed, it works well. Texture packs can give access to better graphics and “special” blocks, allowign for some interesting storylines. The only problem is builds take three-seven times as long as any other game I can think of. However, Minecraft has a friendly feel to it that most other games outside of children’s games do not have. It’s characters can be charming, and many of the animals can be quite cute. This likability is the biggest contributor to Minecraft machinima’s good reception by non-gamers.
AnonymousMachinima in general is a good way to practice the formula of film making. Halo being the best due to it forcing you to develop a good story line in order to keep your focus on people wearing suits of armor. Jon CJG is a primary example at this. Machinima will never be used as a “large scale” media outlet. Serving as it’s own “community” of people sure, it’s worked before, not working well now.
But as far as using it as a learning tool it’s great. Getting freelance jobs people ask me how I know all the things I know and whether or not I went to school. I just tell them I was a part of a digital cinema community (DCC) for 8 years. DCC makes it sound a bit more professional and less cringey to some. I also tell people I use video games as visual story boards for live action adaption later down the road, and that also works.
At the end of the day, it’s a learning tool, nothing else. Whether or not you choose to push beyond the boundaries of what the tool provides and make a name for yourself in said community is up to you.
Today I made another speech about machinima, a persuasive speech to try to get the audience to watch and share machinima (this is all just a college assignment). Unlike lay time where I used a clip from one of the ROTS trailers, this time I used a comedy clip from an Isaiah n Bryan episode. I was surprised that people did react to it. Some laughed during the duration of the clip, some gasped when the kid died, but then they proceeded to laugh. I truly believe that if people give machinima a chance, they will love it( not everyone will). The more we spread the word, the more viewers we may receive.
Awesome!
On a side note, I totally forgot about this, but I made a machinima for a high school project back in the day. It was probably the worst thing I ever made but the class, even people who would normally turn their noses up to it, thought it was hilarious. And all throughout the day people kept coming up to me (people not even in the class) telling me they heard about “that video” I made and how funny it was (It really wasn’t funny). So somehow under the right context, maybe it can do well, even to people who have no interest in gaming.
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