High-performance play: The making of machinima

Abstract

In his paper, Henry Lowood provides an in-depth historical overview of machinima — animated films created using FPS (first person shooter) videogames such as Quake. He traces the evolution of this work from the early ‘speedrunning’ movies created to document exceptional gameplay through to the first pioneering works of narrative machinima such as Diary of a Camper and others. In parallel with this, he traces the development of the tools to facilitate the making of these works.

Keywords:

• Videogames
• art
• videogame art
• machinima
• animation
• modification
• mods
• patches FPS
• 3D