Spiel[FILM]

Interactive Storytelling, Interface & Interaction Design

Machinima is the use of real-time three-dimensional (3-D) graphics rendering engines to generate computer animation. The term also refers to works that incorporate this animation technique. Machinima-based artists, sometimes called machinimists or machinimators, are fan laborers and often use graphics engines from video games, a practice that arose from the animated software introductions of the 1980s demoscene, Disney Interactive Studios' 1992 video game Stunt Island, and 1990s recordings of gameplay in first-person shooter (FPS) video games, such as id Software's Doom and Quake.

Abstract    As opposed to the project Machinima Interactions, which dealt with the interactive forms of machinima during the summer semester of 2010, research was now centered on to why and how machinimas are generally applied for the production of cinematic works. Where do they resemble classic film formats and genres, where do they differ from them and what difference does the level of alienation make, which has its origins in the context, the given guidelines and the settings of the games.

Just like in Machinima Interactions, the interaction between the computer games appointed for production and the resulting works was examined. The focus however, did no longer lie on the interactive possibilities arising thereby.
Instead, the resulting projects are supposed to illustrate how context, setting, characters and the strategy of the games can be used to seize and address real life occurrences substantially and artistically, as well as cinematically. These occurrences may differ widely and refer to current events or to matters from the past and the near future.
It is however important, that the projects don’t concern fictional events, but that fiction as possible narrative forms is not excluded.

The question, how the possibilities of new media and the WWW can be used to make the machinimas created in this project, become an essential part of the medial preparation of the addressed occurrences, is of central significance for Spiel[film].
In this project, personal machinimas were designed and implemented, the content and format of the occurrences referred to, being as freely selectable as the used games and editing tools.