Machinima (or ‘machine cinema’), basically, is movie making using game engines. The concept originally came from those old videos you saw years ago of ‘Doom’ and ‘Quake’.

These days you can capture game play using ‘capture cards’ on a PC and then edit the footage in various video editors to do what you will. The vast majority use capture cards for ‘frag movies’, or in-game tutorials on various things; cheats, glitches, and the like. The big benefit is that it gives fans of games an avenue to get past the stereotypical definition of ‘brain dead gaming’ and create short movies which are basically the gaming equivalent of what ‘fan fiction’ is to novels. The exciting part is that it gives you and me the opportunity to pretend to be Steven Spielberg and Tom Clancy all in one go for next to no cost. Websites like YouTube give you the no cost opportunity at show casing your imagination.

Many people make an income from it, and I guarantee if you get good at it the potential for a career is there as well. What better than to have an online portfolio to show a potential employer; as long as your videos aren’t just “Tea-Bagging”. Toiling away with your problem solving skills instead of having editor programs that do it all will skyrocket your knowledge base.

‘Recently’ Machinima.com started being flooded with general content about anything to do with gaming including reviews and news from various websites and general game play from any game which Machinima (movie) fans believe almost comes across as ‘selling out’. You can understand Machinima.com’s point of view if you have even a slight understanding of how business works.

The Machinima.com channel on YouTube is the 7th most subscribed of all time with over 600,000 subscribers. The channel is placed 5^th with almost 650 MILLION views. It is responsible for making me lose my head and impulse buy games because of fan movies. There’s some big numbers with some big potential so why then have game developers not really come on board?.

There is precedence with various games and of course and I wouldn’t be writing about it if there wasn’t some sort of Machinima history but really, mainstream, Machinima is largely unknown.

With the Halo ‘Theatre’ feature your characters could be talking about the weather in your movie but you can’t stop your characters from pointing guns at each other which is kind of retarded....cinematically speaking. Some people take it VERY seriously and some of the most Machinima friendly games like GTA IV and Halo 3 have huge fan bases with the Halo based Arby and The Chief series on Youtube being arguably the most popular.

Is it time for game developers to really get on board and create options within a game for Machinima?

Well, ‘Naughty Dog’ believe so. They listened to their fans – finally, someone did – and came up with something truly great. I never thought a Third Person Shooter could be useful, but these guys stepped up and created greatness. The following video is making me BUST to try it out.

Folks, Cinema mode, Uncharted 2. *standing ovulation*