Machinima: an investigation into the contribution of participatory user-generated machine-cinema to cultural values

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This project addresses the pertinent issues that have emerged in the massive growth and uptake of machinima, building on previous research into digital creative practice of performance-based media reported in the literature. It will engage key stakeholders from the breadth of creative and cultural industries, as well as the community of machinima practice, through the research design using traditional face-to-face and online techniques including within virtual environments. The range of opinion proposed for inclusion in this project is a key aspect of its contribution to understanding the impact of machinima, which has not previously been investigated. This research will therefore provide an important 'state of the art' dataset and point of reference for future researchers, as well as insight into the immediate and future ways that machinima is impacting on the shifts in our cultural values, particularly towards a visual culture that cannot be addressed through evaluation of social media alone.Machinima is the making of original content using 3D computer games engines and gameplay recorded in real time. Machinima creators ('machinimators') now draw on a multiplicity of computer video games but this type of co-created and participatory content was originally popularised by the growth in fantasy and simulated role-play environments such as World of Warcraft, Halo, Grand Theft Auto and The Sims. It originates from the 'demoscene' whereby computer 'geeks' promote the technical capabilities of computers through demonstrations of gameplay. The first machinima film was released in 1996 and since then machinimators have created and distributed thousands of fan-vids, parodies, satires, reenactments and original content through online fora in an increasingly complex ecology of technologies and new media. Recently, Machinima.com listed on the US stock market based on an impressive record of growth - more than 2.5 billion downloads of user-generated machinima films through its various online channels and 45 million unique monthly users. Content is now included in digital arts festivals and galleries around the world: machinima is inherently a convergence of technology, digital social practice and culture. Importantly, it has been described as 'the visual cultural phenomenon of the 21st century' (Greenaway, 2010). Its growth in popularity has impacted games developers significantly because it challenges the ways in which they view their intellectual property and the role of their customers (games players) in the creation of commercial value, effectively testing the boundaries between authorship and ownership. In turn, this is resulting in shifts in thinking about the format and framing of end-user license agreements. More recently, as a main search facility for online digital creative content, the stability and growth of the community using Machinima.com is considered to be a health indicator of media platforms such as YouTube (much user-generated content posted to this site is machinima and computer gameplay recordings). Despite this impressive growth record, particularly for the UK's digital cultural scene, it remains a relatively under-researched and poorly understood genre of participatory new media (Lowood & Nitsche, 2011). Within media studies, for example, it is described as a convergence culture, produced by 'digital natives' as a form of user-generated content that is superficially consumed in a purely online experience. Within computer gaming studies, it is considered to undermine the demand for animation artists skills, being seen as 'hacking and modding' content. These views fail to recognise the role of emergent creative and computing skillsets, or the ways in which the creative and cultural industries are recognising their value.