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Machinima as Fan Culture -- Bibliography

This is my my annotated bibliography for my media theory research paper on machinima.

Am I Mod or Not? - An analysis of First Person Shooter modification culture.

David Nieborg explores the history of mod culture in computer games in this essay. Most of his analysis is based on Jenkins' theories of fandom and participatory fan culture. There is a short section on how manchinima fits into the larger culture of modifing first person shooter games.

Computer Games as the Tools for Digital Filmmakers NYTimes by Matthew Mirapaul

Addresses the ways in which digital filmmakers are using computer games as "digital sets" to create short films. aka Machinima! Gives a short review of varrious machinima projects. Mirapul compares machinima to a sort of live puppet theater, with the feel more of live theater than film.

Copyfutures: Machinima - Red vs. Blue vs. the Law

John Arnone gives a legal analysis of Rooster's popular machinima Red vs. Blue, a series of films using Microsofts Halo, and Halo 2 for source material. Suprisingly Bungie (Microsoft's Game Development Company) gave Rooster full permision to use the game for the machinima series. A risky move considering the "low humor" of the machinima show, but in the end a wise decision. RvB has helped make Halo, and the XBOX as popular as it is today.

Cybertext : perspectives on ergodic literature / Espen J. Aarseth.

Another book to read

DOOM PATROLS, Chapter 13: Pavel Curtis, by Steven Shaviro

A postmodern analysis of Pavel Curtis' authored virtual world: LambdaMOO.

Game Research Lab's INtroduction to computer game modding

The practice of modding - i.e. modifying and extending officially released games with fan-produced content - is arguably one of the most distinctive features in current computer gaming culture, and has helped to define the state of computer game fandom. Moding is closely related to the creation of machinima, an emerging art form using video games as source material for short films.

Game Studies - Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games: Playing Counter-Strike

Analysis of creative player input in conter-strike communities..

Game Studies - Interaction Forms and Communicative Actions in Multiplayer Games

"The main contribution of this work is in illustrating the available interaction forms and in analysing them based on the various functions they support. The successful application of the social theory framework as a tool for analysing interaction forms indicates the importance of combining the research efforts of various disciplines and practices in order to achieve more comprehensive results in the area of interaction design for multiplayer games."

Henry Jenkins: Art Form for the Digital Age

"Video games shape our culture. It’s time we took them seriously." A really great essay by Henry Jenkins (Textual Poachers) about the future of interactive media. He states the video games are in fact art, and that is is up to fans and critics to shape the video game industry through cooperation and constructive critisim.

High-Performance Play: The Making of Machinima by Henry Lowood

"Machinima is the making of animated movies in real time through the use of computer game technology. The projects that launched machinima embedded gameplay in practices of performance, spectatorship, subversion, modification, and community. This article is concerned primarily with the earliest machinima projects. In this phase, DOOM and especially Quake movie makers created practices of game performance and high-performance technology that yielded a new medium for linear storytelling and artistic expression. My aim is not to answer the question, “are games art?”, but to suggest that game-based performance practices will influence work in artistic and narrative media." -Lowood

This article was a primary source for my paper. Althogh Lowood focuses almost entirely on the FPS culture which emerged out of Id Software's original 3D shooter trilogy: Wolfenstein, DOOM, and Quake, it also covers a good deal of general info about machinima...

Interview with Henry Jenkins

Media theorist Matt Hills conducts a very lengthy interview with the one and only Henry Jenkins. Their discource revolves around the theories set forth by Jenkins' book Textual Poachers. Hills attemptes to break down, and better understand Jenkins' position on fandom a decade after Textual Poachers was written.

Inventing the Medium, by Janet H. Murray

This is a short little article by Janet Murray on the emerging feild of computer based media. She gives mostly just background for the fast paced state of innovation and invention which we're living in right now.

Language Explosion: Poetry & Entertainment in Arteroids 2.50 by Jim Andrews

This is an essay found in the book "Gamers," it addresses the use of language and language manipulation in gaming.

Machinima goes mainstream from kino-eye.com:

This is a test of the emergency broadcast system

Machinima.com: Commercial Machinima and the law

"Hugh Hancock puts on his wig and gown to discuss the legal issues facing commercial Machinima creators." Machinima expert gives a solid review of the legal implications involved when creating machinima. He discuss the use of game assets, the complications of complying with your EULA, and the options for artists in terms of open source machinima tools.

Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities by Pavel Curtis

Abstract:

A MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or, sometimes, Multi-User Dimension) is a
network-accessible, multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose
user interface is entirely textual. Participants (usually called players) have
the appearance of being situated in an artificially-constructed place that also
contains those other players who are connected at the same time. Players can
communicate easily with each other in real time. This virtual gathering place
has many of the social attributes of other places, and many of the usual social
mechanisms operate there. Certain attributes of this virtual place, however,
tend to have significant effects on social phenomena, leading to new mechanisms
and modes of behavior not usually seen `IRL' (in real life). In this paper, I
relate my experiences and observations from having created and maintained a MUD
for over a year.

Narrative as virtual reality : immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media by Marie-Laure Ryan.

An analysis following the idea that all narrative experience, on a cognitive level, can be thought of as virtual realities...

New Media from Borges to HTML by Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich on the budding world of digital media. From "The New Media Reader"

Red Vs. Blue Episode 1

This is the first episode of the widely popular "Red Vs. Blue" machinima series. It was made using the Halo graphis engine, and is considered the most famous machinima series to date. Produced by Rooster Company, RvB is now in it's 4th season.The RvB short films give you a glimpse inside the day to day life of these space soldiers featured in game. Rather than following the games protagonist through whom the single player game is experience, RvB focuses on a rag tag group of soldiers who spend their time philosophizing, and playing pranks on each other, while they wait for their next battle. The battle of course never comes, and we are left with a new, very humorous perspective on the Halo universe.

Second self : computers and the human spirit / by Sherry Turkle.

Turkle talks to children, college students, engineers, AI scientists, hackers, and personal computer owners--people confronting machines that seem to think and at the same time suggest a new way for us to think--about human thought, emotion, memory, and understanding. Her interviews reveal that we experience computers as being on the border between inanimate and animate, as both an extension of the self and part of the external world.

Textual poachers : television fans & participatory culture / Henry Jenkins.

"Written from an insider's perspective and providing vivid examples from fan artifacts, Textual Poachers offers an ethnographic account of the media fan community, its interpretive strategies, its social institutions and cultural practices, and its troubled relationship to the mass media and consumer capitalism."

This is the best source for fan culture theory. Very well written and easy to understand. Plus everyone cites it, you should too. The section I focused on dealt with the creation of meta-texts based on primary sources of fan interest in the media. This is just one of the many charachteristics of fandom Jenkins defines.

The Gamer as Artiste - New York Times

An article about the changing landscape of video games, as they evolve from product into art.

The INDUCE Act and the Right to Prepare Derivative Works. The Importance of...:

Legal cybertheorist Ernest Miller outlines the effect a broader acceptance of the INDUCE act might have on the creation of derative works based on video games, most specifically on the creation of machinima. The induce act puts not only machinimakers in legal peril, but all the websites and hackers who innovate new machinima techniques and encourage the creation of machinima publicly.

Thinking Machinima: Machinima goes to Harvard

This is a nice posting about the legal implications of machinima, from a blog totally dedicated to covering the latest news in the world of machinima. The author, Paul Marino, outlines three possible aproaches to the issue of copyright machinima makers might use to clearing their work for commercial use.

Video Game Value and Exchange Aesthetics by Peter Bell

This thesis argues that the value codings inaugurated by
retail exchange exert a powerful influence over the aesthetic reception of gaming as a
set of enjoyable, exchangeable and exhaustible encounters. At the same time, the
mere fact that gamers talk about and contest each others' valuations in online forums
shows that there is nothing natural about such a valuation, and that the boundaries of
value codings and the boundaries of what constitutes fun are tested, if not traversed.

What is Machinima? - The Machinima FAQ

Just the basics about machinima, from the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences...