Machinima

Machinima interventions: innovative approaches to immersive virtual world curriculum integration

by Andrew Middleton

Doctor Who Fan Videos, YouTube, and the Public Sphere

by Jeremy Sarachan

Twenty years ago it was great fun to watch Doctor Who on a Saturday night with friends in the comfort of your living... more Twenty years ago it was great fun to watch Doctor Who on a Saturday night with friends in the comfort of your living room.  This weekly bonding experience was perhaps the only occasion to share the joy of Doctor Who fandom.  A few fans might engage in writing fan fiction or creating fan videos (fanvids), but sharing these creative endeavors was difficult, with the occasional science fiction convention serving as the primary distribution hub.

Now, with the growth of Web 2.0 and content sharing sites like YouTube, anyone can contribute, view and comment on fan-created works, establishing a global forum for narrative exploration and the redefinition of what it means to be a fan of a fictional program.  The ability of fans to engage the content of a program through their own creations magnifies their interest and dedication, satisfying the needs of a show’s creators by increasing ratings.  More significantly, fan interactions reflect the revival of public discourse missing since the development and growth of electronic mass communication in the last century.

VIRTUAL LIMITATIONS: A COMPARISON OF SIMS 2 AND HALF LIFE GAMES ENGINES FOR MACHINIMA NARRATIVE

by Diana Ford

version 2

Marking machinima: A case study in assessing student use of a Web 2.0 technology

by Christopher Moore

Co-authored with Graham Barwell and Ruth Walker

The model of learning best suited to the future may be one which sees learning as the process of managing the... more The model of learning best suited to the future may be one which sees learning as the process of managing the different kinds of participation an individual might have in complex social systems. Learning capability and engagement is thus dependent on the relationship between an individual identity and social systems. We report on the incorporation of machinima, a Web 2.0 technology, as part of an interdisciplinary and collaborative project where the focus is not on the mastery of the tools or the acquisition of predetermined knowledge, but on the development of learning engagement. We provide the case study of a pilot project involving students across two Arts disciplines collaborating via the game, World of Warcraft, to produce an animated adaptation of one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Their contributions were differently assessed according to the pre-existing requirements of their home disciplines. We argue that the assessment in such projects, in conjunction with innovations and experimentation with Web 2.0 technologies, should shift from an emphasis on product to process. We believe that this has a sound pedagogical and theoretical foundation, and also fits better with the increasingly digitalised, unfixed and interdisciplinary world that students will face on graduation.

SPIEL_FILM. Machinima auf dem Weg von der Fan- in die Populärkultur.

by Anne Franziska Beyer

# Master thesis / Magisterarbeit
# University of Arts & Design Karlsruhe
# Department Aesthetics and Art History
# 2010

Machinima is the convergence of machine, animation and cinema (machine meaning [game] engines). In the 1990s gamers... more Machinima is the convergence of machine, animation and cinema (machine meaning [game] engines). In the 1990s gamers and amateur-filmmakers created 'speedruns' from recordungs of their favourite first-person shooters such as Doom and Quake. In addition of storylines 'Quake movies' rapidly became popular. The concept spread to other 3d-games and graphic engines like Half-Life 2, GTA or Sims 2, mostly because it's a cheap, quick and simple way to create movies. Nowadays machinima also appeares in mainstream media, including television series and advertisements.

# history of machinima so far
# outline of the most famous films and genre
# medial setting between game, cinema and cg animation
# cultural setting between fanfiction and pop culture (using Foucaults term "Dispositif")
# examples of machinima in art, advertisement, tv and cinema

Towards a Theory of a Games-Based Pedagogy

by Russell Francis

This paper was presented at Innovating E-learning 2006: Transforming learning experiences in March 2006. The title was used for the theme summary in the JISC sponsored E-book. This work was also discussed and cited in the NML White Paper: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture (Jenkins et al, 2006/7) as a progressive example of what might be done with new media to support teaching and learning in the humanities classroom.

This paper identifies problems encountered with attempts to use commercial games in educational contexts and... more This paper identifies problems encountered with attempts to use commercial games in educational contexts and highlights the need for a theory and illustrated examples of effective game-based pedagogies that demonstrate how games might effectively be used for educational ends. A model is presented as one example of what a games-based pedagogy might look like. The model grows out of a series of design experiments established in an attempt to use Revolution (a multiplayer role-playing game) as a resource to support learning about aspects of social history. The paper proposes that similar pedagogical models, grounded in action research initiatives, are required to push forward the educational games agenda and guide researchers and practitioners interested in exploiting the power of role-playing games in real classrooms.

Keywords: games-based pedagogy, virtual role-play, experiential learning, machinema, design experiment.