The Future of Machinima

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The most obvious example is Rooster Teeth Productions' phenomenally successful Red vs Blue—a sprawling comic drama taking place in the Halo and Halo 2 engines, if not exactly in the Halo universe. Burns, however, disagrees with this assessment: "I think the focus on game-centric stories is simply a matter of circumstance. The people making machinima happen to be gamers, and as they write stories based on their experiences, naturally they will lean toward gaming. In Red vs Blue, we try to include as little gaming humour as possible. If our tone matches the tone of the game, it's simply because we are limited to the elements present in that virtual world. It's hard to make a romantic comedy when everyone is holding a rocket launcher."

Yet it's exactly that absurd juxtaposition in having the characters of Red vs Blue act in ways contrary to the game's ethos that makes it funny. They may avoid gaming humour in the script, but it all takes place within the context of one big joke at the game's expense.

It's arguably this satirical vein running through all of Rooster Teeth's productions which makes them so successful. Like the ILL Clan, Rooster Teeth has surpassed its amateur beginnings and now frequently finds itself commissioned to produce machinima that promotes the game in which it is filmed. PANIC, Rooster Teeth's machinima in the FEAR engine, sends up the game by presenting the squad of marines who deal with paranormal events as a group of chancers who've been exploiting their superiors' gullibility to get an easy meal ticket. Interestingly, Strangerhood, the promotional machinima Rooster Teeth made for the more prosaically set Sims 2, chooses to satirise the banality of American suburban living rather than the game itself—perhaps because the game is already partly parodic.

"The Sims is much broader in the sense that the suburban theme allows for more voyeuristic, sadistic quality of shows like Big Brother and The Apprentice. "Humans perform best," the TV intones, "in competitions where contestants have to live together in a house on an isolated island and lose weight by eating disgusting food and perform stunts in an effort to win the approval of an egotistic billionaire, all while fulfilling their dream of finding true love."

Perhaps one of the most thought-provoking machinima in this satirical vein is This Spartan Life, a talkshow taking place in Halo 2. Like the other machinima mentioned here, This Spartan Life draws much of its humour from the fact that it is filmed in a game—although not directly sending up the Halo universe, the frequently high-minded discussions are conducted with knowing absurdity: in an early episode, artist Peggy Ahwesh was invited on to talk about the place of the female within the cultural imaginary while bouncing along in a Warthog. A few caustic observations were made about the suggestively labial shape of Halo 2's teleports. More recently, a debate on the subject of civil liberties was brought into relief by the use of weapons to underscore each side's argument. Certainly, This Spartan Life would be an above-average chatshow regardless of its setting, but its presence within the Halo universe undercuts everything with a surrealism that can't be dismissed in any assessment of the show's value.

Conversely, machinima that doesn't embrace the absurdity of its setting or even acknowledge the fact that it has been created in a game faces a struggle to surpass its often rather ropey visual execution. Machinima in which the game itself is not integral to the film's purpose runs the risk of looking like a lazy shortcut; the fact that its creators found it cheaper or easier to master the tools of machinima rather than an animation suite shouldn't matter in objective judgements upon its quality.

Notable exceptions do arise, however, such as the feature-length Borg War, which, once you brace yourself for the intense implosion of nerdiness that comes from combining Star Trek, fan fiction and videogames, reveals itself to be a well-plotted and engaging story on par with its Hollywood counterparts. Its creator, Geoffrey James, set out to create a film that was superior to the recent (and widely derided) cinematic offering, Star Trek: Nemesis. Even given the limitations of machinima, he almost certainly succeeds. In this light, it's easy to forget its clunking visuals, or at least forgive them, knowing that such a production would have been impossible without plundering various Star Trek-licensed games for their 3D and audio assets.