Video-game developers have long tried to integrate the sights and sounds of cinema into their games, with mixed results. So an emerging group of directors has instead turned to making stand-alone films.
These directors won't use cameras and sound studios, nor will they hire actors. Instead, they will use complex software applications designed to power video games, as well as computer-generated characters.
It's called machinima, and if all goes well for the up-and-coming development studios, it will be coming to television next year.
Machinima happened because game developers could not figure out how to bring Hollywood to the computer. For instance, innovations like live-action scenes, during which a player might watch a two-minute clip that moved the plot of the game forward but didn't allow the player to participate, brought game play to a screeching halt.
Despite the lukewarm success of the "cut scenes," developers continued to push the boundaries of gaming technology. However, the advances couldn't bridge the gap between interactive game play and passive movie viewing. But id Software's first-person shooter games -- Castle Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake -- would give machinima filmmakers the tools they needed to create video-game movies.
These games, often graphically violent and highly popular, rely on a special game engine that defines the rules of environments where players will interact with each other. Engines handle everything from the artificial intelligence of computer-controlled characters to player movement and 3-D graphics.
Id Software's engine rules are based on the OpenGL code, which can be easily translated by different operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows and Apple's OS X.
Machinima directors use the game engines, which allow them to record a scene from any conceivable angle, like a Hollywood director uses a cinematographer. The biggest difference is that when a shot doesn't pan out using a game engine, programmers can change the software tools, something even the most powerful Hollywood directors can't do.
Doom and Quake aren't the only engines around; the Unreal Tournament software has also proven rather popular. However, id designer John Carmack is known throughout the gaming industry as a technological wizard, and dozens of machinima filmmakers anxiously await the release of the Doom III game, which will include the most advanced game engine yet.
"When you are working with cars, you have to have a very solid engine," said Katherine Anna Kang, the head of machinima film company Fountainhead Entertainment. "Sometimes you add nitro, you soup up the car with turbo. The rewards of machinima come when you tweak the engine, so that underneath it all, the modifications with the engines are pretty much a turbo charge into it."
Kang knows all about the powerful id Software game engine. In a former business life, she was the director of business development of id Software, the very company that popularized the first-person shooter genre powered by its innovative engines.
But she, like other machinima directors, isn't technically savvy enough to manipulate the game engine code. So Kang depends on her programmers to hack together new software tools that will allow her to interact with the films. Unfortunately, the general public won't have access to those tools just yet, since game publishers like id Software control the intellectual property of the company's game engines.
But few believe licensing the game engines will be a problem, because game players have long tinkered with their favorite games, making modifications (mods) that add new levels, monsters or playing tactics. Many developers, id Software developers included, have supported the process, finding that the games achieve a much longer shelf life if players have the ability to change the games to suit their needs.
With high-powered engines and a little imagination, mods began to take on a more cinematic quality. Soon after Quake was released in 1996, a group called The Rangers created a Quake movie called Diary of a Camper. Others followed, including ILL Clan and Strange Company, two groups that have produced a series of films.
The early films were innovative, but not really intended for a mass consumer audience, as the characters and environments were modified video games.
"The idea was to change the skins, but not the wire frame of the characters and maps," said ILL Clan's Frank Delarrio. "We used one of the maps that was really well known because it was in the free demo. The characters had axes and guns, though, so we didn't change the objects. We took the axes and just made our characters lumberjacks and had them looking for apartments owned by hunters."
The ILL Clan, comprised of a trio of filmmakers and a trio of improvisational comedians, has become the most widely recognized group, winning awards for their work from Showtime. The group has formed a company that develops episodic shows they hope will appear on basic cable, and creates tools they can use in commercial advertising.
Delario hopes the group is on the cusp of an emerging phenomenon. The genre will have its coming-out party after six years of gestating underground. The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences, an organization that promotes the new film genre, will hold a one-day film festival in Mesquite, Texas, the hometown of id Software, on August 17.
