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Xbox As An Indie Movie Studio
jhsiao writes "The NYT has an article about machinima and movies set entirely within video games. In the article they interview a number of machinima artists including the folks at Rooster Teeth Productions who brought us Red vs. Blue." From the article: "He created a comedy series called ''Red vs. Blue,'' a sort of sci-fi version of ''M*A*S*H.'' In ''Red vs. Blue,'' the soldiers rarely do any fighting; they just stand around insulting one another and musing over the absurdities of war, sounding less like patriotic warriors than like bored, clever video-store clerks."
While I'm not 100% certain, I believe machinima began with Quake, yet it's strangely absent from machinima discussions. Arguably the greatest (but certainly the largest and most ambitious) machinima movie for Quake is Seal of Nehahra. It's a background movie to the Nehahra modification (which has extensive cutscenes as well). I think the length is close to three hours. The story was written by a published writer, and it's an expanded version of Quake's originally vague backstory interconnected with Nehahra's own storyline. Custom engine, custom maps, custom music, custom models, multiple voice actors... even before Nehahra and Seal of Nehahra were released, Quake was already forgotten by the rest of the gaming world, so I guess that's why it's never mentioned.
Another movie worth mentioning is Eschaton: Darkening Twilight, which was one of the few attempts at serious machinima (along with Nehahra). I think it had some Cthulhu themes in it. A sequel was made for Quake II (Nightfall), but as far as I know it was discontinued after that.
Quake had a lot of great machinima, far more ambitious than what I've seen these days. I've seen a bit of Red Vs. Blue and it didn't really impress me. Maybe I just watched some lackluster episodes. Over the Counter-Strike had a few funny episodes, but it was really just voice acting in official CS maps. I admit that I don't actively follow machinima, so I don't really know what kind of stuff is being made these days, but the more famous (or "mainstream") machinima like RvsB isn't as good as the older Quake stuff.
The new Half-Life 2 short movie, "A Few Good G-men," is a nice example of what Source can do with its facial expressions and lip synching and such, but I wonder if anyone will take it further by making a longer, original movie.
As for that article, I find it very strange. It makes machinima seem like it was invented by Red Vs. Blue, and that there's something profoundly mysterious and amazing about it. I mean, does RvsB take as much work as making maps, models, music and textures from scratch along with engine modifications? I doubt it. Some of the earliest machinima pieces for Quake were much like RvsB, but they became more complex, and now it seems like we're back at square one.