Machinima in 2009 - review
Jan
And so, it’s that time again - time for a round-up of the last year in Machinima.
It’s quiet in here…
It’s been a very quiet year, overall. We’ve seen a few notable additions to the Machinima world (Pixel Eyes Productions), but overall, as far as I know there have been less films that broke out of their Machinima area this year than any year previously.
Why? I don’t have any answers on that one, just a few suggestions.
The Machinima communities have now entirely separated. The world of WoW Machinima and Moviestorm Machinima cross over only insomuch as there are a few Moviestormers who play WoW. No-one’s watching Halo movies except Halo players. The Second Life/Anymation/Moviestorm communities are still crossing over, but that’s about it. That makes the likelihood of finding out about really good stuff from any community you’re not involved in much smaller. For example, I only found Warrior’s Dream, probably my pick of the year, when I was specifically looking for 2009 Machinima.
That there’s a glass ceiling in Machinima is now well-understood. I don’t have any hard evidence that’s having a chilling effect on game-based Machinima, but it seems a plausible theory. A budding filmmaker can, with a little Googling, discover that if he makes a film in the Source Engine, for example, he’s effectively giving up any chance not just of money, but also of TV or other widespread distribution outside YouTube. That reduces what used to be a significant intake into Machinima - that of the frustrated professional. (Obviously, Second Life and Moviestorm don’t have that problem, but they’re also not as well-known as World of Warcraft or Half-Life 2).
It’s been a very slow year for new technology, and new tech drives Machinima. World of Warcraft Model Viewer is limping along, sadly. Second Life hasn’t had many graphics improvements I’m aware of. The only new Machinima tool that appeared (MachinimaDev) seems to have stalled. IClone 4 arrived this year, I believe, but still doesn’t seem to have much of a hold on the Machinima world. Only Moviestorm and OpenSim saw significant technical developments.
There aren’t many sources of recommendations out there, either - at least not that one can reliably expect to recommend really good work. WoW.com has Moviewatch, but the frequency of posting there means that the quality can be variable. The Movies Underground is starting to gain traction, but is still finding its feet. Machiniplex is good, but pretty infrequent. There hasn’t been a physical-world Machinima festival this year. I’ve not checked Machinima.com’s recommendations in a while, I must admit. Maybe there is good work out there, but we’re missing it.
Will 2010 see a speed-up in Machinima production? Perhaps. But if it does, it’ll largely be because of…
The Year Of Moviestorm
If we hadn’t had Moviestorm, it would have been a near-silent year, not just a quiet one. Moviestorm’s supplied several of the best movies of the year, including one of my personal favourites, Clockwork. It’s had a steady stream of technical improvements, it’s grown exponentially, and it’s moved from borderline-credible as a tool to very capable indeed.
Of course, it’s also supplied a few controversies, most notably the move to a subscription model. Apparently most of the noise from that has died down by now, and I’ve heard informally that Moviestorm will be addressing both lifetime subscriptions and an End-Of-Life (or “What happens if you go bust?”) policy.
Next year will be the really interesting year for Moviestorm. I have a sense, as I’ve mentioned before, that this is the make-or-break year for Moviestorm. There’s a reason they’ve been the source of all the interesting news this year, and that’s that they’re the only seriously funded company (20 or so employees) who are solely focussed on Machinima. Sooner or later, they’ve got to start making that money back, and from the move to subscriptions, my feeling is this is the year. Will they manage to turn the promise of this year into them becoming the next Photoshop, the first easy and powerful 3D moviemaking tool? I think they’ve got a hard fight, but it ain’t impossible.
Games Companies to Machinima creators: “Bugger off.”
Valve doesn’t want anything to do with legitimising Source Machinima. We’ve not been able to find a single person who’s had film festival permission from Blizzard Entertainment (although you might not need to). Even producers of tremedously successful Machinima, like Clint Hackleman, haven’t been able to strike a deal with the games companies.
With the recent news about Valve, it seems that 2009 has put the nail in the coffin of a breakout hit ever launching a commercial Machinima career using game engines. Maybe a future game engine creator will have a more optimistic attitude (and it’s worth noting, again, that Microsoft are very interested in discussing commercial Machinima production), but right now it seems the big names - Blizzard, Valve, EA - are, pretty definitively, not interested.
What effect will that have on Machinima production? I’m not entirely sure, but it seems like a real pity. I’ve ranted about the glass ceiling in Machinima before, and it’s still very frustrating - there are so many great films that could be made in these engines, but with the controlling attitude currently in place, I can’t see them happening.
(As a side note - it might seem like a funny time for me to be working on a very high production value WoW short. There are reasons for that…)
No New Engines
In 2007, the big engines of note were World of Warcraft, the Source engine, Halo, Second Life and Moviestorm. In 2008, the big engines were World of Warcraft, the Source engine, Halo, Second Life and Moviestorm. And in 2009? WoW, Source, Halo, SL, Moviestorm. For a fast-moving technology-based medium, we ain’t doing much fast moving.
For several years now there has been a notable lack of Machinima being created in new engines, despite a fair number of promising options arriving. Medieval Total War 2 never got any traction, nor did Empire Total War. Uncharted 2’s Machinima mode doesn’t seem to have produced much at all. I’m not hearing anything about Conan Machinima, Lord of the Rings Online Machinima, Aion Machinima.
Why? Well, for starters, even engines that try to be Machinima-friendly seem to have an appalling tendancy toward making really bone-dumb decisions. Take GTA4, with its movie editor, but no way to lipsynch characters. Or Playstation Home’s Machinima mode, which looks awesome, if only there was some way to record the video it produces and make, you know, a film out of it.
Added to that, Machinima communities are more and more centering themselves around their tool of choice. The World of Warcraft Machinima community isn’t, by and large, interested in making films so much as it is interested in making WoW films. Most Machinima creators just aren’t looking for a new tool.
And the old-time Machinima creators have become jaded by years of promising-but-flawed games, not to those of us with the experience to get into a new engine and make films in it are by and large now reluctant to touch a commercial game engine without really good reason, because of the legal issues.
One possibility for a new Machinima engine in 2010 seems to be Dragon Age. It’s developed and supported by a team including a bunch of very experienced ex-community Machinima creators. (Michelle Petit-Mee, for example, Leo Lucian-Bay, Paul Marino and Ken Thain, to name but a few). Initial tests show that Bioware are interested in supporting Machinima creators actively, and tests seem to reveal that the toolset actually has sensible, well-thought-out tools for film creation. The only downside will be that, owned as they are by EA, we really shouldn’t expect commercial possibilities. But of all the games of 2010, Dragon Age looks to be the one that might take off in Machinima.
The other quiet contender for Machinima creation is OpenSim, the open-source Second Life clone. Currently it’s in the very early development stages, but the world that Pineapple Pictures have been doing with it looks very promising indeed. The idea of a truly Open-Source Machinima creation toolkit has been floating around for years, and whilst it’s not as developed as Dragon Age (and realistically I wouldn’t expect to see any really impressive work in it until 2011), it IS commercially usable. it’s the other engine to keep an eye on.
Mocap on the Horizon
And the other big elephant of Machinima ain’t exactly in the room yet, but you can certainly hear its feet pounding closer if you listen closely. Mocap is coming to the home, and it’ll be sooner rather than later. Microsoft have announced Project Natal, which allegedly includes full-body motioncapture for the X-Box. The PS3 is getting mocap controls too. IPISoft now offer a motion capture program for a few hundred dollars. And the first Machinima production company - mine, Strange Company - has just invested in the higher-end but still low-priced NaturalPoint mocap tech.
Will we see a low-budget Avataralike from the Machinima community in 2010? Well, if we don’t I’ll be very, very frustrated this time next year, since we’re in pre-production already, and it’s only a short, dammit. But I don’t think we’ll see much of a rush on the tech for a while - maybe more than one homegrown Mocap flick next year, but realistically, I see Mocap becoming important to Machinima in 2012-2014.
Why that long? Well, Natal won’t turn up before the summer at the earliest. The first version will utterly suck. IPISoft’s software currently doesn’t, from the tests I’ve seen, produce usable results, but by the end of 2010, if they survive, they’ll be getting there. There will be announcements of more low-cost mocap in 2010, but no actual releases.
In 2011 I’d expect us to see the first usable prosumer-level mocap, but probably near the end of the year. Maybe it’ll be an update of Natal, maybe it’ll be the rumoured games mocap device from Animazoo. But by 2012, Machinima creators will be able to afford mocap that works.
Then we’ve got the fabled Machinima lag. Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen that it takes new technology an average of one to two years to be incorporated into Machinima production on a wide scale. This is the first year we’ve seen lots of Moviestorm production, for example. It was two years before Half-Life 2 saw lots of Machinima. It takes that long to work the bugs out, for people to become aware of the tech, and for the production process to grind its way through.
Given all that - look for Machinima mocap in 2012-2014.
Of course, 2010 will, if all goes well, also usher in another new era of Machinima - the era of arguing about whether performance capture is Machinima. I look forward to it…
How was 2009 for you? What trends did you see in Machinima?
Thanks for the mention Hugh, I appreciate your encouragement for our Open Sim work. We’ve had a year of things very nearly working, but just now I’m glad to take a short break from the instability issues and get back in touch with other machinima engines for a while. Easier (and therefore cheaper)mocap will have a huge impact for us, not because we want to use the tools themselves, but we’re hoping to see a wider range of animations becoming available as people start to share their motion files. You didn’t mention Voovees, http://voovees.com/ not surprising as it isn’t (yet?) available as a machinima tool. I’m holding on to the hope that the upcoming beta version will be more useful to movie makers than the limited facilities of the current remix site. The program is developed by the 3 guy team who made zencub3d, a very promising program which was knocked back by the same worldwide financial troubles which put paid to Antics et al. I suspect lack of cashflow is inhibiting lots of tool developers right now, and having a similar slowing impact in the virtual worlds. I beleive Iclone has more potential than is currently being demonstrated, but I’ve lost touch a little with that engine, and it may be that there are some niggles which need to be ironed out before creators can steam ahead at full speed. Moviestorm has had a great year, kudos to the team and the great crop of movie makers that use the program. There is benefit in clarity, and games machinima seems to be developing the reputation for being a dead-end for anyone aiming outside the immediate fan-base, no matter how talented the artists involved. This seems understandable from a commercial standpoint, but a huge waste of resources in terms of 3d asset creation and so on. I’m really glad that the new mo-cap technology has reignited your interest. You are right, we need to be always moving forward, and I look forward to seeing what Strange Company create in the upcoming year.
Thanks! I’d never lost the interest in Machinima, despite my year off - that was exactly that, a year off after 5 years of hard work - but it really is fantastic seeing motion capture tech becoming affordable. (And we’ll see about games machinima and dead ends…). I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do, and looking forward to seeing what you do too.
Great review Hugh thanks.
As newcomers we are just trying to find our place and get involved in the machinima community still. And as you have read in a few of our posts we have already been frustrated with the machinima glass ceiling and confused about the different technologies and the true identity of machinima.
We are excited about this year but don’t know what to expect or where we will end up. We will be at least playing with iClone to see what we get out of that but not sure what we will do with it.
Motion Capture sounds fun and exciting and I am interested to see what you do with it. And yes, I am sure you know I would ask if it truly qualifies as machinima. :)
I agree that 2009 was a disappointing year for machinima.
One thing that stood out is the shift from PC games to console only.
The original Modern Warfare had mod tools allowing you to make your own cutscenes. The highly anticipated Modern Warfare 2 was released with no mod tools.
The first Gears of War included the Unreal Editor which is a fantastic tool. Gears of War 2 was released for console only, thus no more editor.
This seems to be a continuing trend among game studios and it really hurts creativity.
Hi, great find this review. Great one indeed, but lacks all bit positive thinking. 2009 “Unigine 3D engine” “opensim” “Iclone” “TMUndetground” “WoW” “aniboom” “Moviestorm” what a year of changes no? 2010 maybe more and for better. Thks for sharing
Very interesting article!
2009 brought us back to machinima. We rediscovered Moviestorm and we now see its potential, in particular for longer dialogue-driven pieces.
I’m glad The Movies Underground was mentioned. It seems to have gained more prominence in 2009 as it continuously added members from different machinima communities and fueled an increasing awareness of the larger machinima community. Successful events like the Machinima Expo have also done a lot in that regard.
Thank you for championing motion capture in machinima. We all look forward to the day when mocap tech is widespread and mature, allowing a new breed of talented mocap actors to contribute to making machinima more exciting.
Interesting article, thanks for writing this. Sure, there is now a glass ceiling for machinima, and that has become apparent. There are still many engine out there that are being used to make films in exciting ways, I would add some work done in The Movies and Flight Sims, though the number of high quality productions is on the decrease.
One of the most significant aspects of 2009 for me was the number of film festivals that now include a machinima category – Bitfilm, Atopic, Cinemanila, Shooot, to name a few. Interesting too that Sundance will be screening a documentary based on Second Life in 2010.
So it seems that it is what it is. It’s not Pixar, for sure, but it is something. Not exactly sure yet what that something is, but for now there is an attraction that anybody with talent but not the budget can still create.
Thanks for all the comments, guys!
@Russell - good point on the film festivals. Machinima is definitely spreading in that world - albeit limited again by legal issues.
@2ndfantasy.org - Moviestorm, IClone, TMUnderground, and World of Warcraft have all been around for a few years now. Not quite understanding your point? I’ve not heard of Ungine, and I haven’t heard of any Machinima creators using it - what’s exciting about it?
@joe - really good point. The console shift is getting more complete and seems to have gone on for longer than is usual in the PC/console cycle.
Machinima on Second Life where we have our main production company continues to amaze me. What I think is very important is to be responsible to the platform one is working on. That means in Second Life building on the strengths of it (fantastic asset creation, good looking avatars, tinies for example) and minimizing the weaknesses. (Not spending 4 hours trying to get a good shot of someone turning a doorknob- ain’t going to happen) The possiblity for telling narrative stories is incredible, for virtual reality like entertainment huge, but like anything it HAS to be well produced and shot.
I see webisodes, game shows, commercials, video for blogs, personal greeting cards and a whole lot using this platform and I will continue to try to break through the virtual ceiling. My overall goal is to put us in Machinima out there, in front of the General Public. I see 2010 as the year that happens. What we have been able to accomplish on the many engines listed in your great article, Hugh, as a body of work, is tremendous - And what has the gretest resonance to me anyway is what has meaning in all media. Content, stories and characters. (South Park is by no means incredible animation, but the writing is so good that is what defines it as great.) For me this is the challenge - to create great stories and characters that use the strengths inherent in the engine I am curenly using, which is Second Life. There are a lot of strengths which I like to focus on. I do see greater awarenes of Machinima as a medium, when I talk to people about what I do now, fewer people each month say “What?” 2010 will see Machinima entertainment grow, will see Avatar based entertainment grow. I would love to see a commercial film also use machinima as a real storyboard for a larger project, using Machinima as Coppola did early video editing. I have a lot of hope and energy for this medium, The folks who commented on this blog are quite a remarkable group.
“IClone 4 arrived this year, I believe … Only Moviestorm and OpenSim saw significant technical developments.”
Er, that seems ignorantly and arrogantly dismissive. Did you actually bother to even so much as glance at the improvements and additions in iClone 4, over iClone 3?
Yes. Indeed, I was asked to review it for a major magazine. I declined because I don’t like repeatedly bashing things, and I really appreciate what John and co are trying to do.
I know a lot of people seem to be enthusiastic about IClone. I look forward to seeing the potential everyone’s enthusiastic about, and I’d really love to turn around one day and discover it was an awesome tool.
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