On Machinima

Another fascinating byproduct of games is the genre of machinima. While machinima can be created out of almost any game, WoW has drawn users in because of its wide variety of character models and expressions. Since characters are highly customizable in game, it is easy to create an entire cast of actors for a short.

I find machinima an interesting phenomenon because it is a user based artifact. The players themselves utilize the models and environments made by development teams to create their own narratives that don't necessarily remain within the boundaries of the games that they came from. The creators of these videos are not necessarily cinematographers or have any relationship to the film industry. Yet these games allow players a cost effective way to create their own miniature films and express their own ideas.

While many have a stereotypical notion of the MMO gamer looking somewhat like this, this stereotype is (thankfully) eroding. Games are becoming a large part of our society and only recently have they begun to be accepted. This problem of acceptance is also prevalent in other cultures, most notably Japan where the Otaku is still considered a social outcast. (we're really not that bad) The notion of the "geek" or "nerd" (There is a hierarchy, though I forget which is worse than the other) seems to creep into all cultures.

However, in October of 2006, Comedy Central's animated series South Park aired the episode titles Make Love, Not Warcraft. A parody of WoW players and the MMO genre in general. While the episode itself was poking fun at gamers, the episode brought MMOs into the mainstream media. It is difficult to find someone who hasn't at least heard of WoW or can't recognize a screenshot of it. A large portion of this episode was shot using WoW's character models in conjunction with the known style of South Park. This episode was of course shot with Blizzard's permission, unlike most machinima found on the interwebs.

Machinima has an interesting relationship with other forms of pop culture. A WoW version of I'm on a Boat, was recently posted to WoW Moviewatch. The machinima version is surprisingly faithful to the original, showing just how flexible the medium is.

If you have the time, I would recommend reading the wiki on Make Love, Not Warcraft. There is a certain symbiotic relationship between the episode and the game. Both make references to each other. As a player, I find it amusing to find these sorts of relationships between different pop culture trends.

Here are a few videos to watch if you have the time:

Not Just Another Love Story (semi-NSWF)

skullcrusher mountain

I'm on a mount

Searching...

I signed up with the social bookmarking site Delicious. To be perfectly honest, I think I did it more because of the name than the site itself. However, it does seem to have a very intuitive interface. I was able to search using various tags and see who had bookmarked sites that I was finding. I did like the feature that allows you shows how many results will come up if you add a tag to the one that you are currently searching.

Unfortunately I am still having some difficulty finding interesting blogs or sites in my field of research. To remind my followers, I am looking at examining the various relationships that develop in MMORPGs and in particular World of Warcraft. I am finding many websites related to the game, but they are more focused on game mechanics and strategies rather than academic research. (I know the research is out there. I've read it!) Perhaps the "academic" authors don't like to write in blogs as much, or perhaps I am just having a hard time finding their work.

I have been looking at sites under the tags of World of Warcraft, Social, and Gaming, but I find that most of the results aren't terribly promising. Most sites are just casual posts from players that say they love how World of Warcraft is social, but that's about it. There are some other interesting things that come up, like tutorials on how to make machinima with WoW. That's an interesting subject for me as well because it explores using video games to express ideas in a more film like media. However, this doesn't exactly pertain to my topic of social structures and development of social practices in a virtual world.

I did find a slight trend of sites that try and show how WoW will help you develop skills in the real world. (I've always wondered...) I've seen articles like this before, but I'm not terribly sure that I believe them. It could be interesting however because it is trying to find correlations between face to face interaction with interaction online. Interactions in WoW are different than those found in other types of online social environments, like IMVU or Second Life.

The fact that there are multiple sites that look into this topic might be useful, but overall I still find it very hard to find good source material. Searching World of Warcraft alone as a tag results in things like (http://www.topworldofwarcraftguide.com/world-of-warcraft-gold-farming-guide). Not terribly helpful. Social Media seems to get slightly better results. Unfortunately, I believe that "social media" has become a bit of an overused buzz word and is being thrown around casually.