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Machinima (mah-SHEE-ne-mah or mah-SHIN-nuh-mah) are movies made with video game assets. The word is supposed to be a portmanteau of "Machine" and "Cinema", but the guy who coined the term, Hugh Hancock, misspelled it. Since Hancock misspelled it while coding machinima.com, the term stuck.

Since machinima is a form of scripted video narrative, it could employ any of the Tropes from the main list, and there are also tropes specific to the medium. From a scriptwriting perspective, the technological limitations on the action are the only difference from other media.

Some common plots include:

Machinima are almost always Web Originals, but they have even appeared on television in some form. For example, several scenes from the Make Love, Not Warcraft episode of South Park were filmed in World of Warcraft. In the past, there were hubs like Gorilla Gong that made it easy to find quality machinima to watch. Machinima.com was the original go-to place for machinima, but it eventually became a more standard YouTube entertainment network, even branching out their focus to include comic books and fandom at one point. A complete history of the medium can be found at The Other Wiki.

When Machinimators cannot muster enough horsepower (or bandwidth) to make video, and decide to turn their Machinima works into webcomics instead, see Machinomics.

See also RPG Episode, when this is done for the sake of a Formula-Breaking Episode.


Examples:

    Halo Machinima 

    Minecraft Machinima 

    The Sims Machinima 

    Super Smash Bros. Machinima 

Non-Web Video Examples:


Alternative Title(s): Machinima Tropes

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