Machinima

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:

• "OMG, we're actually characters in a video game": Characters become self-aware and start assaulting the Fourth Wall with a big hammer.
• "But these are FUNNY Marines!": Red vs. Blue spawned a thousand wise-cracking faceless troopers.
• "Evil hackers are infiltrating the server!": Smashtasm spawned a thousand Super Smash Bros. players fighting against the forces of digital evil.
• "You know those quiet guys you play as in various games? Let's give all of them mics!": Freeman's Mind spawned a thousand personalities for formerly generic characters.
• Affectionate Parody of the game being used.

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:

• The Adventures Of Coach
• Alex Spider
• Anachronox: The Movie
• Ascension Academy
• The Asstronaut Chronicles
• Azerothian Super Villains (World of Warcraft)
• The Bad Assassin (Grand Theft Auto IV)
• BadwaterVideos2009 (Team Fortress 2)
• Christian Brutal Sniper (Team Fortress 2)
• Chronicle of the Annoying Quest (World of Warcraft)
• Civil Protection (Half-Life 2)
• Classic GM Videos
• Clear Skies (Filmed in both Half-Life 2 and Eve Online)
• A Clone Apart
• Combine Nation (another Half-Life 2 machinima heavily inspired by the Civil Protection.)
• COPS: Skyrim
• Courier's Mind: Rise of New Vegas (Fallout: New Vegas)
• Cult of Personality (Team Fortress 2)
• Cyborneer Series (Team Fortress 2)
• Cycles (Battlefield 3)
• The Dark Days (Garry's Mod)
• Dark Secrets of Garry's Mod (Garry's Mod)
• Dat Intelligence (Team Fortress 2)
• A Day in the Life of a Commissar
• Demo Mesa (Team Fortress 2/Half-Life)
• Detective Nigbone
• The Devil Is a Loser: Paranoid (Runescape)
• Dinguses (Garry's Mod)
• Doctor Lalve
• Doppelganger's Rampage (Team Fortress 2)
• Dramatic Hearts
• Duke Nukem ForeverQuest
• Elliot Goes To School (Garry's Mod)
• Eltorro64Rus (Team Fortress 2)
• Emesis Blue (Team Fortress 2)
• An Empire Revisited (Jedi Academy)
• The Fall Of Liberty City Heroes (Grand Theft Auto IV)
• Fallout Lore: The Storyteller (Filmed using very heavily modded Fallout franchise games)
• Faze Combat (Ace Combat: Assault Horizon)
• The Fedora Chronicles (Team Fortress 2)
• Final Fantasy The Sorceress War (The Movies; an adaptation of Final Fantasy VIII)
• Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged
• Freeman's Mind (Half-Life)
  • Freeman's Mind Spinoffs
    • Chell's Mind (Portal)
    • Barney's Mind (Half-Life: Blue Shift)
    • Felix's Mind (Filmed in Half-Life 2: Episode 1)
    • Matt's Mind (Fallout 3)
• Gamer Poop
• Gaming All-Stars (Garry's Mod)
• Ghosts Of The Past (Team Fortress 2)
• The Gmod Idiot Box
• Gorgeous Freeman (Garry's Mod)
• A Granary Adventure: The Underdog Story (Team Fortress 2)
• The GTA Connection (Grand Theft Auto)
• Guards N' Retards (GoldenEye (1997))
• gunslingerpro2009 (Team Fortress 2)
• Half-Genie Soldier (Team Fortress 2)
• Half-Life: Alyx but the Gnome is Too Aware
• Half-Life but the AI is Self-Aware (Half-Life)
• Half Life: Side Story: Gaiden: HUNT DOWN FREE MAN (Hunt Down the Freeman)
• Heavy is Dead (Team Fortress 2)
• A Heavy's 2Fort Adventure (Team Fortress 2)
• JOHNNYFLASH Machinimas
• Knights Of The Old Republic Cinematic Universe (Knights of the Old Republic, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords)
• Leeroy Jenkins Video (World of Warcraft)
• The Leet World
• Littlesprout's Stories (A Warrior Cats series filmed in Roblox)
• Logan's Tale (Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas)
• The Lost Art (Uru: Ages Beyond Myst)
• Mass Defect
• Meet the BLU Team (Team Fortress 2)
• Memeventures (Garry's Mod)
• MGT School (Gacha Life)
• Moments With Heavy (Team Fortress 2)
• Motormouth Mike (Garry's Mod)
• The MSG Saga (Team Fortress 2)
• The Music Freaks (Gacha Life)
• My Little Human Park (Garry's Mod)
• North Western Railway Tales
• Odd Men Out
• The Other Hell: Dystopia (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas)
• OnyxKing
• Oxhorn Short Shorts (World of Warcraft)
• Painis Cupcake
  • Painis Cupcake's Revenge (Garry's Mod)
• Parker's Mind (Red Faction)
• Pinkie Pie's Exciting Adventure (Garry's Mod)
• PlasticApple2011 (Left 4 Dead 2)
• Pootis Engage (Team Fortress 2 and a whole lot of others)
• Profound Moments In Left 4 Dead 2 (A scripted Let's Play series filmed in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2)
• Ze Pyromancers (A Garry's Mod machinima group)
• The Raiden Saga
• Qeios
• Quirky Misadventures of Soldine the Cyborg (Team Fortress 2)
• Requiem For A Pizza (Team Fortress 2)
• Star Wars: Rico's Brigade (Men of War)
• Reynaldo The Assassin (The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind)
• Rise of the Epic Scout (Team Fortress 2)
• Team Neighborhood (Team Fortress 2)
• Sanity Not Included (Filmed in several games)
• Shephard's Mind (Filmed in Half-Life: Opposing Force)
• ShockHat734 (Kirby)
• Skibidi Toilet Series
• Soap Demo (Team Fortress 2)
• Sodor: Dark Times (TRAINZ)
• Sodor the Early Years (TRAINZ)
• Soldiers Of Misfortune (Day Of Defeat)
  • See also Janus Syndicate
• The Spy Fights Godzilla ᶠᵒʳ ˢᵒᵐᵉ ʳᵉᵃˢᵒⁿ (Team Fortress 2)
• STBlackST (Team Fortress 2)
  • Unusual Troubles (Team Fortress 2)
• Star Trek - The Quasi-Machinima (Star Trek Online)
• The Stories of Sodor (TRAINZ)
• Super Mario 64 Bloopers (Machinima filmed with Super Mario 64)
  • MarioMario54321
  • Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers
    • Meggy's Destiny: An SMG4 Movie
    • The SMG4 Movie: 10 Year Anniversary Special
• Team Service Announcement (Team Fortress 2)
• The Tale Of Tarama (Soul Nomad & the World Eaters)
• Tales of the Past (World of Warcraft)
• Tasty Cools (Garry's Mod)
• Team Fabulous 2 (Garry's Mod)
• Team Fortress 2 (Official and canon machinima shorts created by Valve)
• TheParryGod (Half-Life: Alyx)
• Tobias and the Half-Pariah (TRAINZ)
• Two Worlds (The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind)
• The Underground
• Vagineer
  • Vagi Series (Garry's Mod)
• Video Game Championship Wrestling (WWE video games)
• Warden's Fall (Dragon Age)
• War of the Servers (Half-Life 2)
• Water-Human (Gothic II)
• Worlds Apart
• WWEOTE

Non-Web Video Examples:

• South Park - One episode was about World of Warcraft and it was filmed in said game.
• The Drew Carey Show had a scene and a few advertisements filmed in The Sims.
• Zero 7's music video for "In The Waiting Line" was created this way, although with specially-created assets and not in a pre-existing game.
• Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light (uses both live-action scenes and footage shot from within Final Fantasy XIV)
• Gorillaz's first music video for "The Valley of the Pagans" took place in Grand Theft Auto V's Los Santos, merging their typical animation with in-game footage to depict an insane joyride across the city. They even used the game's phone-based interface to display featured artist Beck. Unfortunately, the video was deleted from the official account (the above link is of a fan reupload) almost assuredly because the band didn't actually receive permission from Rockstar Games to use their game, with their second video reworking the concept without any video game footage.
• Splinter Cell Co-Op Theater (with Bob And Steve) used the co-op mode of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and aired as part of X-Play.