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id Software LLC is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack. Business manager Jay Wilbur was also involved. id Software made important technological developments in video game technologies for the PC, including work done for the Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake franchises. id's work was particularly important in 3D computer graphics technology and in game engines that are used throughout the video game industry. The company was involved in the creation of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Wolfenstein 3D is often considered to be the first true FPS, Doom is a game that popularized the genre and PC gaming in general, and Quake was id's first true 3D FPS.
Machinima is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation.
Quake is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive in 1996. It is the first game in the Quake series. In the game, players must find their way through various maze-like, medieval environments while battling a variety of monsters using an array of weaponry. The overall atmosphere is dark and gritty, with many stone textures and a rusty, capitalized font.
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is an American comic science fiction web television series created by Burnie Burns with his production company Rooster Teeth. The show was based on the setting of the military science fiction first-person shooter series and media franchise Halo. The show is distributed through Rooster Teeth's website, as well as on DVD, Blu-ray, and formerly on the El Rey Network and Netflix. The series initially centers on two opposing teams of soldiers fighting an ostensible civil war – shown in increments to actually be a live fire exercise for elite soldiers – in the middle of Blood Gulch, a desolate box canyon, in a parody of first-person shooter video games, military life, and science fiction films. Initially intended to be a short series of six to eight episodes, the project quickly and unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its premiere on April 1, 2003. The series consists of seventeen seasons and five mini-series, with a crossover with Death Battle, "Meta vs. Carolina", releasing in 2016. Red vs. Blue is the longest running episodic web series and second longest running web series of all time, behind Homestar Runner.
Katherine Anna Kang is an American businesswoman and machinima film producer.
Black Widow Games was a video game developer specializing in promotional mods for Quake and Half-Life 3D engines. They are best known for their They Hunger series. Prominent members included Neil Manke, Einar Saukas, and Magnus Jansén. The company business model is based on developing contract-work mods for the marketing campaigns of customer companies and products, freely distributed for promotion.
Paul Marino is a film director, producer, animator, voice actor, and author currently focused on machinima, the art of using engines from video games to create films. He is a co-founder and the executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS), a non-profit organization formed in 2002 to promote and organize the growth of machinima. Marino also co-founded the ILL Clan, a machinima production group, and, working under the pseudonym ILL Robinson, helped to create a number of the group's machinima pieces. In particular, he directed Hardly Workin', an August 2000 comedy video that won a Best in SHO award in Showtime's alt.SHO.com Alternative Media Festival, held on February 8, 2001, and an award for Best Acting at the AMAS's 2002 Machinima Film Festival.
The French Democracy is a short 2005 French political film made by Alex Chan using computer animation from Lionhead Studios' 2005 business simulation game The Movies. The plot centers on three Moroccan men who turn to rioting after facing different forms of discrimination. Chan, a French native of Chinese descent, created the film to convey his view that racism caused the riots of the 2005 civil unrest in France. Although Chan was restricted by shortcomings and technical limitations in The Movies, he finished the film after four days of production.
Strange Company is a group of machinima creators and distributors based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They are known in the medium as the longest-standing machinima production company, having produced machinima films since 1997, and for creating the Machinima.com website, which distributes such films on the internet since 2000.
Diary of a Camper is a short American film made using id Software's 1996 first-person shooter video game Quake, released in 1996. It was created by United Ranger Films, then a subdivision of a popular group of video game players, or clan, known as the Rangers. The film was first released over the Internet as a non-interactive game demo file. The video is generally considered the first known example of machinima—the art of using real-time, virtual 3D environments, often game engines, to create animated films. The story centers on a lone camper, a player waiting in a strategic location instead of seeking active battle, who faces five members of the Rangers clan in a deathmatch, a type of multiplayer game in which the goal is to kill as many opponents as possible.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in the year 2006. These include several new machinima productions, season finales, and the 2006 Machinima Festival.
Operation Bayshield is a short 1997 film made by Clan Undead, a group of video game players. The work was created by using the machinima technique of recording a demonstration file of player actions in id Software's 1996 first-person shooter video game Quake, which could replay such files on demand. The group had seen the first known machinima productions, made by United Ranger Films, and decided to make a comedy film. The result, Operation Bayshield, follows a task force's attempts to thwart terrorists who have chemical explosives. Released on January 23, 1997, the work received praise from contemporary Quake movie review sites and helped to attract others, including Hugh Hancock of Strange Company and members of the ILL Clan, to machinima. It pioneered technical advances in machinima, such as the use of custom digital assets and of lip synchronization.
The Seal of Nehahra is an American film made in 2000, created by Mindcrime Productions as part of the Nehahra Project. Made using a modified version of id Software's 1996 first-person shooter computer game Quake and released over the Internet as a non-interactive game demo package, the film was the longest released Quake movie — as Quake-based machinima was known at the time. At a total length of three hours and fifty five minutes, it is the longest single-piece machinima production as of 2017. The film received high reviews from the major Quake movie review sites of the time, Psyk's Popcorn Jungle and The Cineplex.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in the year 2005. These include several new machinima productions, season finales, and the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.
Machinima, Inc. was a U.S.-based multiplatform online entertainment network owned by WarnerMedia. The company was founded in January 2000 by Hugh Hancock and was headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in the year 2004.
Quad God is a 2000 film made by Tritin Films. It was created using the machinima technique of recording video frames from id Software's 1999 first-person shooter (FPS) video game Quake III Arena. Featured during the launch of the website machinima.com, the work was initially controversial among machinima filmmakers because it was created and distributed in a conventional video file format, whereas previous machinima films were demo files that required the original game to view. However, the more accessible format broadened Quad God's viewership, and, in a few years, the use of conventional video formats became nearly universal for machinima.
Game: On is a 2004 short film produced by Ethan Vogt, a student at New York University, as an advertisement for Volvo Cars. The work is the first to combine live action and machinima, the use of real-time computer animation from a three-dimensional graphics rendering engine. In 2005, the film won awards for Best Picture and Best Commercial/Game Machinima at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.
References
- Heaslip, Stephen (November 1, 1996). "Blue's Quake News October 26 – November 1, 1996". Archived from the original on August 14, 2006. Retrieved August 7, 2006.
- Heaslip, Stephen (November 8, 1996). "Blue's Quake News November 2–8, 1996" . Retrieved August 7, 2006.
- Heaslip, Stephen (December 6, 1996). "Blue's Quake News November 30 – December 6, 1996" . Retrieved August 7, 2006.
- Heaslip, Stephen (December 13, 1996). "Blue's Quake News December 7–13, 1996" . Retrieved September 1, 2006.
- Marino, Paul (2004). 3D Game-Based Filmmaking: The Art of Machinima . Scottsdale, Arizona: Paraglyph Press. ISBN 1-932111-85-9.
- "Quake". GameSpot . CNET Networks, Inc . Retrieved August 7, 2006.