Machinima is the art of making movies with video games. That's the short answer, but the long answer is much more complex. Learn More...
Machinima is an example of "emergent gameplay", a fancy-sounding term which means using a video game in ways the game's developers did not intend.
Although initially not designed for making movies, game hackers and modders found ways to manipulate the video game and gain control of the game's camera, control the character's, etc. By using programs originally intended for testing a game's frame rate by recording footage, such as FRAPS, they could choreograph action and film it, later editing it make movies.
Another example of emergent gameplay is the machinima explosion with the release of The Sims 2. The game featured an in-game video capture, which the designers had intended to be used for recording events that happened in-game and sharing them online. Completely unexpected by them, gamers started using the in-game video camera to record scenes, editing them together into a movie. The Sims 2 is a natural choice for machinima artists; the game features the ability to build your own sets, customize your characters, set up your shots, etc. These features, along with a great wealth of animations to choose from, all of this without need to know any programming or modeling, and an enormous community of custom content creators made this game the most user-friendly game for making machinima, and since it's inception sims2machinima has been the largest machinima culture to date.
As the artform grows, game designers are making their games more readily accessible for modding and for making machinima.
There are companies out there that are trying to make programs specifically for the purpose of creating machinima. These programs are not games, but rather dedicated applications soley for moviemaking. The most notable of them, and the one I use to make some of the machinima showcased here, is Moviestorm, an incredibly ingenious and innovative program created by Short Fuze Ltd., a company founded by machinimators.
The biggest appeal of machinima is the ability to make CGI-style movies without needing the resources and money of a large studio. All you need is a PC, a game, a story, and the tools to make your own. Never in history has the ability to make and market film been so accessible to anyone!
And everyone is starting to notice too! Game developers such as EA games have often freelanced machinima artists to create commercials for their products, networks have used machinima in their advertising and entertainment, and there is even talk of a major movie release made with machinima! As the art grows, so too does interest. Studios are seeing that machinima cost significantly less, and take a lot less time to produce, then a traditional computer animated film, and with game graphics becoming detailed enough to approach rivaling anything WETA or ILM can produce, the artform is becoming an increasingly more lucrative source of entertainment production.
The future is very bright for machinima! If you don't make your own already, why not start now? If making machinima interests you, check out these fine links below:
Moviestorm | Sims99 Wiki | Sims99 | Machinima.com