only based on computer games or that adopt their aesthetics, but actual
games recorded and dubbed in order to provide them with a ‘filmic plot’ to
attract videogames consumers. This phenomenon is known as ‘Machinima’.
Irene Chien remarks on the self-reflexivity of machinima and points out that
‘the way these game-movie hybrids use cinematic narrative to challenge
video-game logic, and game culture to question filmmaking paradigms is what
makes them, for the moment, so arresting’ (Chien, 2007: 24). Machinima
develops an entirely new film language, one that is not necessarily restricted
by the real world. A pertinent example of Machinima is the aptly titled short
film Deviation (Griggs, 2006). Released to the public at the 2006 Tribeca Film
Festival, this virtual film was created by players/actors on-line who were not
present at the Festival and did not even meet each other or the director in
the real world (Chien, 2007: 24-25).
Mackenzie Wark summarizes the current difference between cinema
and videogames stating that the latter ‘represent a significant step away
from the intensity of cinema and the simultaneity of television. Its aesthetic
depth lies firstly in the complexity of possible interactions between the
audience and the media text’ (Wark, 1994: 23). Indeed, in spite of the
common characteristics that are shared by films and videogames (plots and
aesthetics, fundamentally), time and space are managed in a different way in
them. In cinema the camera is a window on the world which can be explored
from a given position (or more than one, as occurs in films such as in Time
Code (Figgis, 2000)), but videogames go a step further and allow players to
explore and have an active role in the environment. We watch films but we
are active participants of videogames. Indeed, in a videogame we are
simultaneously the spectator and the protagonist. The keyword to understand
the current difference between film and videogames is interactivity. This can
be the future of cinema: interactive films with active spectators. In this
sense, the appearance in the last decade of a videogame genre that recreates
worlds and periods that are played in the first person or FPS (First Person
Shooters) is crucial. Thus, games like Halo (2001), Half Life (1998)17, Quake
17 In a review of this game, Ron Dunlin writes: ‘A major goal in any game is to create the illusion of
reality, a fact that is especially true for first person shooters. The whole point of the genre is to put you,
- 53 -