Keeping It Reel: Is Machinima a Form of Art?

Champion's paper, presented at DiGRA 2009, asks whether machinima, films produced inside game engines, can be regarded as art. The author treats this as an important but unsettled question, noting that no agreed definition of art exists and that judgments often borrow criteria from cinema that fit games and machinima poorly. Rather than accept the premise that games are inherently inferior to film, the work argues that machinima's interactivity, procedural constraints, and parody of game conventions give it artistic potential of its own. The analysis engages critics such as Roger Ebert and Steven Spielberg, who contend that player control, limited authorial command, and restricted expressive tools hinder games' artistic standing.

The central argument draws on Fiedler and Heidegger, holding that art is defined by intentional activity and by the revealing of an object's "thingliness." On this account, machinima's blend of pre-scripted and real-time elements can produce reflective, artistic experience. The author concludes that machinima may qualify as an art form, while cautioning that formal classification could erode the subversive, interstitial appeal that makes the medium distinctive. The paper also acknowledges present limitations, particularly weak facial expression and avatar expressiveness, which for now keep the practice closer to craftsmanship.

The later argument extends the discussion to machinima as a reflective design practice and a teaching tool. Working within the constraints of earlier, more stable game engines is presented as a source of creative productivity, and machinima is framed as a design procedure defined by its tools, with its origins as a primitive virtual camera still visible to audiences. The scope is theoretical and conceptual, grounded in game design, media theory, and cognitive science rather than quantitative data, and the paper offers no empirical measurements of audience reception or production practice.