In this ep, we reflect on the key trends in #machinima we’ve observed during Season 4 of the Completely Machinima podcast. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the year too, so do add comments below.

During the past year, we have reviewed over 22 hours of content, and presented detailed analysis of over 50 films on this channel. As vets of the original community practices (that’s pre YouTube and the M.com/Inc days), one of the great pleasures we take in this podcast is that we get to look at machinima and virtual production across the breadth of genres and engines, by creators from anywhere in the world, and reflect on where its come from, how its evolved and is developing.

This year, we have seen amazing quality films made in popular games such as Half-Life, World of Warcraft, Elden Ring, Star Citizen, Warhammer 40K and Team Fortress 2; have had the pleasure of exploring work made in entirely new games, like BeamNG and Deep Rock Galactic; and others made using engines in their base form such as Unreal, iClone and Source. We’ve also started to see #genAIs become integrated into processes and works. What a year for creatives and creativity!

Our main observation is that we have noted a resurgence of interest in machinima as a terms for the creative form, and we feel creators are at long last focussing on creative practices rather than their channel return. Of course its great when these things collide but it was never what machinima was about originally: it was the passion for great storytelling, using novel processes to achieve a desired outcome and to share that with a community of equally passionate others. Other observations are why we are not seeing as many traditional short stories as we used to…

We hope you enjoy this ep as much as we have making it.

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Key trends observed –

• The highest quality of machinima we’ve ever seen
• Unreal, by comparison, doesn’t actually really compare!
• Experimentation
• Meme’s
• Distribution channels
• Generative AIs

Our reviews, mentioned during discussion in order –

• Firefly, made in Unreal Engine https://completelymachinima.com/2024/05/22/s4-e130-music-maestro-please-may-2024/
• FLITE, made in Unreal Engine https://completelymachinima.com/2024/03/28/s4-e122-m-f-toxic-relationships-vigilante-flite-mar-2024/
• Lonely, made in iClone https://completelymachinima.com/2024/06/19/s4-e134-iclone-lonely-episode-2-the-package-thief-june-2024/
• May the Force tribute, made in Unreal Engine https://completelymachinima.com/2024/05/02/s4-e127-may-the-force-a-tribute-may-2024/
• Flowers of Evil, made in Second Life https://completelymachinima.com/2024/03/21/s4-e121-cosmic-flowers-of-evil-mar-2024/
• Danser Encore, made in GTA5 https://completelymachinima.com/2024/02/14/s4-e116-gta5-danser-encore-escape-game-feb-2024/
• Inner Migration, made in Cyberpunk 2077 with corporate video content https://completelymachinima.com/2024/07/17/s4-e138-cyberpunkfound-footage-inner-migration-july-2024/
• Ricky’s ‘chainsaw massacre’ pick: This is One of the Craziest Videos I have ever Made, made in GTA5 https://completelymachinima.com/2024/07/31/s4-e140-this-is-one-of-the-craziest-videos-i-have-ever-made-gta5-aug-2024/
• Star Citizen father/daughter film: Adrift part 1 – a Season 1 pick https://completelymachinima.com/2021/11/11/completely-machinima-s1-ep25-films/
• Backrooms and the Backrooms response videos https://completelymachinima.com/2023/02/02/s3-e63-film-review-the-backrooms-reunion-feb-2023/ and https://completelymachinima.com/2023/09/27/s3-e96-unreal-engine-backrooms-medley-sept-2023/
• Emesis Blue, made in Source Engine https://completelymachinima.com/2024/03/07/s4-e119-feature-length-emesis-blue-mar-2024/
• Day of Dakrness II, made in EVE Online https://completelymachinima.com/2024/06/26/s4-e135-destruction-hope-day-of-darkness-ii-the-wanderer-june-2024/
• Half Life: Overworld https://completelymachinima.com/2024/08/14/s4-e142-half-life-overworld-aug-2024/
• Lobachevski, made in iClone and genAI https://completelymachinima.com/2024/01/25/s4-e113-legends-zelda-totk-shinto-ritual-iclone-ai-lobachevsky-jan-2023/
• Children of Pain, anymation and genAI content https://completelymachinima.com/2024/05/22/s4-e130-music-maestro-please-may-2024/

And, check out the bonus episode of our very own RickyAI –