Machinima, Inc.

Machinima, Inc. was an American multiplatform online entertainment network owned by WarnerMedia. The company was founded in January 2000 by Hugh Hancock and was headquartered in Los Angeles, California.[2]

It originated as a hub for its namesake, machinima, which uses and manipulates video-game technology to create animation,[3] as well as featuring articles on machinima and content about film and technology. The website initially helped to bring attention to machinima as an art form and to encourage productions based on game engines other than those of id Software's first-person shooter computer game series Quake.[4] Over time, the website's focus shifted to general entertainment programming centered around video game culture, comic books and fandom.

In 2016, the company was acquired by Warner Bros. Digital Networks. In turn, Warner Media was acquired by AT&T in 2018. That December, the company would be re-organized into Otter Media and eventually subsumed by its multi-channel network Fullscreen. In January 2019, Machinima abruptly discontinued their YouTube channels, with their videos set to private. In February 2019, Machinima officially ceased operations.[5]

History

In December 1999, id Software released Quake III Arena. According to Paul Marino, executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences, filmmakers who had been using prior versions of the Quake series to record animated videos, then called "Quake movies", were initially excited, but the enthusiasm dampened when id announced that, in an attempt to curtail cheating in multiplayer video games, it would take legal action against anyone who released details of Quake III's networking code, which was included in the game's game demo file format. This precluded the use of custom demo-editing tools that had facilitated the creation of videos that used the older Quake and Quake II demo file formats, slowing the release of new Quake movies. Another contributing factor to this decline was that the self-referential nature of the gameplay-related situations and commentary of Quake movies was losing novelty. Marino explained bluntly that "the joke was getting old".[6] Therefore, the Quake movie community needed to reinvent itself.[7]

In January 2000, Hugh Hancock started Machinima.com, a resource for video makers who used computer and video games as a medium. The site's name was foreign to the Quake movie community. The term machinima was originally machinema, from the words machine and cinema. However, Hancock had misspelled the term in a previous email, and the new name stuck because he and Anthony Bailey, who had worked on Quake done Quick, liked the now-embedded reference to

Programming

Machinima's content was primarily hosted on various YouTube channels. Content uploaded onto these channels are either produced in-house or by signed directors. Machinima has also utilized social media platforms to provide fans with featured uploads, interactive questions, and live event coverage.

Social media integration

Machinima used a variety of social networking services including Facebook and Twitter as distribution platforms for its productions. It was integrated with Apple IOS and Microsoft Xbox Live service.[75] Machinima frequently posted content on various social networks core to the concept of sharing and generating hits for Machinima videos.

Machinima's partnership with Google included Google's $35 million investment in Machinima.[76]

Criticism

As a multi-channel network, Machinima had over 5,000 partners worldwide[77] who were contracted to produce video content under the Machinima brand.[3] The company had been criticised for the use of perpetual contracts.[78] Ben Vacas, known to the YouTube community as "Braindeadly", attracted media attention in January 2013 over contractual issues with Machinima.[79] Under the terms of his contract, Machinima was permitted to place advertisements on Vacas's videos and in return he would receive a percentage of the profits generated.[79] However, the contract also disclosed that it existed "in perpetuity",[78] meaning Machinima would hold the rights to any content created by Vacas, published on his partnered YouTube channel, in his lifetime, a detail Vacas failed to read.

See also

• Multi-channel network
• Cost per mille
• Cost per impression
• YouTube
• List of multi-channel networks
• List of YouTubers

External links

• Official website (Archive)