PvP as Machinima

Personally, I'd only watch a PVP video here if it was... story based or just thrown in as comedy. Guy wakes up drunk in Nagrand arena with an ugly dwarf priest who's his new wife now, gates open, aww balls.

I don't mean have RP stuff for each fight. Possibly have it flashback style. Really hard to try to think of how PVP would fit in.

If I want to watch a straight forward PVP video, I'd hit up YouTube or something. The closest I might watch here would be the World of Roguecraft series. Not a real story, but it made many connections to things experienced in our game play and things people complained about. It stretched (or not so stretched) stereotypes and then smacked them and proved them wrong.

I'd like to watch a video, see some awesome stuff, and have a good laugh. Experiment, see what your friends think.

 

I think the frustration from storyline Machinima producers comes with the abundance of gameplay and PvP videos overshadowing the more creative content. It's not to say that they can't both share a place on the front page of a movie site, but they shouldn't be rated and categorized together.

Content that tells a story or shares an experience that isn't typical of the game is a general place to draw the line between storytelling and gameplay. That doesn't necessarily mean viewers won't enjoy both ends of the spectrum, but it's pretty easy to find PvP and gameplay videos whereas a lot of videos on this site are harder to stumble upon.

 

I like your comment on sharing the same page -- it'd be a great idea to have one spotlight dedicated to game-play and another dedicated to machinima. There are some PvP movies that are definitely entertaining viewing from any perspective -- I first saw Dance 3 when I'd just started playing Warcraft and had no idea what was going on -- so I'd not so readily count them as a besides to machinimas.

 

Another thing that bothers me personally with pvp videos versus story driven movies, is that pvp movies simply require some kind of movie recording program. As machinima continues to grow, these programs will record higher quality, at a lower cost, and continue to become user friendly, whereas real "movie making magic" is always solely dependant upon the creator, it's not something that can simply be bought, used, and thrown on youtube for an overnight 1,000,000 views. It feels far more satisfying on the producers end.

On that same side, I also think it begins to become frustrating for producers because while they may still be trying to break into the industry, Stormshadowninja (lvl 70 nelf rogue!) simply recorded all of his arena games, stumbled upon a particularly interesting one, and throws it on youtube. Overnight his movie has drawn more attention than earlier said producer.

Now in defense of Stormshadowninja (fictitious name btw) it'd likely be smart for the producer to somehow "bridge the gap" between easily developed pvp movie, and intriguing story machinima (a narrated cinematic arena movie is totally plausible).

In the end, I believe that it is in a way, supply and demand. The demand is low for pvp movies, mostly cause it's completely over supplied due to the ease of creating them, while cinematic machinima garners (once it's cracked the thick crust of other machinima) more attention and begins to shine far brighter. 

 

Well...

I think the real question is... What makes any vid a quality Machinima? All aspects of wow or whatever game your playing can be rendered or expressed in such a way that any of it can be good if acually done right. We might as well be talking about what even makes a good movie or a work of art.

Yeah theres an abundence of PvP vids but theres very little good ones at that. I mean how many vides have you guys seen of any non pvp content for a wow vid and still don't find much thats all that great. It's the samething. I myself have come across at least 3 pvp vids out of like the thousands I've seen that would consider Machinima because they actually stand out as such.

A piece to me is one that has an life of it's own. It's not just something thats portraying an event. It's something that brings the life of the work to the viewer.

Does that make sense?