Something Interesting I noticed about Machinima.com (Gameplay and Narrative Content)

Hey everyone,

In case you don’t know, I’m one of those many people who are a bit peeved about Machinima’s transition to gameplay content over machinima. I completely understand why they did it and such, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And no, before you ask, this is not a rant, rather an interesting observation that hints at the fact that it may be that we machinimators are just behind the times.

Okay, so scrolling through the Machinima.com app, I thought I’d look at the most popular videos. Fully expecting to see gameplay commentaries everywhere; I was not surprised. Every video was a gameplay of some sort. However, it was when I began look at the most popular videos ‘This week’, ‘This month’ and ‘All time’ that I got realized something. The ‘This week’ section was topped by RCVR Episode 4. Now this does make sense; Machinima.com have been promoting the ever-living shit out of this series (I haven’t watched it yet, planning to once every episode is released though). Then there was the Dragon Age redemption trailer, followed by an animated minecraft series. After that, the usual gameplay commentary mix started to show.

Once I got to ‘this month’ though, there were only two gameplay videso in the most popular: Anoj’s top 10 black ops [something] and a music video/BF3 montage. Every other video on the list was narrative content. It was a mix of RCVR, AMC’s Walking Dead, Sonic for hire and How God of War should have ended.

Now I realise that none of these shows are technically ‘machinima’ with Sonic for hire being the closest however, that doesn’t change the fact that Narrative content on Machinima.com is more popular over time than gameplay/commentary. Gameplay commentary seems to be a TV-style thing; you watch it on the day of release, and then it gets buried in the subscribers’ subscription box for another.

This was just an observation, but it appears audiences like high-quality narrative content. I’m betting if someone made a Black ops (or MW3 machinima when it comes out) that was of a very high standard, in terms of visuals, script, etc. it would get a huge following. The Machinima.com audience is ever-changing and I think we need to reevaluate our target audience(s).

This observation makes me much more confident that the apparent decline of machinima on Machinima.com may be due more to the directors and less due to Machinima.com itself. Certainly Machinima.com played its part, but I think it’s time we did some research and got some narrative content out there that is catered towards the current audience, not the audiences of yester-year.

Oh, and no, I don’t mean just make a Call of Duty machinima that you have absolutely no passion for, the call of duty community is not the only audience of Machinima.com. I just used the Black Ops machinima as an example because Call of Duty is, without a doubt, one of the most milked series, content-wise on Machinima.