As a life-long player of historical simulations and games, I have long been interested in the ways in which games can be used as a narrative medium about history. I've called this HistoryTelling and spoken about the ways in which it has been attempted and also about how I think it might work with digital games.

An interesting post in Alexander Knorr's Xirdalium blog ties issues around accepted uses of source material in Wikipedia to my own work in the history of machinima. So I can't resist posting an excerpt here:

XFIRE presents Machinima Showcase at Stanford University Thursday, October 26

"World of Warcraft Summer Movie Contest" Winners Screening And Machinima Panel Discussion To Be Featured

What: Xfire is hosting a special screening event (http://www.xfire.com/cms/stanford) announcing and showcasing the winners of the Blizzard/Xfire "World of Warcraft Summer Movie Contest."

The new featured pick at the Machinima Archive is "Est Mori."

"Est Mori" was written and directed by Nicholas Werner, a Stanford student in Film & Media Studies. He is also part of the How They Got Game group at the Stanford Humanities Laboratory.

Under the title "Debate 2.0: Weighing the merits of the new Webocracy," today's San Francisco Chronicle carried a fascinating debate between Andrew Keen, author of the forthcoming Cult of the Amateur and Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail. But of course you don't need to find a copy of the newspaper to read it.

The current spotlight pick at the Machinima Archive is Overman's wonderfully juvenile, yet restrained "Male Restrooom Etiquette." I think this amusing piece proves that it is not game culture that is immature, but male culture. Or maybe both.

This from our friend Frederic Descamps over at Xfire:

This just in from Lonneke Theelen of the Mediamatic Workshop in Amsterdam, open to "students, colleagues, friends and co-media-professionals.":

Workshop Machinima " Games as Tools

26 | 27 | 28 | 29 September 2006 @ Mediamatic

Machinima is the art of making film inside the real-time 3D virtual environment of a video game engine. By treating the in-game viewpoint as a camera, the gamespace becomes the set, the characters turn into actors, and the gamer becomes a director.

This just in from Lonneke Theelen of the Mediamatic Workshop in Amsterdam, open to "students, colleagues, friends and co-media-professionals.":

Workshop Machinima " Games as Tools

26 | 27 | 28 | 29 September 2006 @ Mediamatic

Machinima is the art of making film inside the real-time 3D virtual environment of a video game engine. By treating the in-game viewpoint as a camera, the gamespace becomes the set, the characters turn into actors, and the gamer becomes a director.