Pioneers in Machinima: The Grassroots of Virtual Production

Dr Tracy G. Harwood is Professor of Digital Culture at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. She was director of the First European Machinima Festival in 2007 and has been researching the socio-cultural impacts of machinima ever since. She has keynoted and spoken at machinima and digital arts events around the world, highlighting the impacts of machinima in practice. In 2014, she was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (England) to evaluate its cultural values (see: machinima.dmu.ac.uk). Her research into machinima has been published in leading digital arts, visual culture and marketing journals including Leonardo, Digital Creativity, Journal of Visual Culture, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, and others.

Ben Grussi was part of the original core community whose earliest engagement with machinima began long before the term was coined. Like many that became part of the machinima community, its force pushed Ben in an entirely unplanned and unexpected direction. With a series of roles in the community over twelve years, Ben’s knowledge of all things machinima has earned him the distinction of once being described as its own Wikipedia! Most notably, Ben was the primary curator of machinima creative work from its earliest days. This text draws on his deep knowledge of and insight into the games, film, people, and events, from within the world of machinima as it emerged and evolved.