Found Technology: Players as Innovators in the Making of Machinima

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the Unexpected The focus of this chapter is a new narrative medium called machinima, which means producing animated movies with the software that is used to develop and play computer games. Machinima has provided digital game players with a medium for performing for other players about topics that matter to them, whether it is showing off their prowess as players, commenting on game culture, telling stories, or making statements about current events. This chapter is about how players learned to use multiplayer digital games for these purposes, and how their gameplay was able to take them from deep engagement with games and game technology to the discovery of new uses for digital technology and media