Machinima Reader final proofs

Over the weekend I was very excited to receive the final proofs of The Machinima Reader. It's the first serious textbook about machinima, edited by two academics who've been involved with it for about a decade, Professor Michael Nitsche of Georgia Tech, and Professor Henry Lowood of Stanford.

The Machinima Reader will assemble the first collection of essays to critically review the phenomenon of Machinima from a wide variety of perspectives.

Machinima is on the verge of stepping beyond its chaotic mix of artistic, ludic and technical conceptions into established traditions and vocabularies of contemporary media. As machinima invents itself, the flexibility of its form poses an interesting challenge to academics as well as artists and critics. We want to offer an inaugural reader for the further development and critical discussion of Machinima, one that charts its growth from several angles and also provides a foundation for critical studies in the future.

They first talked to me about the book nearly five years ago, and asked me to contribute an essay. After 25 years of writing as a journalist and for business, it was very strange relearning the discipline of academic writing. It's taken Michael and Henry a quite while to find a publisher, and go through all the rigours of academic publishing, but it's very nearly there now. The book's been picked up by the prestigious MIT Press, and should be available early in 2011. Mind you, last year I wrote that it was due to be out "in a few months", so don't hold me to that.

I haven't yet seen any of the contributions by the other authors, so I'm personally looking forward to this very much indeed!

The Machinima Reader

About four years ago, I was asked by Henry Lowood (Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections, Film & Media Collections at Stanford University) and Michael Nitsche (Professor at the Digital World and Image Group & member of the Experimental Game Lab at Georgia Tech) to contribute a piece for the first academic textbook about machinima, The Machinima Reader. Henry & Michael described it this way:

The Machinima Reader will assemble the first collection of essays to critically review the phenomenon of Machinima from a wide variety of perspectives.

Machinima is on the verge of stepping beyond its chaotic mix of artistic, ludic and technical conceptions into established traditions and vocabularies of contemporary media. As machinima invents itself, the flexibility of its form poses an interesting challenge to academics as well as artists and critics. We want to offer an inaugural reader for the further development and critical discussion of Machinima, one that charts its growth from several angles and also provides a foundation for critical studies in the future.

I duly wrote something about the difference between game-based and non-game-based machinima (still a highly topical subject, if the recent discussion over on chat noir's blog is anything to go by), sent it off a week later, and then forgot all about it. Well, the wheels of academia grind slowly. Very slowly. But they do move onwards, bit by agonizing bit.

Turns out the book is due to be published by The MIT Press in a few months, and they're now calling for final submissions. I just re-read what I wrote, and it could stand a little revision. Not, surprisingly, nearly as much as I'd expected. Still, it's another little task to be squeezed in amidst all the Moviestorm work before I go on honeymoon next week.

P.S. That'll make two books for me. Well, one and a bit. Dave, I'm ahead of you now!