November 29, 2005 - Gamasutra Lionhead's new Hollywood management game The Movies seems to have caused a bit of a stir, but not simply because of its smart premise and odd flaws. It has made machinima, the art of making films from game engines, far easier than ever before. It's not long been out, but already thousands of films have been uploaded to the net.
Some of these, as tech-activist site BoingBoing points out, have been concerned with stark political commentary, such as this movie about the recent rioting in France. Video games are increasingly enabling people to express their ideas on all kinds of subjects creatively, but there are limits on what people are going to be allowed to do with tools like The Movies. Interestingly, as a BoingBoing reader points out, all the films produced by the game are subject to Activision's EULA. "Since user-created movies seem to require at least *some* of Activision's copyrights (3D character models and/or environments at minimum), the DMCA could probably be used to take down movies. This might be of note if Activision doesn't agree with the content of political machinima made with The Movies."
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