Diary of a Camper
Encyclopedia
Diary of a Camper is a short 1996 American film made using id Software
's 1996 first-person shooter
computer game Quake. It was created by United Ranger Films
, then a subdivision of a popular group of computer game players, or clan, known as the Rangers. The film was first released over the Internet
as a non-interactive game demo
file. The video is generally considered the first known example of machinima
—the art of using real-time, virtual 3-D environments, often game engine
s, to create animated films. The story centers on a lone camper
(a player waiting in a strategic location instead of seeking active battle) who faces five members of the Rangers clan in a deathmatch
, a type of multiplayer game in which the goal is to kill as many opponents as possible.
Although players had previously recorded segments of gameplay, these were usually deathmatches or speedrun
s, attempts to complete a map
as quickly as possible. Diary of a Camper was the first demo to contain a narrative with (text-based) dialogue, instead of merely showing gameplay. Commentators have called the work primitive, but acknowledge its importance in establishing video games as a medium for filmmaking.
.
Doom. Using this feature, players could efficiently record game events, rather than the rendered video itself, and later replay them in real-time through the game engine. Dooms successor, Quake, offered new opportunities for both gameplay and customization, while preserving the demo recording ability. In the book Machinima, Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd stated that multiplayer games became popular, almost a sport, and demo files of matches were recorded and studied. Paul Marino
, executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
(AMAS), used a different analogy: "Players began to record deathmatches with a more cinematic flair.... [T]he viewpoint of the player became the viewpoint of a director."
Well-known for their playing skill and their ability to program game modifications
, the Rangers conceived the idea to use Quake for filmmaking in August 1996 and released Diary of a Camper on October 26, 1996. The group's new demo surprised the Quake community by exploiting the game differently. According to Henry Lowood, Diary of a Camper contains the action and gore of previous gameplay demos, but in the context of a simple story instead of the usual deathmatch. A BusinessWeek
article compared the events of the film to those of a typical deathmatch. Like many of its predecessors, the demo was recorded in Quakes networked multiplayer deathmatch mode, but "it marked the transition from sports footage to moviemaking. The players were choreographed like actors, ... delivering their lines as plain text...." Lowood stated that "Diary of a Camper breaks with the demo movie as documented gameplay" because the spectator's perspective is independent "from that of any player/actor; the movie is not 'shot' from the first-person perspective of the shooter." Lowood called the film a "transformation of competitive play to ... minimal theatrical play", emphasized through the inclusion of references to gameplay, such as the camper.
Before Diary of a Campers release, Uwe Girlich, a German doctoral candidate, had documented the Quake demo file format, in which "the player coordinates and camera positions may be different". He added that "for people with too much spare-time Quake can replace a full 3D modelling system". However, the Rangers developed Diary of a Camper before any demo-editing software tools had been publicly released; clan member Eric "ArchV" Fowler instead created his own tools to reposition the camera and to splice recorded footage. As with all of United Ranger Films' productions, Heath "ColdSun" Brown wrote the story, and Matt "Unknown Soldier" Van Sickler was the director. In the release notes, Brown credits clan members Chris "Sphinx" Birke and Mute with helping Fowler with "movie packaging".
Diary of a Camper and the films that it inspired were initially called "Quake movies"; the term machinima was later coined in 1998, in response to the increasing use of other game engines. There was initial hesitance to retroactively label Diary of a Camper the first machinima piece; a Machinima.com
article from January 2000 opened, "It's kinda hard to pin down the first Machinima: things like the Doom speedruns, the Stunt Island
stuff and the Demo Scene
all compete for the title. However, it's a lot easier to pin down the first piece of film made in a 3D game engine: Diary Of A Camper". Marino states that the AMAS carefully defined machinima in 2002 as "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment" to separate machinima from its creative lineage. Separating machinima from the demoscene and earlier demo recordings, he defines Diary of a Camper as the first machinima work. Lowood also contrasts the film with earlier recordings of "documented gameplay".
Although Quake movie critics found shortcomings in Diary of a Camper, they mentioned positive aspects, including the work's novelty; however, their final ratings varied. Matthews wrote that "the camera work was very nice and never once screwed up", and Lum gave the film "a perfect 10 for Innovation/Originality because [it] started the Quake Movie craze". Of the major Quake movie review sites, only The Cineplex gave Diary a good rating overall, 7.5 out of 10. Matthews and Coates rated the film 20%, and 2 out of 10, respectively. Later, Coates updated his review, saying, "I feel I overreacted at the fact that DoaC was old. It's the first ever Quake movie. I have to give the Rangers massive credit for that.... But, by today's standards, the rating seems to fit."
Because of its significance, Diary of a Camper continues to be featured in machinima presentations. It was one of the first works to be included in the Machinima Archive, a collaboration among Stanford University
, the Internet Archive
, the AMAS, and machinima.com
. In a 2005 event at Stanford University, the film was presented with later machinima works, such as Red vs. Blue
. Likewise, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
included it in a machinima exhibit that ended on July 16, 2006.
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
's 1996 first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
computer game Quake. It was created by United Ranger Films
United Ranger Films
United Ranger Films was a machinima production group responsible for the first examples of machinima. They were an offshoot from the Quake deathmatch clan, The Rangers, and were made up of members of the clan. Their first movie, Diary of a Camper, was a revolution at the time, because it was the...
, then a subdivision of a popular group of computer game players, or clan, known as the Rangers. The film was first released over the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
as a non-interactive game demo
Game demo
A game demo is a freely distributed demonstration or preview of an upcoming or recently released video game. Demos are typically released by the game's publisher to help consumers get a feel of the game before deciding whether to buy the full version....
file. The video is generally considered the first known example of machinima
Machinima
Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation...
—the art of using real-time, virtual 3-D environments, often game engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
s, to create animated films. The story centers on a lone camper
Camping (computer gaming)
In video gaming, camping is a tactic in which a player will obtain a strategic position anywhere on the map and wait for characters to arrive and be killed, or waiting for useful objects to appear in an area rather than actively seeking them out....
(a player waiting in a strategic location instead of seeking active battle) who faces five members of the Rangers clan in a deathmatch
Deathmatch (gaming)
Deathmatch or Player vs All is a widely-used gameplay mode integrated into many shooter and real-time strategy computer games...
, a type of multiplayer game in which the goal is to kill as many opponents as possible.
Although players had previously recorded segments of gameplay, these were usually deathmatches or speedrun
Speedrun
A speedrun is a play-through, or recording thereof, of a whole video game or a selected part of it performed with the intent of completing it as fast as possible, optionally under certain prerequisites, mainly for the purposes of entertainment and competition...
s, attempts to complete a map
Level (computer and video games)
A level, map, area, or world in a video game is the total space available to the player during the course of completing a discrete objective...
as quickly as possible. Diary of a Camper was the first demo to contain a narrative with (text-based) dialogue, instead of merely showing gameplay. Commentators have called the work primitive, but acknowledge its importance in establishing video games as a medium for filmmaking.
Synopsis
Diary of a Camper occurs entirely within the Quake map DM6 ("The Dark Zone"). After exploring some of the area, the Rangers gather and decide to send two members, Sphinx and Pyoveli, to scout a room above. Shortly after they teleport into the room, the camper waiting there kills them both, as confirmed by in-game text messages that appear on the screen. The remaining three Rangers—ColdSun, ArchV, and an unidentified member—realize their comrades' fate and return fire from a distance, killing the camper. Examining the remains, they identify their foe as John RomeroJohn Romero
Alfonso John Romero is a game designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry. He is best known as a co-founder of id Software and was a designer for many of their games, including Wolfenstein 3D, Dangerous Dave, Doom and Quake...
.
Precedent and new ground
Diary of a Camper is built on the ability to record gameplay, which first appeared in id Software's 1993 computer game1993 in video gaming
-Events:*March — In Sweden, the Swedish video game magazine Super PLAY starts. The original name is Super Power.*Midway Games embroiled in controversy for its game Mortal Kombat from 1992 when the game is launched for video game consoles in 1993....
Doom. Using this feature, players could efficiently record game events, rather than the rendered video itself, and later replay them in real-time through the game engine. Dooms successor, Quake, offered new opportunities for both gameplay and customization, while preserving the demo recording ability. In the book Machinima, Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd stated that multiplayer games became popular, almost a sport, and demo files of matches were recorded and studied. Paul Marino
Paul Marino
Paul Marino is a film director, producer, animator, voice actor, and author currently focused on machinima, the art of using engines from video games to create films. He is a co-founder and the executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences , a non-profit organization formed in...
, executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
This is a list of film festivals dedicated to machinima, the use of real-time 3-D engines in filmmaking. The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences regularly holds such festivals, and recognizes exemplary machinima works through awards nicknamed the Mackies.-Machinima Expo:The is an annual...
(AMAS), used a different analogy: "Players began to record deathmatches with a more cinematic flair.... [T]he viewpoint of the player became the viewpoint of a director."
Well-known for their playing skill and their ability to program game modifications
Mod (computer gaming)
Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...
, the Rangers conceived the idea to use Quake for filmmaking in August 1996 and released Diary of a Camper on October 26, 1996. The group's new demo surprised the Quake community by exploiting the game differently. According to Henry Lowood, Diary of a Camper contains the action and gore of previous gameplay demos, but in the context of a simple story instead of the usual deathmatch. A BusinessWeek
BusinessWeek
Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
article compared the events of the film to those of a typical deathmatch. Like many of its predecessors, the demo was recorded in Quakes networked multiplayer deathmatch mode, but "it marked the transition from sports footage to moviemaking. The players were choreographed like actors, ... delivering their lines as plain text...." Lowood stated that "Diary of a Camper breaks with the demo movie as documented gameplay" because the spectator's perspective is independent "from that of any player/actor; the movie is not 'shot' from the first-person perspective of the shooter." Lowood called the film a "transformation of competitive play to ... minimal theatrical play", emphasized through the inclusion of references to gameplay, such as the camper.
Before Diary of a Campers release, Uwe Girlich, a German doctoral candidate, had documented the Quake demo file format, in which "the player coordinates and camera positions may be different". He added that "for people with too much spare-time Quake can replace a full 3D modelling system". However, the Rangers developed Diary of a Camper before any demo-editing software tools had been publicly released; clan member Eric "ArchV" Fowler instead created his own tools to reposition the camera and to splice recorded footage. As with all of United Ranger Films' productions, Heath "ColdSun" Brown wrote the story, and Matt "Unknown Soldier" Van Sickler was the director. In the release notes, Brown credits clan members Chris "Sphinx" Birke and Mute with helping Fowler with "movie packaging".
Diary of a Camper and the films that it inspired were initially called "Quake movies"; the term machinima was later coined in 1998, in response to the increasing use of other game engines. There was initial hesitance to retroactively label Diary of a Camper the first machinima piece; a Machinima.com
Machinima.com
Machinima.com is a gaming and media streaming website, that aims to be a hub for machinima, the art of creating animated videos in real-time virtual 3-D environments. The site features machinima-related articles, and news. Machinima productions can be submitted for possible redistribution after...
article from January 2000 opened, "It's kinda hard to pin down the first Machinima: things like the Doom speedruns, the Stunt Island
Stunt Island
Stunt Island is a video game designed by Adrian Stephens and Ronald J. Fortier and was published by Disney Interactive in 1992. The game, marketed as "The Stunt Flying and Filming Simulation", provides an island which contains a number of different sets, such as a city, an oil rig, a canyon, and an...
stuff and the Demo Scene
Demoscene
The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
all compete for the title. However, it's a lot easier to pin down the first piece of film made in a 3D game engine: Diary Of A Camper". Marino states that the AMAS carefully defined machinima in 2002 as "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment" to separate machinima from its creative lineage. Separating machinima from the demoscene and earlier demo recordings, he defines Diary of a Camper as the first machinima work. Lowood also contrasts the film with earlier recordings of "documented gameplay".
Reception
Despite Diary of a Campers importance in establishing machinima, commentators have criticized the film's actual content. Marino called the plot "simple"; likewise, Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd believed that "it wasn't much of a story", and Lowood wrote that "the plot offers little more than a brief sequence of inside jokes". Among major Quake movie review sites, Roger Matthews of the Quake Movie Library called the film "not much more than a deathmatch with a camera". On Psyk's Popcorn Jungle, Paul Coates wrote, "This movie is dull. It is not very interesting." Stephen Lum of The Cineplex said that the film contained "weird humour".Although Quake movie critics found shortcomings in Diary of a Camper, they mentioned positive aspects, including the work's novelty; however, their final ratings varied. Matthews wrote that "the camera work was very nice and never once screwed up", and Lum gave the film "a perfect 10 for Innovation/Originality because [it] started the Quake Movie craze". Of the major Quake movie review sites, only The Cineplex gave Diary a good rating overall, 7.5 out of 10. Matthews and Coates rated the film 20%, and 2 out of 10, respectively. Later, Coates updated his review, saying, "I feel I overreacted at the fact that DoaC was old. It's the first ever Quake movie. I have to give the Rangers massive credit for that.... But, by today's standards, the rating seems to fit."
Because of its significance, Diary of a Camper continues to be featured in machinima presentations. It was one of the first works to be included in the Machinima Archive, a collaboration among Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
, the AMAS, and machinima.com
Machinima.com
Machinima.com is a gaming and media streaming website, that aims to be a hub for machinima, the art of creating animated videos in real-time virtual 3-D environments. The site features machinima-related articles, and news. Machinima productions can be submitted for possible redistribution after...
. In a 2005 event at Stanford University, the film was presented with later machinima works, such as Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is a set of related comic science fiction video series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed through the Internet and on DVD...
. Likewise, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Australian Centre for the Moving Image
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, or ACMI, is dedicated to the moving image in all its forms. It is located in Federation Square, in Melbourne, Australia, across four levels of the Alfred Deakin Building...
included it in a machinima exhibit that ended on July 16, 2006.