The new featured pick at the Machinima Archive is "Est Mori."

"Est Mori" was written and directed by Nicholas Werner, a Stanford student in Film & Media Studies. He is also part of the How They Got Game group at the Stanford Humanities Laboratory.

Under the title "Debate 2.0: Weighing the merits of the new Webocracy," today's San Francisco Chronicle carried a fascinating debate between Andrew Keen, author of the forthcoming Cult of the Amateur and Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail. But of course you don't need to find a copy of the newspaper to read it.

The current spotlight pick at the Machinima Archive is Overman's wonderfully juvenile, yet restrained "Male Restrooom Etiquette." I think this amusing piece proves that it is not game culture that is immature, but male culture. Or maybe both.

This from our friend Frederic Descamps over at Xfire:

This just in from Lonneke Theelen of the Mediamatic Workshop in Amsterdam, open to "students, colleagues, friends and co-media-professionals.":

Workshop Machinima " Games as Tools

26 | 27 | 28 | 29 September 2006 @ Mediamatic

Machinima is the art of making film inside the real-time 3D virtual environment of a video game engine. By treating the in-game viewpoint as a camera, the gamespace becomes the set, the characters turn into actors, and the gamer becomes a director.

This just in from Lonneke Theelen of the Mediamatic Workshop in Amsterdam, open to "students, colleagues, friends and co-media-professionals.":

Workshop Machinima " Games as Tools

26 | 27 | 28 | 29 September 2006 @ Mediamatic

Machinima is the art of making film inside the real-time 3D virtual environment of a video game engine. By treating the in-game viewpoint as a camera, the gamespace becomes the set, the characters turn into actors, and the gamer becomes a director.

Several new machinima pieces received at the Machinima Archive have demonstrated that the expressive potential of this new medium is moving beyond game culture. Two recent spotlight items, "An Unfair War" and "Better Life" (the current pick) provide examples. Both express the tragedies and aspirations of human existence, through short pieces made in The Sims 2 and Second Life, respectively.

Doug Wilson of the How They Got Game group is speaking today at the "Thinking Through New Media" graduate student conference at Duke.

Nick Werner's new machinima piece, "Potentior," is now the featured pick at the Machinima Archive.

Tonight Rooster Teeth, the makers of Red vs. Blue: Blood Gulch Chronicls and The Strangerhood, will have a special showing of their work, followed by Q&A with some cast members, tonight. This will take place at the Aquarius Theater in Palo Alto, starting at 6.45pm.

You can read a full description of the event, which has the endearing title, "Cock Byte: Masters of Machinima." At least you now know where the name Rooster Teeth came from.