Machinima ( or ) is the use of real-time
computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. Most often
video games are used to generate the
computer animation. Machinima-based artists, sometimes called
machinimists or
machinimators, are often
fan laborers, by virtue of their re-use of copyrighted materials (see below). Machinima offers to provide an archive of gaming performance and access to the look and feel of software and hardware that may already have become unavailable or even obsolete; for game studies, "machinima’s gestures grant access to gaming’s historical conditions of possibility and how machinima offers links to a comparative horizon that informs, changes, and fully participates in videogame culture."