[Teever]

> Not too much came out of that era.

Are you sure it isn't the complete opposite? I'm pretty sure that the amateur kids who played around with Machima in the age of Quake went on to become the professionals in the video game industry.

[grumbel]

Yes, but it didn't break down the divide between the professionals and the amateurs. CGI is still not common in the amateur world. People aren't producing successful movies in game engines in their homes. That is still up to Hollywood, even so Hollywood is using the same game engines that people have access to at home.

Compare that to what Youtube did to TV, where Youtube did in fact replace a lot of peoples TV watching with Youtube content. A similar shift hasn't happened with movies. Good low budget indie movies are still extremely rare, and generally aren't done in CGI, but filmed classically with cameras.

Cameras, editing and compositing getting cheaper and completely changed the game for Youtube-style video productions. Machinima just didn't have the same impact. Creating CGI/game assets is still a costly and timely endeavor out of reach for most amateurs at a movie-scale. You see a few 5min shorts every now and then, but no two hour movies.

[jokethrowaway]

I think the thing is once you get good enough at CGI you make enough to become a small studio Think about RocketJump who went on to make Video Game High School after making cool looking Youtube videos for a while.