A closer look
Why buy expensive cameras and hire actors when you can just plug in an Xbox controller and complain about the sniper rifle? By exploiting a glitch in the original Halo game where looking down made a character's weapon disappear, these bored gamers realized they could puppet the super-soldiers like digital muppets. It completely legitimized 'machinima'—using video game engines to shoot narrative cinema—and proved that hilarious writing easily trumps multi-million dollar production budgets.
