The story behind the screen
Made in a game.
Remembered outside it.
Tristan Pope’s machinima journey began with I Surrender, his first machinima. He had already spent years making silly videos with friends on VHS, DVD, and film. CHANGED followed with an emotionally charged revenge story. Not Just Another Love Story pushed the boundaries of love between the Horde and Alliance, and explored the idea of sex in a video game. Then came the Switcher series. Crafting Worlds was where Tristan shared these films before YouTube became their home.
“The motivation behind making these movies was to give the Horde a propaganda tool.”TRISTAN POPE · ORIGINAL CGW INTERVIEW
August–November 2004
I Surrender: the machinima that started Tristan’s career.
Crafting Worlds began in August 2004, according to my published résumé. That November, Tristan released I Surrender near the end of the World of Warcraft beta. It was Tristan’s first machinima and the film that started his career. He had been making silly videos with friends on VHS, DVD, and film for years before bringing that creativity into World of Warcraft. Henry Lowood’s research traces how the website became a place to distribute films to the WoW community. Résumé Lowood’s research
After I Surrender / Before Not Just Another Love Story
CHANGED: an emotionally charged revenge story.
CHANGED came next: an emotionally charged revenge story that audiences loved. It took the films in a more serious direction, before Not Just Another Love Story and the Switcher series. Watch CHANGED on my channel
April 2005
Not Just Another Love Story.
A troll and a human crossed the divide between Horde and Alliance. Not Just Another Love Story pushed the boundaries of love across those factions and explored the idea of sex in a video game. It used character movement and camera angles to tell that story inside Azeroth, sparking debate about what players could express through the game. Lowood documents the April 2005 release and the forum discussion that followed. Contemporary research
2005–2006 / Films, interviews, and community
The Switchers and Save the Murlocs.
Apple’s Switch commercials inspired a different kind of WoW film: exported characters against a white background, talking directly to the audience. The uncut Computer Gaming World interview preserves that process and the response to Frostshock. Save the Murlocs also reached BlizzCon and the magazine’s Interview with the Murloc. The preserved Switch page has no publication date, so its interview remains a period document rather than an invented day on the timeline. Read the uncut interview See the original scans
2005 / BlizzCon
Save the Murlocs goes into real life.
The campaign went beyond the films when I brought Save the Murlocs to BlizzCon in real life. The protest against murloc slavery became part of the convention experience, with a baby murloc at the center of it. Computer Gaming World caught up with me afterward for Interview with the Murloc. The original scan preserves that moment when a joke from Azeroth stepped out into the real world. Read the original BlizzCon interview scan Watch Save the Murlocs
January 2006
Hired by Blizzard.
I joined Blizzard in January 2006 as a Cinematic Director. The fan films had become a path into professional game filmmaking.
March 2006
Atkins takes second in Best Comedy.
Atkins, Switcher 2, placed second in Best Comedy in the Xfire and Blizzard World of Warcraft movie contest. The archived results were posted on March 3, 2006. Archived contest results
October–December 2006
From the in-game camera to interviews.
Make Love, Not Warcraft first aired on October 4, 2006. The crew interview identifies Tristan Pope as the primary in-game camera operator and describes how he helped Trey Parker stage and rehearse the Blizzard performers. By December 16, contemporary coverage also reported a This Spartan Life interview with Terran Gregory and Tristan about WoW and machinima. Production interview Episode airdate December interview coverage
2007
The Studio archive and South Park’s Emmy.
The 2007 Studio archive brings together the films, their press coverage, and the community around them. That year, Make Love, Not Warcraft won the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for programming less than one hour. My part in that production is preserved below through the crew interview, photographs, and keepsakes. Television Academy award record The production story
Later work / Beyond the 2007 archive
The journey continues.
Later films in Guild Wars 2 and New World belong to the continuation of this work. They are collected in their own section below, alongside the original channel uploads, so the early WoW films and their later context can be explored together. Explore later films
