Diary of a Camper is an American short film released in October 1996 that was made using id Software's first-person shooter video game Quake.

The minute and a half-long video is commonly considered the first example of machinima—the art of using real-time, virtual 3D environments, often game engines, to create animated films.

[16] In the release notes, Brown credits clan members Chris "Sphinx" Birke[17] and "Mute" with helping Fowler with movie packaging.

[7][21] Stanford University media curator Henry Lowood wrote that "Diary of a Camper broke with the demo movie as documented gameplay by moving away from the traditional first-person perspective of players.

"[9] Diary of a Camper and the films that it inspired were initially called "Quake movies"; the term machinima (a fusion of "machine" and "cinema") was coined in 1998,[22][23] in response to the increasing use of other game engines to make similar content.

[25] Diary of a Camper was widely shared in the Quake demoscene, and later via rendered video versions on sites like Machinima.com, garnering millions of views.

"[29] Despite the effort put into creating a narrative, authors Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear noted that it still looks more like a straight recording of gameplay, rather than film.

[14] In comparison, professor Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath argued that despite the simplicity of the resulting work, "Diary of a Camper still displays an artistic vision and perspective that is informed by expert players.

"[2] Professor and video game researcher Riccardo Fassone described Diary of a Camper as a "ur-machinima", stating that it would go on to define machinima but that the medium would use more complex narratives and become more institutionalized in the following years.

[32] Works after Diary of a Camper immediately began to develop more sophisticated storytelling methods and narratives,[14] and would break out of the gamer subcommunities they were created by.

[2] John Romero recalled that some developers introduced custom camera tools to facilitate machinima production in response to the film.