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On this 232nd day marking Independence in the United States, we wanted to feature some of the patriotic videos created in MMOs. They range from quick videos showing off fireworks in platforms such as Second Life, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, to artistic videos set to Bruce Springsteen, all the way to silly safety tips from the Red vs. Blue boys. As you're planning your real life festivities this year, considering taking some time to pop into your favorite game to get in on some of the action. Happy 4th of July!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Check out more videos after the jump!

(In order to avoid confusion created by the comments below, we would like to note that there were two fan-made videos of the event, and the one we chose to feature has music created by Orb Gettarr and Spiraling Cycling.)

If you've never been to a popular Second Life event, you wouldn't have experienced the pain of a packed sim. The number of avatars in a single sim usually gets to around 70 or 80 before people start crying of lag, ruths, and missing images. However, those wacky Metaversatility kids took to Orange Island in an attempt to set a record for most avatars in a single snapshot.

Jade Lily was shooting for 100 -- and it wasn't easy. As documented by Daneel Ariantho and Natty Foggarty in pictures, and Osprey Therian in this video, people wouldn't rez properly, floated away, and lost connection. After many minutes, they were able to reach their goal, but it took about two hours without SL before this blogger's computer felt right again!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them. Please note that due to the high volume of Second Life submissions, we would prefer submissions from other platforms.

Lifefactory Writer, a Second Life machinimator, has been working on a docu-narrative, Life on Life, about the virtual world. It will contain multiple vignettes, including today's Cinemassively, Virtual Africa. Little is known about the rest of the project, which will hopefully be released soon.

Lifefactory takes us on an African safari, where she befriends a meerkat and tours the non-profit sim. It appears as if she is narrating it from the point of a public speaking engagement where she tells a story. If you would like to find out more about the sim she visits in this machinima, you can visit the Africa in Virtual Worlds website!

[Via the Machinimatographers group in SL]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them. Please note that due to the high volume of Second Life submissions, we would prefer submissions from other platforms.

Draxtor Despres takes us on a sentimental journey through the last year of Second Life. His take on the past year includes making friends and revisiting old ones, being happy that all of the shady real world businesses finally abandoned us instead of pushing their products on us, and hoping that the parents, Linden Lab, will take care of their growing child. Our very own Tateru Nino recently did the same thing on the SL side of Massively with her ten-part Year in Review. Be sure to check both out!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Second Life has proven to be an extremely popular platform for machinima production. However, sometimes it's just used to complement videos made in engines that don't involve human interaction at all. Such is the case with HypoHeretic, created by The Martin Brothers in iClone.

When John Martin III spoke on the machinima track of the 2007 Second Life Community Convention, he met a musician there, Kirsty Hawkshaw. Kirsty is a popular artist, with a dance track that is currently charting in the UK, and a long history of working with some very famous DJs! Together, they collaborated on a music video about a cyborg obsessed with meeting a virtual celebrity.

[Thanks, John!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Reallusion, the company that creates the animated facial expression software, CrazyTalk, embraced Second Life machinima quite some time ago. First, they appeared at real life festivals, then they developed their own plot of land in the virtual world, and now they've created a page on their website that features the works of SL machinimators, as well as a tutorial. In the instructional video, they explain how to use their software to lipsync pictures of avatars, as well as give some tips and tricks.

[Thanks, John!]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Christian Lassonde, of Millions of Us, appeared on the Real Biz in SL show to discuss their work in Second Life. They recently announced that they would be bringing celebrity likenesses into virtual worlds, including SL. Cybergrrl Oh grilled Chris on the important questions, including their investment in the platform, their return on the investment, what kind of metrics they employ, whether it's worth being there, and if MoU will continue to stay.

While most of the answers sounded prepared, it was still informative! To check out the full half hour program, visit the show page on SLCN.tv.

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

One dollar per user per month may not sound like a huge revenue for any game, but when you start thinking in the terms of the user base of games like Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and RuneScape you start to realize how much a dollar is really worth.

Lightspeed, a venture capital firm, recently did a few calculations to come up with the figures of how much revenue is generated by a single user in today's most successful free-to-play, microtransaction supported MMOs. What they came up with is a pretty interesting look at how much a "successful" MMO will make. For example, Habbo Hotel pulls in around $1.30 on average for each of their active users per month, while RuneScape pulls in 84 cents per active user per month.

The one figure that stood out from the pack was Second Life, which pulled in 9 dollars per user per month thanks to things like land ownership and the premium subscription that land owners have to buy to be able to own property. Even with Second Life in the mix, it's interesting to see that these types of MMOs don't make much per user, yet still can pull in great amounts of revenue by entertaining huge player bases.

[Via Kotaku]

MMOS X is a bi-weekly column dedicated solely to gaming on the Macintosh natively. "Running Boot Camp or Parallels" is not an option here. This column is for people who want to get the most out of their Mac gaming, as meager as it is.

Originally, this week's column was going to be a technical how-to, but a series of snafus -- not the least of which included me slapping my head and going, "You moron, combat logs changed after patch 2.4. That's why this new analyzer you are looking at is barfing on your Karazhan logs from February." However, my focus changed when, like many of the Faithful, I turned my attention to the West Monday to see what our Leader had to say.

Frankly, all I wanted Jobs to say was, "with iPhone 2.0, now you can sync iCal tasks to the iPhone." I didn't get that. Instead, I got a bunch of technical jargon that went over my head. Really, who did he think he was talking to, a bunch of developers or something? When a couple of game developers got up to show off their new iPhone apps, a light bulb went off for this week's late column.

Jim Gustafson's production company in Second Life, Slipstream Productions, has released the first episode, The Future is Hear, of a planned sci-fi series, Slipstream. In this inaugural machinima, a man learns that greed can get the best of him.

While there are some rough shots in certain scenes, this is one of the most engaging storylines we've seen come out of SL. Once we started watching the video, we soon forgot that it was even made in a virtual world and paid more attention to the content. We totally didn't see the ending coming! With a large cast of characters and an even longer list of thanks in the credits, there is already plenty of support for this project. We look forward to seeing the second episode!

[Thanks, Troy!]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Insomniaddict Productions is hard at work on his new machinima series, Narien Asks. In order to promote the series ahead of time, he created this humorous trailer, Narien Arrives. While the video was mostly created with World of Warcraft and the WoW Model and Map Viewers, he also used Second Life to customize the truck featured briefly in our favorite scene. There's no word yet on when the series comes out, but we hope it's just as funny as today's Cinemassively!

[Via Warcraftmovies.com]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Draxtor Despres and BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, the self-titled "uncrowned masters of machinima," have collaborated to make Second Life residents aware of global warming in real life. While the subject matter is very real, we're not sure how much of the actual machinima is. Some of it seems almost mocking, although obviously there was some dramatization. The website, Turning Up the Heat, offers more information for those that are interested.

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

While a lot of news reports focus on the breaking up of real marriages because of Second Life, a surprising amount of partners actually log in together. One couple, Blair Fizz and Alegria Garden, were in a documentary, Our Brilliant Second Life, last year. Created by Mixin Pixel to show a different side to virtual relationships, it ended up being shown at the Aspen Shortsfest in 2007!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

What always amazes us about Second Life is how real the activities are. Sure, lots of those realistic activities, like baking in your virtual kitchen, or washing your hands in your virtual bathroom, are pointless, but some are actually are pretty cool. For example, Italian Formula 1 and Ducati racing.

While the site is entirely in Italian, you can get an idea of what goes on. It would appear as if they have regular daily, and monthly, events that one can participate in. This blogger has been the passenger in a race car (NASCAR) and would not do it again, but from the comfort of SL? Bring it on!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.