Video Games That Don’t Exist
Video Games That Don’t Exist brings together a selection of Kieran Nolan’s AI machinima works with exclusive new material in a special festival edit. Machinima is a form of filmmaking that uses real-time computer graphics, typically from video games or virtual environments, to create animated films or videos.
The movie explores AI, authorship, and game aesthetics. Using clips generated by OpenAI’s Sora, the piece embraces AI’s unpredictability, turning glitches and deformities into creative elements. It reflects on the evolving relationship between human creativity and AI in digital art, blending elements of breakdancing, racing, and surreal YouTube culture.
Video Games That Don’t Exist was premiered at the 2025 Milan Machinima Festival in Los Angeles as part of the festival’s Game Engine Cinema programme at Microcinema MUBI @Vidiots.
Artist Statement
Sora is a powerful creative tool, but is not perfect by any means, and this project embraces these limitations. To borrow from the philosophy of circuit bending pioneer Reed Ghazala, the accidental glitches aren’t considered bugs in the context of this work, but an integral feature. At the time of writing AI video generators are evolving to allow greater levels of granular control. The current state of the art of this tech is always the worst it will be, but why idealise the perfect future medium when right now you can enjoy working with AI that rapidly unlocks so many creative possibilities while often doing its own thing and hallucinating as standard? I imagine that further down the line this imperfect style of AI will continue to be explored and experimented with by artists, its inherent constraints functioning as an incentive, just as with so many legacy digital platforms that live on on as creative mediums beyond their mainstream commercial shelf-life.
VGTDE Promo Images (Dropbox folder)
Further reading:
Abstract for the inaugural DiGRA Ireland conference: Paratexts Without Texts: Experiments in AI Machinima
Interview for the 2025 Milan Machinima Festival
Article at VRAL: More and More People Are Watching Video Games That Don’t Exist
Newspaper article: Dundalk lecturer’s AI-Glitched film premieres in LA