Funcom, makers of Age of Conan, are looking to user-generated content (UGC) to boost the number of online players. Age of Conan is a roll-playing game (RPG) that had as many as 700,000 subscribers when the game launched last summer, but that number has sinced dropped below 100,000.

Machinima is a style of filmmaking that usually uses graphics engines from video games to create short films, music videos or montages. Most video game companies have frowned on the craft because the content the creators use is under copyright. Funcom has embraced the concept and even pushed for more users to start creating machinima videos.

Machinima.com hosts video tutorials on how to make animations using Age of Conan. This was a campaign that began last year in partnership with Funcom. The campaign was so successful that Funcom has announced that they will launching a similar campaign this spring.

Funcom’s media strategist Terri Perkins recently explained why the company went in this direction in an interview on NewTeeVee.

“We like machinima because our customers sell our product better than we do… It’s not very likely that someone is going to share a banner ad with their friends, but it’s very likely they will share videos.”

Other companies like Blizzard and Microsoft have encouraged users to create machinima in the past but always had restrictions on what could be done. Funcom is the first to have zero restrictions on what is available to users.