Well known for their playing skill and their ability to program game modifications, the Rangers conceived the idea to use "Quake" for filmmaking in August 1996 and released "Diary of a Camper" on October 26, 1996. The group's new demo surprised the "Quake" community by exploiting the game differently. According to Henry Lowood, "Diary of a Camper" contains the action and gore of previous gameplay demos, but in the context of a simple story instead of the usual deathmatch. A "BusinessWeek" article compared the events of the film to those of a typical deathmatch. Like many of its predecessors, the demo was recorded in "Quake"s networked multiplayer deathmatch mode, but "it marked the transition from sports footage to moviemaking. The players were choreographed like actors, ... delivering their lines as plain text..." Lowood stated that ""Diary of a Camper" breaks with the demo movie as documented gameplay" because the spectator's perspective is independent "from that of any player/actor; the movie is not 'shot' from the first-person perspective of the shooter." Lowood called the film a "transformation of competitive play to ... minimal theatrical play", emphasized through the inclusion of references to gameplay, such as the camper.