Lowood called "Diary of a Camper", "Quake done Quick", and "Operation Bayshield" "the founding trilogy of machinima". For comparison to early film, he placed these works between the 1895 footage recorded by Auguste and Louis Lumière and the 1902 film "A Trip to the Moon". Writing for the "Houston Press", Robert Wilonsky stated that "Operation Bayshield" was "a freaky hybrid" of "Quake"s visuals and of sketch comedy resembling that of television show "Saturday Night Live". Ben Moss of machinima.com contrasted the inside jokes in later "Quake" movies with "Operation Bayshield"s references to popular fiction, including the 1982 film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial". In turn, the work's E.T. joke inspired similar mentions of extraterrestrials in "Quake done Quick" and other machinima films.