Indie Movie: The Game

Getting more into gaming, and always been interested in documentaries, of course I was going to watch Indie Game: The Movie. This follows the creators of Braid, Super Meat Boy and Fez.

There is a common theme of: these programmers grew up wanting to be involved in computers, and devoted many, many years of their lives to creating games... and most of them consider this to be their social interaction. It's easy to see them as arrogant asses, and yet they are just as insecure and trying to get value and appreciation from the world that everyone else wants.

And another common trend is that, as indie game makers (the 'company's was either one or two people) they are at the mercy of big companies they are trying to sell their game via, and having no money. Once their game sells, bam, they get the money in (assuming they don't put their foot in their mouth like Phil Fish (maker of Fez) did). But it becomes a very tortuous process when trying to get their game to market.

Which raises the perennial documentary question: how many people did the makers follow? Just these three games? Or lots more and have many of them disappear into obscurity? ...I wonder how many documentaries disappeared when their subject did...

Anyway, while interesting, this movie isn't that gripping. The stories for the three games are similar, and not very surprising. It's hard to say that there is lots of new and surprising details here... if you are interested in this topic, give it a go, but I wouldn't recommend it as a general movie.

[END]