I ain't much of a gamer. The most I play are some light-weight PC games when am bored. I stumbled upon this movie only when I saw it being rated as the best movie of 2012 by Mihir Fadnavis. Initially I was put off that it was a documentary and that it could be boring. But later decided to check out anyway. The movie talks about independent game developers, the struggles they face during the process of developing a game and then releasing it.
The film caught my attention in the initial few minutes when Tommy Refenes says this in the movie "I'm not going to go work at 'EA' or 'Epic'. That sounds horrible. That sounds like Hell to me. So, if it (the game) comes out and people hate it, it doesn't make a difference because even though it's a game that people are supposed to buy it's not a game that I made 'for people'.... I made it for myself"
Wow! The passion, the one thing that was common to every Indie developer in this movie. How they wanted to express themselves through the games and not just make some well-polished and marketed 'crap' (Tommy also goes on to say that 'Modern Warfare' or 'Halo Reach' are sh*t and that he hates them).
The movie revolves around interviews of developers of 3 of the most popular Indie games. Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes who developed Super Meat Boy, Phil Fish of Fez and Jonathan Blow who created Braid. It talks about their early struggles without any big corporate backing, tight deadlines, public pressure (Fez was in the making for almost 5 years after it was announced in 2007). Also the games they conceptualized and developed were something personal and might not appeal to the masses. So there is always the risk of investing a lot of time and money on something but then it could become a total failure. But all of them have successfully managed to break those barriers and released their games on various platforms and earned critical success. Most people know about the game factories like EA, EPIC etc but these people are rarely in the limelight. So, I liked the way this movie talked about these master minds who work single-handed (or in pairs) and make such beautiful creations!
P.S. There were some nice recommendations of indie games when they discussed a few in the back drop. Thought of making a list so as to check out later:
Super Meat Boy, Fez, Braid, World of Goo, Castle crashers, Osmos, Limbo, Journey, Minecraft, Sword and Sorcerer, Overgrowth.
The film caught my attention in the initial few minutes when Tommy Refenes says this in the movie "I'm not going to go work at 'EA' or 'Epic'. That sounds horrible. That sounds like Hell to me. So, if it (the game) comes out and people hate it, it doesn't make a difference because even though it's a game that people are supposed to buy it's not a game that I made 'for people'.... I made it for myself"
Wow! The passion, the one thing that was common to every Indie developer in this movie. How they wanted to express themselves through the games and not just make some well-polished and marketed 'crap' (Tommy also goes on to say that 'Modern Warfare' or 'Halo Reach' are sh*t and that he hates them).
The movie revolves around interviews of developers of 3 of the most popular Indie games. Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes who developed Super Meat Boy, Phil Fish of Fez and Jonathan Blow who created Braid. It talks about their early struggles without any big corporate backing, tight deadlines, public pressure (Fez was in the making for almost 5 years after it was announced in 2007). Also the games they conceptualized and developed were something personal and might not appeal to the masses. So there is always the risk of investing a lot of time and money on something but then it could become a total failure. But all of them have successfully managed to break those barriers and released their games on various platforms and earned critical success. Most people know about the game factories like EA, EPIC etc but these people are rarely in the limelight. So, I liked the way this movie talked about these master minds who work single-handed (or in pairs) and make such beautiful creations!
P.S. There were some nice recommendations of indie games when they discussed a few in the back drop. Thought of making a list so as to check out later:
Super Meat Boy, Fez, Braid, World of Goo, Castle crashers, Osmos, Limbo, Journey, Minecraft, Sword and Sorcerer, Overgrowth.
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