Indie Game: The Movie (2012)

The filmmakers focused on four of the most eccentric, pretentious, controversial indie developers they could find -- three of whom were essentially starving themselves while working on their games. It makes for an entertaining film, but it doesn't really represent indie development. That being said: I watched the film 5 times. 9 stars.

People are reviewing it as garbage, but giving it 5+ stars? Cmon, little bit of logic here.Some documentaries are well done, although decent video game oriented documentary does not come to mind at the moment, and some are garbage, like this one.People selected to be featured in this documentary were badly chosen. Phil Fish is known drama queen of indie game community. Guy threatens to kill himself every other week, just like he did in this documentary, then doesn't. He has some sort of mental issues and I do not want to make fun of him but I also do not feel he should be used as representation of indie game developer as its insulting to the community.To prove my point, Phil Fish stated he would kill himself if he does not finish sequel to Fez, ... then just ... nothing. He just quit. Its not that I wanted guy to kill himself, but if he was that adamant he would finish Fez sequel, then he should have finished it. I would not have played it as I did not like Fez, but this way I just lost all respect for the guy. He left all of his fans hanging and is not nothing but a butt end of the jokes all over internet.The other guys featured were equally disappointing. Edmund McMillen just makes games that are perhaps suited to be free on Kongregate and ad supported, but there is no way I would ever deem them worth paying for. On top of that he seems intent on making himself sound like rejected weirdo during the course of entire documentary. Its like he just keeps screaming "look at me, I am different", problem is, it does not come off as a positive thing.Unless you know who people featured are, or are interested, I would give this one a pass. Even then, it is one of most boring, uninformative, documentaries I've seen recently. If you want to know about topic its more productive to hit forums or just contact few indie guys on Facebook. Seriously.

I consider myself to be a pretty dedicated gamer and have always been fascinated in both the playing and the development of video games. This beautifully shot, fantastically produced documentary has taught me so much about what goes on beyond the pixels and programming. What I thought was going to be a sort of development diary was actually a very emotionally charged journey through the lives of independent video game developers. The games featured (Super Meat Boy, Fez and Braid) are all games I've played and I feel that I've taken them for granted. I knew video game development was hard, but I never knew the extent to how emotionally attached the developers get to their game. There were times where you fully empathise with the developers and I'd be lying if I said I didn't shed a tear or two. To complement the wonderful 'indie' style was a beautiful blend of cinematography. Everything was shot perfectly and it made it feel like more of an experience than a run-of-the-mill documentary. Long story short, watch this documentary. It's inspiring, beautiful and truly shows the emotional impact that games have upon their developers.

There aren't that many documentaries about video games so to say that this is easily the best of the bunch might not mean much to many (that's a lot of M's right there), but it is. It's also one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. If the film-makers idea was to first give you a really great view of how some of these indie developers do their stuff and why, then have you on the edge of your seat as release day looms and problems arrive, then finish by leaving you a little bit misty and in a really good mood? If that was their idea then it worked for me.It's every bit as brilliant as the games that are featured. I think people owe it to themselves to watch this.