Indie Game: The Movie

By: Derek Yu

On: June 12th, 2012

Indie Game: The Movie was released today as a digital download on the documentary’s website, as well as Steam and iTunes. The doc follows Team Meat (Super Meat Boy) and Polytron (Fez) as the two groups work toward releasing their XBLA titles. Jonathan Blow is also part of the film, speaking about Braid and game design.

Posted in Community, Developers, Steam

Maxim

If I ever become rich off of a game, I want it to be precisely because that game is good enough to merit it. I’m not in it for the money though, I’d rather just make the kind of games I like.

I’d be happier if I was able to set a positive trend somewhere. But I’ll admit some money would be nice. I’d be able to spend more time developing if I didn’t have to work as much!
Lailoken42

I also saw it. It was a little bit annoying, but at the same time I can see getting frustrated with people trolling something you put so much into. If I had to guess I would say he made it when he was feeling super upset and emotional, and made it private later when he was feeling more rational.

Also maybe other dev’s make sacrifices too? That doesn’t diminish any he might have made. As far as I can tell, most of the whining about these guys is just that they are successful. Sure they have exhibited less-than-optimal behaviors sometimes, but who hasn’t? I know I have.
Anonymous

that’s actually *exactly* why i don’t play minecraft (and i’m the guy who named it “minecraft”, so it’s kinda ironic that i don’t enjoy playing it). i always feel ‘why build a house in a game when i can make a house in my own game?’
Anonymous

ya, there are plenty of intellectuals who are not pretentious — richard feynmann for example
Anonymous

i was gonna reply to the reply to my comment, but this reply by IDontEven is a decent replacement. there’s absolutely nothing wrong with feeling bad when you work really hard to put stuff into a game that most reviewers miss, with instead the reviewers focusing on the things that were easy to put into a game

for instance, with immortal defense, i worked really hard on the sound effects, perhaps spending a month on them, creating custom systems where frequency would change in certain situations. i felt more proud of the sounds than of any other part of the game. but not one review mentioned the sounds, out of like 50 reviews. they mentioned the story, the gameplay, the graphics, the music, but not the sound effects. so it felt like all that work was wasted, and i may as well have used stock sound effects or something

(although thankfully the players themselves did mention liking the sound effects, it was just the reviewers that missed it)
Anonymous

yeah i saw and enjoyed that video too. he seemed to be making fun of trolls who attack any indie game just because they like making the developer feel bad, not of people who genuinely had constructive criticism for him
Anonymous

you aren’t in the movie because you “spoke truth to power” in the past, with your comments and your games like indie game legend
Josich

I’m agree with your review.

Actually I think it is not a bad documentary, but I like videogames and don’t cool videogames developers and his personal problems. I would prefered his opinions about the indie world or deeper interviews. More games, the alternative that represents the indie games agains a mainstream industry etc…
http://profile.yahoo.com/K6N65ORLG2DBZQFVKU3EI6SVR4 JoseD

That’s cool! I too would rather spend my time making a game I personally like… rather than make some bullcrap like angry birds or something.
But hey, angry birds is perfect for mobile… see, mobile gaming is shit! It’s like we’re living in some sort of crippled utopia, in which we think it’s amazing to have gaming in our cellphones, but when you snap out of it, you can tell you’re playing a piece of crap… especially with touch screen. How the hell is the player suposed to control a game when his hand blocking the screen?? Traditional gameplay is almost unachievable with touchsreen. Unless, if you make a really crappy game like angry birds, players can finally meet developers half way, between a terribly flat gameplay, and games that can actually be played with touchscreen.So angrybirds did that right, settled for being a glorified “flash game”, but gave their customers what they wanted… to not look like douchebags for trying to play a game when your hands are constantly blocking the view. Just slide your finger along the screen once, and you can successfully fool yourself that you’re truly living an utopia where there’s real gameplay in mobile devices! And that’s why angry birds is so great!But hey… I rather make a game that I love, and live in my small house in the middle of the 3rd world! But spend my days making games that I can feel excited about! Hurray!
Anonymous

Okay. I saw this movie and there was a lot of this “stripping down your social life to the bone” crap.

I’ve been programming since childhood and I’ve never had this problem.

The reason is that they’re really bad at what they do and cannot manage time properly or have good development habits.

Team Meat constantly refuses to fix bugs in their game. Someone once even found an exploit in their high scores and Edmund blew it off entirely on Twitter. The next moment it was hacked.

In the movie, they show Fez barely even functioning (likely due to spaghetti code) and then they have the nerve to portray this all as some sad event.

These people are adults, not children. Secondly, what are they doing in the field of software development if they can’t do something as simple as debugging?
Anonymous

* have not learned good development habits.

Also, this movie really irks me a lot. I feel irritated for watching it all the way through.

Why is it that people like Konjak can put out games with far more complicated sprite work and gameplay over and over again in less than a span of 2 months, while these guys can’t even get a simple faux-retro pixel art game out without wanting to shoot themselves?
http://muniverse-game.tumblr.com/ namuol

Totally. If Tommy had better development habits he’d have managed his time better and released SMB a year later…

And yeah, I also diagnosed the structural problems of Fez’s PAX build from seeing a 2-second clip of game footage in the video; *obviously* a huge mess of spaghetti code. We all know that most game development always yields a pristine codebase.

I agree, software bugs are only excusable when the developers are children; if there are bugs in an unfinished build of a game (Fez), *clearly* the developers can’t do something as *simple* as debugging. Debugging is SO simple.
http://profile.yahoo.com/K6N65ORLG2DBZQFVKU3EI6SVR4 JoseD

Soon this movie will have as many comments as FEZ!
formerworldheavyweightchampion

Lemme tell ya brother. Back in my day, we coded things right down to the metal, yeah. There was no game maker or any of that nancy pants garbage, oh no, you had to know the computer and become it, you had to speak the same language as it and shit and breathe binary, dude, and if you couldn’t do that then you might as well give up, brother. Tommy, Phil Fish, all of you, you’re a disgrace to the trade, crying and saying you’re going to kill yourself over something as easy as making a 2D platformer with worse graphics and simpler mechanics than even the games me and thousands of others grew up with. Try looking into the face of hell, that is, learning an esoteric machine language, brother and trying to get a game to even work in that. You guys aren’t legends, you’re no heavyweight champ like John Carmack, brother. What a disgrace that you even consider yourselves the face of the indie game community. Just you wait you cowards, I will show you all how its done and when I get done with you, there will be no room left to cry oooh yeah brother.
Maxim

Yeah… my gaming setup is 2 CRTs, Yamaha speakers and gaming-grade HIDs. And as simple as Bloodlands looks that’s the kinda setup I recommend for it.

You ever see video of the Japanese kids playing Caravan shooters, tapping like 15 times a second and moving the joystick very carefully (but just as fast)? You just can’t imitate that kinda speed with a non-mechanical digitizer device… maybe you could with a digitizer-style button, but with a joystick? No way in hell…
Maxim

Right on. My dream is to someday make a game that uses the full power of something like a Pentium 4, legitimately with no interpreter overhead. Let’s bring back speedshock, man…
someguy

I was totally going to download this for free and watch it , but that would be wrong after seeing that trailer. This is something special.
Maxim

I’m not gonna even bother downloading it. And the reason why is that fuckin’ music!! If anyone ever set *my* words to tracks that sound like that I would sock them so hard….
http://profiles.google.com/astrofra François Gutherz

Haha. I totally second that.
guest

Liked the movie! Trailer does not give the best representation, only shows the most dramatic parts.
someonewhowatcheditperchance

LOLOLOLOL THAT NEVER HAPPENS IN THE MOVE AT ALLLLL
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