Indie Game: The Movie

I’m still confused why they think a SNES controller is indie.

Both the SNES controller and the word Indie itself conjure up warm feelings for a certain demographic group. It’s perfect, really.

I’m still confused why making games is likened to being in a concentration camp.

Maybe because they quit their jobs to do something several others do as a hobby?

Then again, those people aren’t indie enough I suppose. This movie pretty much is every reason I can think of why I don’t like the term “indie”

Did you only watch the trailer? He explains the statement it in the film.

people who attention whored the most around here: the movie – TIGSource front page “rockstar” edition

I’m wondering, can we start call ourselves Punk game studios/developers?
Is punk an appropriate word to use, in place of Inide, to describe creators not beholden to external creative pressures, who don’t abide conventional rules?

‘Indie’ to me conjures up images of pretentious, self-important hipsters, and personally, I’ve always felt more who-gives-a-fuck and tongue-in-cheek than humbly-holier-than-thou.

It sure sounds a hell of a lot cooler at any rate.

Circle-Jerking tag needs to be added for this.

suck my dick. choke on it.

 Why don’t you guys make a movie about me?

…oh yeah, because it’d turn out worse than Freddy Got Fingered.

Here’s my negative review of the film:

http://www.dinofarmgames.com/on-indie-game-the-movie/

This pretty accurately describes my expectations of this movie which I have yet to see. Based on this, I may actually go steal a copy to watch, just to sit there and feel all smug and correct to myself.

melodramatic antireal propaganda

The tigsource comment section is puzzling.  It implies that a good chunk of the people who read this site hate everything it stands for.

Anyway, IGTM is a decent film and the people in it (and those who made it) are decent folk, having been face-to-face (if briefly) with all of them.  Maybe I’d have an easier time deriding all this stuff if I hadn’t.  Maybe when I finish a half-decent game I’ll get internet bile too; a reward for my hard work.  So that’s something to look forward to.

A pair of shoes strung over a power line by the laces is an indication in some locales that someone nearby is selling drugs.  A game controller over a power line means someone nearby is selling games.  Nothing indie about the controller itself.

 Growing up in the 90′s doesn’t make you indie.  SNES was pretty damn mainstream.  Indie doesn’t mean old.  Or liking old things.  It means “not part of a big company”.  Nintendo was, and still is, a big company.

I wish all ind-hee game developers acted in the way this trailer seems to show them. All the time. I could go to IGF and feel like the least queer person in the room (for once).

(And I don’t mean queer in the slang sense, you silly-billies).

“The tigsource comment section is puzzling.  It implies that a good chunk
of the people who read this site hate everything it stands for.”

why do phil fish, jon blow and edmund mcmillen represent everything this site stands for?

faggot striver poor

jealous projecting cretin

He’s talking about marketing, not reality.

I’m a punk game dev.

Suck my dick. Choke on it.

ultra douche: the movie…Nahh..but seriously though…grow…balls…

Ah, TIGsource comments. The 4Chan of gaming sites.

Those who hate Jon Blow, Phil Fish, and Ed McMillan need to stand up and make as much of a dent in the world. Until there are other devs who have been as successful as they have, as challenging and as controversial as they have…there are few other faces to represent the scene/demographic/industry/niche/market. Yes, I used the word successful, a word supposedly true blue indie devs are scared to death of.

The three of them represent a logical sampling for outsiders. Unlike other indie devs like Daisuke Amaya or Cactus, the three have carried indies to widespread recognition by being commercial hits. I know, commercial is a scary word. But for better or worse, they helped usher in the next logical step for indies: the financial independence, and recognition, for creators to make what they want.

It’s an interesting climate. Things weren’t quite like this before, and the three of them are the frontrunners of a catalyst. Along with perhaps Kickstarter. Now, if any of you have a personal vendetta against Fish, I can’t say I blame you. But regarding the movie, it would have been great for Notch to be in it; though I suspect his exclusion was practical for the filmmakers: he’s not in the U.S.

 It’s just a vocal minority. I’m pretty sure a bunch of these comments are by the same person.

But yeah, I agree.

Just to be clear…I don’t hate the individuals. I dislike the way indies are represented in the trailer. From this trailer people will think all indies are angsty hipsters, it is very 1-dimensional. While we know that at least 2 people in the trailer are not like that at all.

 Yeah right! He’s the reason for not watching the movie!  Blow’s part is way too short in comparison to fish’s part (which is ridiculously “styled up” [why this underwater-cam - still-glases-on - part?])

 Suck my dick! Choke on it!

I think you guys should see the movie. I saw it at the Chicago screening and it was the best new movie I saw this year. It was such a good movie, that I’m working on the Game for this movie.

Well if that’s the case then ‘indie’ is the perfect word to describe the people in this movie.

 Nintendo fits some people’s definition of indie.  They self-publish.  I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

 I don’t know if that analogy holds.  Shoes on a power line means selling drugs, not selling shoes.  Doesn’t that mean that a game controller over a power line means someone nearby is selling lamp shades or something?

 I don’t know, looking at this thread I think angsty hipsters seems pretty accurate.

Wow, to think they chose to focus on Phil Fish and Team Meat instead of all your wonderfully insightful and interesting people…

Seriously though, the movie was great. Phil may be a douche (I don’t believe he’s as bad as some people seem to) but he’s interesting to watch. The documentary doesn’t make any value judgements about him as a person, they just follow his story, and you can’t say it’s not dramatic. Ed and Tommy seem like really down to earth and cool people. Tommy’s story is definitely the highlight of the whole thing for me. Jon Blow doesn’t say a whole lot in the movie but it wouldn’t feel complete without a few choice quotes.

And to all the people complaining about how hipster this movie makes indie devs look, need I remind you that the logo to this site is a joystick wearing thick black hipster glasses?

“they helped usher in the next logical step for indies: the financial
independence, and recognition, for creators to make what they want.”

making games on loans, grants and funding from microsoft, including an exclusive publishing deal is “financially independent?” ok.

I feel there are A LOT of missing games, developers and cases in the movie. They should have called it SMB, Braid & FEZ: The Movie. Only once are Knytt Stories and Cave Story mentioned, and it’s a journalist who asks. Nothing about Spelunky, Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress… and those are successful examples too. There are clearly different ‘indies’ among ‘indies’, and I almost agree with uvTwitch when he calls himself  ’punk’ instead.

Even though, I enjoyed the movie.

heheh, I have to wonder how much less flack they’d have caught if Fish wasn’t in this.  One thing’s for sure, he doesn’t seem popular.

Thing is, Fish got Microsoft moneys.  I developed my game on no budget using outdated equipment and can barely scrape together enough money for a pack of smokes.  And my game is still better!

Alright, just finished watching. Very misleading title. It should be renamed: MANCHILDREN: The Movie

Because they did what the robot on this website said to do. 
“Make the games you want to make!” 

 If you want sophisticated discussion (compared to this shithole) you should go to /v/

 Now, now. /v/ actually, on occasion, has good discussions. I can guarantee you that you will never see anything resembling a good post here.

 Why the hell wasn’t I in this movie then?!

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’d like to point out that movies take a really long time to make (yes, even documentaries), so several years ago when they started working on it, the filmmakers would’ve had to take their best guess at which indie devs to follow, and from that point on they were pretty much locked in to that decision, for better or for worse.

Also, I’m sure they wanted to give themselves the best chance of ending up with an exciting story at the end, so of course they would choose the most colorful personalities they could find, even if it meant a less accurate portrayal of the indie community. Again, I haven’t seen it yet so I don’t know how well it captures the indie scene or not, but at the very least it sounds like its an interesting bit of entertainment, and that was likely the main goal of the film anyway.

Well I consider myself a Polka Game Dev.

 Holy shit… I never noticed that until you pointed it out just now. I mean, I knew the Joystick was wearing glasses, but… Oh… My… God… We were the hipsters all along…!

What is your game?

Haha, you’re so right, makes no sense at all! 

At most you can associate snes with oldschool indie games, but not all oldschool indie games are after the snes look, not all indie games are oldschool and not all are 2D!

That snes controller has pretty much nothing to do with indie gaming, in fact I’d say it’s the opposite of that. Pretty dumb to put it there…

Actually that analogy barely makes any sense. It’s too far fetched!! If I’ve learn something about viewers, is that they don’t pay a lot of attention… and excepting them to analyse the controller thing as if it’s an abstract painting… is laziness in terms of visual communication. 
A message must be clear and easy to read, people are bombarded with information all the time, we can’t nor want to process that much info on a daily basis. 
You can’t expect viewers to figure out what a god damn controller hanging from a string is!
-1 for snes controller, end of story.

Haven’t this trailer been around for several months now?

The indie game development scene is interesting; like many other industries there is definitely a degree of “who you know” – and sure, there’s also a degree of cultivated “coolness” and elitism that could be used interchangeably to describe a lot of these people as hipsters, but at the end of the day most of us are just irrelevant nerds who have suddenly risen to some modicum of relevancy. Not exactly the most useful combination of traits, but I think it’s one we can expect to expect more of, given that our evolution is leading us into a digital era where the athlete and the socialite are becoming less relevant, and nerds are creating the world that everyone else has to inhabit.

I’m not saying that game developers are on the same level as inventors like Nikola Tesla, but there also hasn’t been a more auspicious time to be a game developer; video games are in. So as a result, you’re going to have a ton of people hopping that bandwagon, from kids who just graduated school and can’t think of anything else they’d rather do, to so-called “entrepreneurs” with big fat dollar signs in their eyes; where there’s money to be made or a vision to be expressed, people will follow.

Fortunately this is something I wanted to do since the inception of my consciousness in this worldly vessel. Yes, it’s a bit frustrating when you look at things like, “Damn, those people have the same goals as me, but they’re realizing them sooner!” and I did feel this way up until the point I watched this movie at its first screening. What I found instead was myself relating to the characters of Phil Fish and Edmund McMillen. In Phil I saw the frustrated under pressure and unfiltered version of myself that often sends people the wrong message. In Edmund I saw the more down-to-earth version of myself that has my inner-child very much intact. Both are equal realities to the unfunded game development process, and as a developer this really resonated with me, and I think if you’re serious about this you’ll see yourself in these people, too.

Keep in mind this is all coming from somebody who has had the vision to make games for over 25 years. I’ve entered three different games into the Independent Games Festival three separate times and failed. I’ve had so many projects of mine dropped or hi-jacked that my dream was all but destroyed. If I can have optimism and confidence, I think anyone can.

Now close your browsers, open your minds, and make a game.

I’m deducing that your response is triggered by Phil Fish and is being applied to everyone who so much as stands next to him. Jon Blow supposedly put up $200k of his own money for Braid, a risky move. And regardless of the who, how, and why, my quote was aimed at the aftermath of their successes, in which they truly are more financially independent.

Metaphorically speaking, these guys could be making a deal with the devil, and it would still support my point: for better or worse, they helped take things to the next level of ambition that hasn’t really been seen before. I’m not interested in hanging out with these guys; I’m interested in where they stand professionally and financially. Two more scary words for “true blue” indie devs.

And the only angsty hispter here is Fish. At worst, Blow is like an introverted nerd, and McMillan’s like an angry lumberjack. They all seem pretty different.

As for the movie, which I have not seen, I do resent what I sense to be over-simplifications being perpetuated. But it’s more a portrait of the three of them, for the sake of good, structured drama, than it is about the whole “scene,” and in the end I don’t take it personally. The filmmaker’s goal is to make an entertaining documentary for outsiders, using as few subjects as possible in its brief runtime, while trying to cover entire emotional arcs in their stories.

They make formulaic games that will sell on XBLA and complain life is too hard.

They’re anything but what the robot says.

I’ve already done that without taking government loans and then claiming I’m “financially independent.”

Indie devs (like the ones in this movie) are the worst. Hobbyist developers are far more independent than they claim to be. Pixel didn’t need to quit his job to make his game. It’s funny that people who make clones of it even do.

Sonny Sonny sonny. Sonny son jim bob son. You shouldn’t eEVEN post on
the TIGSOurce comments sections. Every time that the you do that, It
will decreases your intelligence A LOT. Oh how iut makes you very stupid
indeed! LOOK at all the stupid people s post on the TIGSOUrce comments
sections! SMEELL all over their shitty shit smears. SOME of them are
just little shit. BUT al ot of the are BIG BIG shitty smears that leave
MASSIVE STINK – they write lots of words and think it is intelligent but
it IS NOT!!! The only way to do intelligents is to STOP POSTING ON THE
FARCKING INTERNET!!! NOTHING YOU WRITE IS INTELLIGENT!!! Especially IF
YOU THINK IT IS! EVEN SMART PEOPLE WRITE AND BECOME MORAEE STUPID!!  OH
NO!! QUICK CLOSE BROWSERS AND GO TO REAL WORLD FAST YOU MANBABYS!! what to do about serious proble ming? Oh I BET YOU know (not talking to you phubans sweety pops)
how to solve problems with society and whatevver topic because you are
smart intellectualal MAN and you even grew a BEARD! Write post with
words to proove you are intelligent man on the interneet!! LOTS OF
PEOPLE WILL BENIFIT FROM YOUR OPINION S ANFD CRIT(IQUE!!!!111 YOu are
ALSO A HUMOURSSES WRITER AND WILL THINK YOUU ARE WITTY!!! OH NO!!!

Minecraft is mentioned in the beginning when they’re talking about successful games from recent years.

I feel the need to reiterate though, this isn’t supposed to be a comprehensive look at all indie games, they had to keep it to regular film length so they focused on a few interesting stories rather than a disjointed world tour of indie games. The special edition blu-ray is supposed to have tons and tons of cut footage from different people they talked to and different games they profiled, so that may be more in line with what you were expecting.

They showed the film in theatres a few months back, the trailer has been around for a lot longer than that. The movie just came out for purchase though.

I get the feeling the movie was more about the process of making than the games themselves, which are really only used as eye candy.

INDIE: MANCHILD NATION

Well said, Paul.  <3

 Open yer oral porthole! I have a hot and frothy delivery just for you!

Wow, the robot on your screen must get really specific.

Like, the one on my screen doesn’t even give a shit.  Maybe it’s because I’m running this site in Opera browser?

 He invented tiddlywinks Paul.  Can’t you tell from his name?  Very famous.

What, no new-wave jazz fusion games? This whole scene is getting too narrow.

 comment pages don’t count buddy

that’s what you get for using non free (as in speech maybe while drinking a few beers) software

Huh?

Anyway, I opened the site up in Chrome and Firefox, and the robot on my screen still just told me to make stuff.  It didn’t really give any parameters, like “don’t put it on XBLA,” or “make sure it’s not formulaic,” or anything.  

I dunno, the freedom to do whatever I want…that still sounds pretty indie.

Sorry Chaoshero, but maybe your robot sold out to a big studio.  You should let Derek know.

 BLOODLANDS !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35DVGAJgqc0

ALL OF MY PORTHOLES all the time ARE OPEN YOU KNOW THAT baby!!!!! Accepting deelivers!!!!!  AMmfffffMffff! !

[copied from a forum post]

anyway i watched the movie today. here’s some of my thoughts, although i
didn’t get to watch the whole thing and was sort of sleepy during most
of it

i loved the jon blow parts. i empathized a lot with some of
the things he said; for instance, when he talked about the good reviews
of his game giving it a 9/10 or 10/10 depressing him the most because
they liked the game for shallow reasons and didn’t why he personally
thought the game was good — i actually had the exact same reaction
(sans the 3-4 month depression he mentioned) to reviews of immortal
defense (which were universally positive but often very shallow). i also
liked that he flat-out admitted that the idea for braid came from a
friend who got the idea from prince of persia: most indie devs aren’t
secure enough to admit that the basic idea of their game isn’t original
and isn’t their own. overall i was pretty impressed by his segments, he
was by far the most mature guy in it

the edmund parts were also
fun. of the people featured in the movie edmund is the only one i’ve
communicated with (we used to talk on AIM a bit and i playtested a
couple of his games and gave him suggestions early on, and he answered
some of my questions about flash programming / sponsorship etc.), so i
may be a bit biased in that sense, but he felt the most ‘real’ of the
people in the movie, someone whose entire life wasn’t just making indie
games (they way it felt with the others; that just may be the editing,
but he was the only one with a wife and pets, the only one where they
showed his life outside of making indie games). of the people in the
movie i’ve also enjoyed his games the most (i think i’ve played almost
all of them). i loved all his drawings of monsters, he reminds me a bit
of my brother, who also used to draw monsters all the time

regarding
the phil fish parts, i didn’t like that they painted his ex-business
partner guy so negatively. this thread goes into detail about that: neogaf dot com/forum/showthread.php?t=478250 — it seems they only told one side of the story, though i suppose it’s
not a documentary in the completely factual sense of documenting
something so biases are to be expected. but i came away from the phil
fish segments wondering exactly what the other side of the story was,
why he threatened to murder that guy (what did that guy do to him?),
etc. — as someone mentions in that thread, it felt like what happened
in “king of kong” (another documentary about videogames which i enjoyed)
where they paint billy mitchell as some type of evil guy, just for the
sake of having a villain, when the reality was more complex. i also wish
they’d show renaud more in the movie, he seemed extremely nice, even
though his part in the movie was short he came off as the most lovable
person in the movie

overall i felt that the movie was an
enjoyable use of the short time it took to watch it, *but* i guess i was
looking for some “words of wisdom” or something that i didn’t know
about game design that i could take away and apply to my own work, and i
didn’t really get that out of it. the closest was knowing that someone
else feels the way i do towards good reviews of their game which were
positive but say basically nothing. i’d rather have a thoughtful review
that gave my game a 6/10 than an effusive review that gave it a 10/10.
the movie seemed more like a way to introduce indie games and some of
the games and personalities involved to “outsiders” rather than, like, a
serious “documentary” or attempt at understanding indie game
development. it was an expose rather than a treatise. the latter was
something i hope will be made one day.

What? I didn’t watch the documentary… but that guy who got rated 10/10 and it’s sad about it… what an ass.
 He thinks he is so superior that game critics are unable to understand his game fully? F*ck that! He did a bad job at audiovisual communication, that’s the only reason people didn’t understand his game. Maybe if such profound yet ignored aspects of the game were ignored, it’s because they weren’t so profound nor worth mentioning. He should be humble and be glad he did something right, instead of being sad that “people doesn’t get my complexity”.

Am I supposed to believe he’s profound and superior because people didn’t understand some sort of “profound aspects” no one seemed to noticed? F*ck him, he’s just marketing his game, and telling me I’m dumb in the process. 
If he thinks I should buy his game because… not only it’s 10/10, reviews missed even more amazing aspects… just say so! Tell that to my face, maybe I’ll believe it! But don’t act like the misunderstood genius… it’s a damn game, an indie game even, worth a few hours of gameplay then moving on.

If I make a game, and people love it because of the little things, and doesn’t pay attention to what took me most time and effort to make? 
a) I’m lucky as hell, I shouldn’t be sad about it. I wouldn’t prefer my game to be a flop. 
b) I’ve learned people is shallow. Welcome to planet earth. I’d use that knowledge next game I make. I’d stick to the obvious awesomeness and what people care about.
c) I’m getting a lot of $$$ thanks to those reviews. I’d be an ungrateful ass to say I’m sad about it. I’m glad as hell if someone ever reviews 10/10 a game that I made, because I’ll gladly take all that cold hard cash. I’m not giving it to charity.

I love indie games. But I’ve been hearing plenty of bs about this documentary, so I’ll stay away from it. 

 In all seriousness…  I didn’t get a fraction of the attention with Bloodlands that Blow got with Braid.  But all of the reviews I’ve found have shown that people DO “get” my game… and not just get it, but were willing to figure out the strange mechanics.  What’s that tell ya?

I felt the same way when it came to seeing myself in Phil and Edmund.

I also felt that showing the vulnerabilities of these people was a core idea behind this film. Sure people may dislike what they saw of them but then again they saw them at their worst, stressed, tired and vulnerable. It’s much easier to feel empathy for them if you consider a role reversal in which you are at your worse and world is judging you.

Good luck Paul. As mentioned in the movie Jon was working for 22 years before he got to where he was. I’m not sure if he was trying to make serious games all that time but even so, I don’t think you’re alone.

Hello I am a middle class white class white college educated Starving Artist(tm). No one understands the profundity and deep emotional content of my 8bit pixel platformers. Someone please make a documentary about my suffering. *slits wrists*

 The controller is hanging itself, it represents the death of mainstream gaming and the rise of indie, which is largely unnoticed by the public, hence the absence of an indie-like image…..
Or maybe you’re just thinking too much about it?

 Love it, nice!

 Yeah, I think that description has been pretty associated with indie across the board, including movies and music, for some time. For better or worse.

So… What do people think about that game Katawa Shoujo? Like, dislike? Points of criticism? Share your thoughts!

:D

You read way too much into this. He made a game and tried to put some subtext into it. But then very few people saw past “Oh it’s Super Mario: Sands of Time.” It’s understandable that he feels a little let down. I’ve seen the film. It’s not like he sees the reviews and proclaims “NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME AND MY HIGH-ART. NO ONE TRULY APPRECIATES IT AND I AM OBVIOUSLY THE GRAND-MASTER ARTIST!”

On a different topic. I don’t get why Indie devs, even particularly these ones, are accused of being pretentious. Perhaps the most confusing to me is accusing Team Meat of being pretentious. They never claimed the game to be super-important or of high-culture. They just wanted to make a game they would’ve liked as kids. Hell, in their commentary of the film they basically spend the whole time mocking themselves (and everyone else in the film.)

But the reason in general accusing Indie devs of being pretentious confuses me the most, is because the big publishers are the most pretentious people in the damn industry. Watch a single E3 speech and see some exec talking about how their games are “Ground-breaking” “innovative” and “all new”. Or watch them try to talk about the story in a COD-clone. They’re making claims of importance and culture that aren’t true. That is the DEFINITION of pretentious.

 E3 was an absolute farce, yes.  The major companies’ ideas for what a game should be are totally insulting.  But really, everyone needs to step it up a notch!  More complexity, more action, more thinking, more CPU power spent on the important parts of the game!  Any of that, really.

But neither the big corporations nor the “successful indies” will do that, because it means less money spent on graphics…  which is the most important thing to the lowest common denominator whether you’re making a 2D puzzle platformer or a boring talkie FPS.

 I severely question the cultural and economic importance of graphics.

If Graphics are the most important thing to successful Indies why does Minecraft, perhaps the most commercially and popularity successful Indie game ever, have terrible graphics? And if it’s what the masses want, why isn’t Crysis the most successful series of all time?

’cause Minecraft’s easy to use and is everywhere.  And I gotta imagine the Minecraft demographic is at least slightly smarter than the Crysis one, as you’d have to be in order to want to use something that requires creativity.  And an increasing number of gamers I’ve talked to lately are wondering where the fun mechanics went…

I’m not saying relying on graphics is a good idea or even one that works for long, but try telling that to EA.

“’cause Minecraft’s easy to use and is everywhere” Minecraft being everywhere is a result of Minecraft being popular, not the reverse (Although there is a snow-ball effect). “And I gotta imagine the Minecraft demographic is at least slightly smarter than the Crysis one” considering some of the things I’ve seen from the MC community, it’s debatable… But that would be a waste of both parties’ energy, so lets not even go there.

But those minor points aside, if you originally meant that executives think graphics are everything , then that’s a fair enough statement, to some extent at least.

http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/news/2011/7/15/hanging-controllers-looming-questions.html

Now everybody please kindly shut up about this. Thank you.

 Yeah, you’re right…  I could have worded it a bit better.  And I’m probably being a bit too generous to the Minecraft community.

Honestly I don’t understand Minecraft, and think its users would benefit more from using Megazeux instead.  And would end up making cooler stuff.  But yeah, I’m gonna refrain from saying anymore.

It’s a shame that people overlook how awesome of a game the first Crysis actually was thanks to all the hype about its graphics.

Hold on a minute, you’re telling me that there’s a difference between intellectualism and pretentiousness?! I’ve been barking up the wrong tree.

 I always get this sort of creative-guilt from Minecraft. “Wait, why did I spend hours channeling my creativity into this game when I would be better putting it into my own game ideas?!”

Well I can see why there is a lot of criticism about the movie. One thing I’m really not sure of is Edmund’s comment about creating games being like a concentration camp. If it’s too hard or stressful… why do it? Game design and production is certainly frustrating at times, but for the most part, if it’s your thing, then it’s very enjoyable. I’m still working on my first stupidly simple game and I’m at the point I’m sick of doing any more coding in it. However, I still love it. Love seeing it in action. I have never been stressed about it and definitely never felt it was like working in a concentration camp. Perhaps game making is not Edmund’s thing.

I couldn’t care less about the emotions and stress of developers making indie games, unless it’s a game so moving whether in a wonderful way or dark or sad way that it prompts me to look up the bio on the creator.. which so far no game has done for me. After playing a bit of Super Meat Boy or Braid, I didn’t break down in tears and declare out loud, “I feel your pain” and started looking up the creators. To be honest Braid was depressing and boring. All I saw in that game was a simple mechanic that had a lot of nice but awkward art and storyline thrown at it. To me it looked like WAY more work than was necessary was put into that game in order for the player to be immersed into it. Almost as if, all the imagination and thinking (other than the solving puzzles part) was done for the player. It was like Braid’s creator wanted the player to see and feel the game as exactly as possible as he envisioned it. So in short.. overkill. You should always leave some of the imagination and how the story is perceived, up to the player. Look at Adventure for the Atari 2600 for example. It was fun. It had puzzles. You were a little square in possibly the most minimalistic depiction of a medieval action/adventure game.

 sage

sageru all you want but you can NEVER crush my JAPANESE SPIRIT.

Edmund Mcmillen takes his very dark and violent issues and pours them into his game design and graphics. At least, that’s my impression having not seen the movie at all…but I think that the Binding of Isaac is proof enough.

Have you seen the movie yet? If not, give it a try. Team Meat’s story is by far the most genuine and inspiring of the three told in the film.

There’s a moment after Meat Boy hits XBLA and starts selling like hotcakes, Danielle (his wife) and Edmund are watching glowing video reviews of SMB together when she just starts streaming tears of overwhelming joy — Edmund looks at her and says “It’s sorta starting to feel like it was worth it,” a look of disbelief and pride in his eyes, “it’s sorta starting to feel worth it.”Hard work is hard work, and “concentration camp” was obviously a hyperbole — but keep in mind that Edmund and Tommy had spent around 2 years working on SMB, and had deadlines and pressures from Microsoft to get it done by a certain time. Combine that with the fact that these guys were running out of money, and surely you can imagine how stressful it might be.

But they worked through that shit because they obviously *loved* what they were making, and when the world came around and unequivocally embraced their hard work, the reward was priceless. Their success is the sort of triumph that many developers dream of, and there should be no shame in that.

I’m a developer too, and I’ve never made the sort of sacrifices that developers like Edmund and Tommy made for SMB, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it. It’s inspiring stuff.

How do I join your club?

I would’ve loved to see a Dwarf Fortress plug somewhere too, but there’s just not enough time to talk about a game like DF (or interview Tarn Adams — have you listened to any of the DF talks? He’s my favorite rambling game developer but he just goes on and on, heh. <3)

Minecraft was pretty blatantly mentioned a number of times in the film, and there's actually an entire documentary about Minecraft being made right now, so I think they made the right decision not to cover Minecraft any more than they did…

I really wish people would stop worrying about what they call themselves. If anybody asks, just say "I make games." If they're interested, tell them about your games. End of story.

They didn’t make any sacrifices. Edmund is just a really disturbed guy who is prone to whining a lot. Every other developer goes through the same thing if not more. I even have more sympathy for other developers especially because none of them make it or even become known while Edmund for a long time was busy making videos like one entitled “tehinternets” where he was attention whoring for things unrelated to any game.

Also he seems to have made that video private. It’s him basically losing his shit over a small number of TIGSource comments he picked out that didn’t praise an earlier game he made.

I’ve seen it. It’s brash, but it also made me laugh and didn’t seem like much more than Edmund openly lashing out. He probably made the video private because he got a lot of backlash for having the balls to *give a fuck*.

Turning down steady work and stripping down your social life to the bone for a few years isn’t making a sacrifice? And I didn’t say other developers don’t go through the same thing. If you stuck a camera in front of most other developers nearing the release of a game, you don’t think they’d be “prone to whining?”

Would you rather pity a failed developer than congratulate a successful one? I don’t understand what your point really is, besides Edmund is “just a really disturbed guy” and apparently doesn’t deserve your sympathy.

And besides, I was talking about *empathy* — not sympathy. It should be inspiring to see others succeed.

Your game didn’t get a lot of attention? sounds like you should have made a shallow game in order to reach to the big masses. Oh, and become rich in the process. 
Maybe Johnathan Blow would trade places with you, he gets people to comprehend his game, and you have enough money to retire. Or maybe not a chance in hell! He rather keeps the money …GUARANTEED. 
Nevertheless congrats for finishing a game that people liked to a personal level. If it’s worth anything, your game is more valuable to your small selection of players, than braid is to the general public, and that’s a great thing. That’s why we get in this biz, right?… Well that’s what I’d like to think anyway, dont kill the dream!

 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!

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.

 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?’

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

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)

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

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

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…

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!

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?

* 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?

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.

Soon this movie will have as many comments as FEZ!

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.

 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…

 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…

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.

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….

Haha. I totally second that.

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

LOLOLOLOL THAT NEVER HAPPENS IN THE MOVE AT ALLLLL