Documentary Pick: Indie Game: The Movie (2012)
After last week’s somber reflection on the beginning of the atomic age, I searched the Netflix collection of documentaries to find something, well, a little lighter. So let’s take a look at Indie Game: The Movie, which takes us inside the exciting world of possibility that is independent video game development. Three stories highlight the tremendous struggles and rewards involved with creating a successful indie game, and the various characters allow the cameras of directors James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot to catch all their hopes, dreams, anxieties, and self-criticism.
We meet Jonathan Blow, the visionary though slightly pompous creator of the top selling indie game Braid. Then we meet Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, AKA: Team Meat, who are developing the game Super Meat Boy, and development goes from 0 to 100 when Microsoft offers them the opportunity to be a part of “Game Feast” for Xbox Live Arcade. Finally, the early promise of programmer Phil Fish is put to the test as he tries to finish his game, Fez, which was demoed in 2008, but was still not available to gamers three years later.
The stories, particularly those of Fish and Team Meat, highlight the age-old struggles of artists trying to make their bones, including money, personal sacrifice, and the need to stand out from the pack, but because we’re talking about video games, those issues are shown in a fresh and fascinating context. Blow, whose success the others are chasing, offers perspective on the nature of independent versus studio development, and how the former allows for the creation of more personal games that have specific allegorical and narrative goals as opposed to the assembly line process of corporate game developers.
The doc quickly swallows you up and takes you completely on the journey of these four people, along the way balancing well the full weight of their challenges, but also the incredible joy in the small victories. There’s a compelling case here to persuade those like Roger Ebert (back in the day), the ones who doubt the artistic motivations and accomplishments of video games, that there’s a real personal stake in the creation of these programs. Some even talk about how video games are their way of expressing themselves, in much the same way that painters express themselves on the canvass, or writers express themselves on the page. Although some people in the film might take the existential implications a bit too far, Indie Game underlines that fact that these video game makers are indeed artists with something to say.