Independent developers develop pretty much everything on their own. They don’t conform to publishers and their parameters, they can create whatever they want. Often making the games more personal than mainstream games. This is what some games would be created from back in the 8bit era and even earlier. For me this would be good as I like to have a lot of freedom when I am creating something. Looking at some companies in the game industry, I already know that I would not want to go near them due to their forced concepts and lack-luster repetitive games.

However there are aspects to the independent developer route that would work against me. Something as simple as the up and down sleep patterns could effect me. However since starting university my own sleep patterns have started to vary due to the work that I do. It may not be as much of a factor as I thought.

Click Here for Episode #29

In this episode…

We review three horror films and one documentary film.

• Our first film was…
  

  Dream Home directed by Ho-Cheung Pang

• Our Second film was…
  

  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was directed by Robert Wienke

• Our Third film was…
  

  Yellowbrickroad was directed by Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton

• and our Final film…
  

  Indie Game the Movie was directed by Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky

Download our Variety Take – Biutiful, Indie Game the Movie, Drive Spoilercast or

Stream it:

Charlie’s Take  Indie Game the Movie
Dustin’s Take   Biutiful
John’s Take      Drive

Up next week: Cloud Atlas, Wreck-it Ralph,, Skyfall, oh my!

This incredible documentary is a must watch for any indie gaming fan.

Indie Game: The Movie is a film that will hit close to home for many indie gaming fans. Following the developers of the popular indie games Super Meat Boy, Braid, and Fez, this documentary shows the hard work and robust imagination that these games require. It is a treat to watch these developers lay out the thought process of their games from inception to polished product, complete with every piece in between.  Many other indie titles make cameos throughout the film, including a few of my personal favorites,  Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery,  Minecraft, and Limbo.

Any fan of indie games, or gaming in general should check this movie out. It is an excellent film that captures the pleasant aesthetics and digitized tunes we all appreciate from indie games, while showing the raw, stressful and human side of the process to get these games into a player’s hands to enjoy.

Indie Game: The Movie can be purchased here, or viewed on Netflix instant play. Enjoy!

Hot on the heels of the International Documentary Association, the Cinema Eye Honors have released their nominees, with The Imposter and Searching For Sugar Man leading the way in what is certain to be a very busy Oscar run-up for them both.

Check out the full list of nominations below:

The ceremony will be held on January 9th.

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN NON-FICTION FEATURE FILMMAKING:

5 Broken Cameras
Detropia
The Imposter
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
Only The Young
Searching For Sugar Man

OUSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTION:

Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady – Detropia
Ra’anan Alexandrowicz – The Law In These Parts
Jason Tippet, Elizabeth Mims – Only The Young
Yi Seung-Jun – Planet Of Snail
Bill Ross, Turner Ross – Tchoupitoulas
Victor Kossakovsky – ¡Vivan Las Antipodas!

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION:

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Big Boys Gone Bananas!*
The Imposter
Searching For Sugar Man
¡Vivan Las Antipodas!

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY:

Chasing Ice
The Imposter
Only The Young
Samsara
¡Vivan Las Antipodas!

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN EDITING:

5 Broken Cameras
Detropia
How To Survive A Plague
Room 237
Tchoupitoulas

AUDIENCE CHOICE PRIZE:

5 Broken Cameras
Beauty Is Embarrassing
Bully
How To Survive A Plague
The Imposter
Jiro Dreams Of Sushi
Kumaré
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
Searching For Sugar Man
Trash Dance

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN DEBUT FEATURE FILM:

Alison Klayman – Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
David France – How To Survive A Plague
Matthew Akers – Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
Jason Tippet, Elizabeth Mims – Only The Young
Rodney Ascher – Room 237
Malik Bendjelloul – Searching For Sugar Man
Peter Nicks – The Waiting Room

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORE:

Detropia
The Imposter
Into The Abyss
Room 237
¡Vivan Las Antipodas!

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN GRAPHIC DESIGN OR ANIMATION:

Beauty Is Embarrassing
Herman’s House
Indie Game: The Movie
Room 237
Searching For Sugar Man
Urbanized

SPOTLIGHT AWARD:

Argentinian Lesson
Bestiaire
Downeast
Meanwhile In Mamelodi
Special Flight

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN NON-FICTION SHORT FILMMAKING:

Cutting Loose
Family Nightmare
Good Bye Mandima
Into The Middle Of Nowhere
Paradise

* * *

             In the weeks since I have finished The Elements of Style, one passage from E.B. White’s concluding essay has remained clear in my mind: “When writing with a computer, you must guard against wordiness. The click and flow of a word processor can be seductive, and you may find yourself adding a few unnecessary words or even a whole passage just to experience the pleasure of running your fingers over the keyboard and watching your words appear on the screen” (72). I find myself often experiencing the “pleasure of running [my] fingers over the keyboard and watching [my] words appear on the screen”—so much so that I chose to reproduce that entire phrase. There is something powerful in the small, purposeful movement of fingers. Each motion a desire, each thought an action. The work of fingers is the physical work of directed human intelligence; this is why it is so beautiful and powerful: when we see the fingers typing purposefully, or sewing, or playing an instrument, we see the human mind at work. That is not something to be ignored. The whole world stands on the back of the work of fingers.

* * *

This morning I watched Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary about independent game developers and the toil of producing such a complex product without the promise of financial reward or the safety-net of corporate backers. You can find it on Netflix or on its websitew. Indie Game: The Movie is a well crafted narrative of the work of fingers, and the ameliorative power of dedicated creative work.

* * *

I have a poem in Issue 13 of Specter and a review of Joel Brouwer’s wonderful book, And So, over on HTMLGIANT. My own work of fingers.

* * *

Here’s a picture of baby fingers. Who knows what work they’ll do:

Real Talk By: Steph-O (Stephanie Owens)

Indie Game: The Movie is a documentary feature film that focuses on the stories of developers of Super Meat Boy (Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes), FEZ (Phil Fish and Renaud Bédard) and Braid (Jonathan Blow). It was created by Canadian filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajo, and was funded in part by two successful Kickstarter campaigns.

Indie Game has been received well by the film community, and even won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, but it is a slight let down to the gaming community. Praised as a film that even non-gamers can enjoy, I fear it is a film that only non-gamers will enjoy.

According to the film’s Kickstarter page, Indie Game was inspired by the film makers’ documentary short film on Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo, as well as their experience covering the Game Developers Conference in 2009. Interested in the culture of indie game development, they wanted to explore it further. The end result of their feature length film has the same tone and style as the short, but I fear it has lost the spirit. The directors apparently shot over 300 hours of footage and interviewed quite a few other game developers in addition to the ones that made the cut. In the end, they decided to focus on the four developers chosen so as to tell the stories of three games in depth rather than only skimming the surface of many. A valid choice, had they not delved further into the stories of the chosen four individuals instead of the games themselves.

During the course of the film, there is much time spent on deadlines, frustration, relationships, and fear of failure, but hardly any time spent on what it is that is causing all those feelings in the first place: developing a game. There virtually no coverage of game programming (Phil Fish’s programming partner Renaud Bédard has only one or two interviews) or any actual game development, even though the film spans several months. I did enjoy learning about the developers’ pasts and how they got into video games and game development, and there are a few early game and artwork iterations that are fun to see. But this film could have focused on virtually any creative process and the results would have been almost the same. Everyone goes through those feelings of desperation and hopelessness when trying to meet a deadline, but this film was supposed to be specifically about video games.

The narrative is told mostly through interviews with the developers, but I have to wonder if maybe it was the prompts they were given or the way the film was edited that made the developers come off as so unbalanced. Sure, many creative can be a bit on the weird side, but how do all four interviewees come off as almost equally crazy? Sure, we’ve all been there: you have a huge deadline coming up, you are low on sleep (and time), your brain is fried and you can barely get your work finished- let alone interview on camera! Still, there is too much exaggeration on what is ‘at stake’ and the emotions of the developers, rather than how their games are progressing or the changes they have decided to make. It is an unfair representation of the game developer world, and possibly of those individuals themselves. Take Markus “Notch” Persson for example. There was recently a Kickstarter project held to document Mojang- the studio created after the initial success of Minecraft -and the 20 minute preview already availableshows an extremely talented but overall sound individual. There are plenty of indie game developers out there- as well as indie film makers, musicians, and artists -all doing the same thing as these developers. I don’t think what made them unique was their stress and frustration, so why was that the focus?

Indie Game: The Movie had a chance to bring some attention to the indie gaming community and give less well known developers something to look up to. However, anyone who actually plays or developers games will be left frustrated, and “non-gamers” will only think of how strange you must have to be to create a game.

Indie Game: The Movie is currently available on Netflix instant watch, for watch or download DRM-free for $9.99, and is currently shipping on DVD and Blu-Ray copies. Check out it, and let me know what you think.

Indie Game: The Movie Gets

Out of Five

Follow me @PlayLegit_Steph

A factor that I thought was amazing was the fact that these teams consisted, usually, at a maximum of two people.  Two people.  Creating the most highest praised and grossing indie video game, ever.  Stunning really, as I never thought even one person could even scratch the game industry, let alone make an impact so huge that it changed the way we make games today.  The gaming industry as a whole was like someone that would show one side of piece, something that is visually appealing, but then the back has all the mistakes and holes that are cloistered by the exterior.  Hiding imperfections and only distributing highly polished games with no center.  As the maker of Braid, Johnathan Blow, had explained, they would smooth out any rough corners, cut any imperfections out, and would ultimately protect the player from seeing or expriencing any type of harm from the game.  How I see it, is that gamers, consumers, people, don’t need to be protected.  They need to be hurt, they need to make and see mistakes, all of this is necessary for human development.  As we gain experience, we grow and mature, and we know what to expect next and experience failures and see mistakes again.  We gain higher expectations and emotions for these things, which I think, is important for game and human development.  This is how we grow, not by being pampered with an empty shell of a game.
Games these days, as I see it, cover up the loop hole of the story line, or hide the missed opportunity with stunning visuals, or great gameplay.  Something made this way seems hollow to me, like there was no real life put into these games.  I am not saying that when people make games, they don’t give it their all.  That’s not what I’m think about them.   It’s more like there is something missing in the formula for a truly whole experience of a game.  There needs to be a (+) in the games that I don’ t usually see anymore.  It’s more about figures and sales now then the actual enjoyment and perhaps enlightenment for the players.  No game has to be perfect, however.  Imperfections are what makes games what they are.  However, if they try to cover the player’s eyes and use smoke and mirrors to hide the gritty mistakes, then all you get is a glitter-covered crap.  In the end, good is good, bad is bad.

One of the main aspects i see in successful indie games is that they are a personal to the creator or creators. The creators know this game, they breathe this game, everything they experience is in this game.  Something that deeply personal creates a character that is not the player itself but the game as a whole.  There is more meaning and raw emotion in these games and it is something that is truly shared, an idea or a belief, something that the creators wanted us to see so badly.  The amount of hours, and sacrifices they had to make in order to create a connection with the player is truly astounding.  This is what people see when they see something innovative.  This is something people see when they interact with something that is so carefully made, with the players mind, always thinking how they could tell their story to them.

Now there is more of an effort to create something personal with these new games coming out, and we can thank these games and many more that came before that inspired so many people to believe that you can create something that can change the way we perceive people, not numbers but as normal human beings.  I was struck so deeply because I wasn’t sure about what I would do or how I would expose my feelings and emotions in something I took so much time and care for to complete.  In the end, I realize that my imperfections and faults are something that I want people so see and share with me.  I know it will take time and patience, things I don’t usually have, but I now see that I want to do this.  I want to share myself with you, and with that, I continue to work hard for what I believe in.

If your as much of a Netflix fanatic as i am, then you’ll be pleased to hear that they just put up “Indie Game: The movie” for instant stream. Indie Game: The Movie takes you on a journey into the minds of the creators of Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Fez. These developers have put their blood, sweat, and countless hours of mind numbing programming into these spectacular releases. The documentary shows us the pressure independent developers are under to create and test their games for their big commercial release (many of which have been in development for many years). These games bring us back to the challenges we loved about old school platform gaming but with a new, deeper, much more intellectual spin. The long hours and hard work have clearly paid off as all three of these games won countless awards and raked in thousands upon thousands of fans.

Check out the trailer here:

Indie Game: The Movie

Related articles

• Indie Game: The Movie: The Picture of Devotion [Movie Night] (gizmodo.com)
• Indie Game: The Movie Added to Netflix Streaming Service (jtmgames.com)

Check out the trailer here:

Indie Game: The Movie

In a dramatic twist, Happy Wars came out over the weekend with little promotion from Microsoft. Considering it’s a free-to-play tower defense game, where the real income stems from players buying new weapons, armor, and accessories with actual money–well, real money converted into Microsoft Points ridiculously converted a second time into Happy Tickets–you’d think they’d want to let people know the thing exists. Instead, I learned about it from a forum post on Giant Bomb, and then had to sift through menus (and submenus!) to figure out where to download it from. Not ideal, I assure you, and considering I just watched Indie Game: The Movie the other night, placement on the e-marketplace is vital. Especially around launch time.

Happy Wars is a free-to-play tower defense game, with a single player story and online multiplayer matches. War has broken out between…uh, people that dress in white, and people that dress in black. Or something like that. That’s the overall gist, but some story-based missions focus on other topics, like a stolen princess or a mad scientist and his army of crazy red robots. Cute, cartoony graphics help emphasize the happy part of these wars, as does most of the loot, such as a sword made from a dead fish, a flower petal shield, and a stat-boosting pencil you can stick in your avatar’s hair. The look of the game is not going to astound you, but it won’t also annoy you, being just right for this sort of experience of capturing spawn points, building deadly turrets, and using class-based action skills. Reminds me a bit of Quarrel and Costume Quest and something else.

If you don’t remember, tower defense is not one of my favorite gaming genres. It’s a lot of building and waiting until one side tips the scale just enough to wash over their forces. So that part is kind of boring to me, but there are some aspects here that I do like. Such as leveling up items, earning loot, and completing mini challenges during a match. Of the three classes–warrior, cleric, mage–I prefer being a warrior, rushing into the thick of things and using thrown stones to stun opponents before I cut them to pieces. The other classes all have their uses, but I’m not terribly comfortable with them just yet. Give me time. Plus, of those three, I have the better equipment so far for the warrior. Also, the roulette wheel called the Spinner is a wonderful way to spend all your hard-earned Happy Stars; just like in Borderlands 2 with their slot machines, I can’t resist testing my luck. It is a nice feature for those that don’t want to spend really money on item packs to try and get something better for their characters.

There are some problems though. The single player experience is severely hampered by a strange level rank restriction. You beat the first story mission, and you are immediately slapped in the face with a note that says you can only play the next story mission once you’ve achieved a rank of 6 or higher. You can only increase your rank, from what I can tell, in multiplayer matches. Seems simple enough; however, the problem continues from there. Not sure if it just had to do with server issues or initial launch problems, but connecting to an online match or getting one started from the ground up was extremely hit or miss for me. My system kept trying to “connect with Xbox Live…” over and over again before ultimately booting me out of matches that looked promising. I did eventually get a few games in after many attempts, but once you beat the second story mission–made up of two smaller missions really–you are again told you can’t continue playing solo stuff until your rank is 11 or higher. Eep. Back to multiplayer, I guess. Either way, this experience is fairly frustrating, only softened by the fact that I did not pay any more for this game or give it any money so far. Maybe the online matchmaking will shake itself out over the next week or so.

Oh, and free game means free Achievements, none of which have been too tricky to unlock:

First Victory (10G): Get 1 victory in any game session

The Legend Begins (10G): Receive mention in Hero Pop-up in a Quick Match or Co-op mode

Mod 0 (10G): Level-up an item

Rich Man (10G): Get 30 items

I’m not having a great time or a terrible time, but I’d also like to see more of the game before calling it quits. Especially the single player missions, as I don’t have to rely on anyone but myself to get the job done. If you’re on Xbox 360, definitely give this a try, as it won’t cost you anything but a download. Just be aware that after the tutorial and training missions, you’ll be locked out of most content until you can up your rank, and getting online matches to connect is consistently wishy-washy at the moment.

As Happy Wars is the first dip into free-to-play games for Microsoft’s platform, it’ll be interesting to see just how long this war really lasts. I think there’s promise here, some good and bad, but maybe not enough hooks to really keep a crowd coming back. Or I could be completely wrong. Again, these sorts of gaming experiences are generally not for me. Time will surely tell.

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With the rise of the gaming industry to what it has come today, many companies have grown massively and have become the leading source in the entertainment industry. Many of these are companies that develop AAA titles which cost millions to produce with 100′s of people. These companies have created some of the largest entertainment media launches of all time, with Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 grossing over $1 billion throughout the world within 16 days of launch in 2011. Many of these titles use the same formula throughout a series of games, such as Call of Duty and Assassins Creed. This can lead to large titles to become complacent and never change or try new innovative aspects to their games.

Being an indie game developer means that you can try any new crazy idea. You can push your game with any new mechanics, storytelling methods, or style that many AAA studios and publishers would consider to be too risky to implement even with a small team. You also don’t have a schedule or release date set in stone that leads many bigger developers to the ‘crunch time’ nearing the end of a project.

With the rise and ease of use of free tools such as Unity3d, Blender3d, GIMP, & GameMaker, anyone can now develop games with virtually no budget. With this, many bedroom developers have sprung up around the world creating their own games. This is one of the best times we have seen to become an indie developer with so many tools and so much information freely available. Many indie studios are appearing here in Ireland and are becoming quite popular. BitSmith Games, and BatCat Games have both released their games Kú, and P-3 Biotic respectively on Steam’s Greenlight platform recently with some success.

As new platforms of distribution and monetisation are being created, game developers no longer have to go through publishers to get their games funded. One of the biggest successes with a new distribution method was Double Fine Adventure’s KickStarter campaign which rose over $3 million dollars alone. As seen in the chart below, on KickStarter alone games have been funded in excess of $50 million so far this year.

Graph showing the growth in crowd sourcing games

Becoming an indie developer also has its downsides too. As many people have seen on Indie Game the Movie and many articles, working on a project can be tough work as an indie Developer. Many developers struggle along their path to creating a game. The video below shows some of the content from Indie Game the Movie and allows us to see what some developers have gone through to create their games.

Without these indie developers however, we would not have some of the most amazing, highly rated games in the world such as Braid, Fez, Bastion, Super Meat Boy, Limbo, Minecraft, and Journey.

So, this leads to the question, why aren’t you going indie?

Did you guys see Midnight in Paris? There’s this scene in the film where Owen Wilson’s character asks Ernest Hemingway for feedback on his novel. Hemingway, in less words than I can write here — which is funny since I’m trying to summarize the scene — tells Mr. Wilson that a writer should never ask for another writer’s opinion because he’ll hate it whether it’s good or bad. If it’s good, Hemingway says, he’ll be envious of it and if it’s bad, he’ll be critical of it for being bad.

This adequately describes how I feel about Indie Game: The Movie.

I’ve been wanting to make a documentary about video games for a couple years now, and these two filmmakers, James Swirskey and Lisanne Pajot, went ahead and made one that is absolutely awesome. The film makes engaging characters out of these indie game developers, and reels the audience in with a great underdog story. On top of that, it’s pretty well shot for a documentary (like 99% of the film is on a DSLR + slider combination) and if you’re into video games or any other creative endeavor, you’ll identify with the developers just on the basis of your understanding about what it takes to translate your vision (whatever vision that is) into the physical means by which you create your art. It’s really quite an endearing story.

The developer of “Fez”, a guy named Phil Fish, put it very well: “Video games are the sum total of every expressive medium of all time made interactive…it’s awesome.”

Whether or not you agree with that, and I don’t because I’m a film purist and will always argue that film is the greatest expressive artistic medium ever, it’s a unique way of looking at a medium that perhaps is more indicative of the 21st century than any other medium in their current forms.

Definitely check this film out if you get a chance, it’s totally awesome.

I remember the day that a good friend of mine suggested an amazing documentary to watch named “Indie Game: The Movie”. Phil Fish, Game Designer of Fez and Founder of Polytron said in that documentary:

“It’s the sum total of every expressive medium of all time made interactive… it’s awesome!”

I agree in every possible way with that quote. Video games are art. The best type of art. It’s work of one or many people containing endless amount of work to create the most beautiful type of art that can interact with anyone! Video games stimulate and trigger your eyes and brain with the most awesome way. They have the power to entertain you and simultaneously teach you almost anything.  It’s a wonderful way to express yourself through a game. Game Designing is a world of endless possibilities. You create what you want to create and you introduce to the world something that came out of your your mind and your heart. And above all that people can interact with what YOU have created. How is that not absolutely astonishing?

I jumped from speaking about my personal participation in school events to Game Designing for a reason. Both can be related by the fact that you provide, for someone you know or to a complete stranger around the globe, a huge amount of good feelings and emotions and to me, as I stated earlier, that is everything. Game Development has the power of combing Design and Coding to create something greater. The reason I used Design and Coding as the two main elements in these blog posts is to end up at Game Development and show you in any way I can it’s greatness. If I could influence even one person on the whole planet to dedicate his time on Game Development, me being absolute thrilled would be an understatement.

I value video games a lot and I have created emotional attachments with many games and many characters. Anyone who grew up with video games can relate to what I’m saying. Watching Link ride away on Epona from Hyrule in the Legends of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, facing Sephiroth with Cloud in Final Fantasy VII or saving Princess Peach with Mario from Super Mario 64 brings back memories and feelings from my childhood that nothing else has ever has given me. I want to be part of that. And I will be part of that.

Searching for Sugarman

Rodriguez was a musician who was a household name in Apartheid South Africa with hits like Sugarman, Street Boy and I Wonder. Despite Rodriguez being a huge success in South Africa, no one knew anything about the man behind the music.  Two South Africans decide to find out the truth about his mysterious death.

Movie Rating: I’ll be the first to admit that I had no clue who Rodriguez was. Even though I didn’t know his name, when I heard the opening tune playing as the documentary started a light bulb turned on inside my head. I had gone into this documentary pretty blind, and I was totally blown away. Music and documentary lovers will get more out of this movie than your average joe, but even an audience with no clue about the man or his music will be entranced by his story. 

The only thing I found a major disappointment relates to production – even though this is a South African story, it’s made by Europeans. Why South Africa? Why?

Indie Game – The Movie

Indie Game is a crowd sourced documentary that takes a look at the lives of three different groups of indie (independent) video game developers. The documentary looks briefly at the game development process, but spends most of its time with the people behind the games. Indie Game looks at how the developers struggled with money, social politics and their own emotions, in order to get their games finished and out the door.

Movie Rating: You’d be wrong if you though Indie Game was just about video games. Indie Game – The Movie is really an inspiring story about pursuing your dreams. It’s definitely not easy, and there’s no guarantee you’ll make it, but if you do the pay-off is totally worth it. A must-see for anyone in any creative industry.