Iconic video game doc Indie Game: The Movie already feels like a relic

I attended the screening Indie Game: The Movie, still perhaps the most famous documentary about video game development, was released in early 2012. The film received a standing ovation from the large audience gathered in the main hall of San Francisco's Moscone Center at the Game Developers Conference (which, as I wrote at the time, “defined the local audience”). . The Kickstarter-funded film had already been screened at Sundance at the time, but it reached its true audience: people who love games, people who make games, and people who dream of making games. It was his debut in front. Naturally, they fell in love with the film's confident storytelling, larger-than-life characters, and romanticism of the artist's struggles.

It's a strange experience to watch this movie again now, available for rent or purchase on Prime Video or Apple TV. Twelve years is not a very long time in film or real life, so you can't really call this movie old. The people in this film live in a world we recognize as the one we live in today. They use their smartphones to check the discourse on Twitter and YouTube. The film itself, directed by James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot, is a sophisticated documentary, expertly edited in a contemporary style, with clever and stylish use of still-rare video game footage. It's worth noting. As an all-around depiction of video game development, it's been surpassed in particular by his two surprisingly candid documentary series Double Fine, but you can't resist it.

But in the world of video games, 12 years is a lifetime, and the world of indie game development, and especially game development, has changed beyond recognition since then, and the fates of the film's protagonists tell a difficult, sad tale that doesn't quite fit with the filmmakers' ambitious narrative.

Image: Indie Game: The Movie

The film has two main storylines. In one, Team Meat (indie developers Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes) prepares an anarchic platformer. super meat boy On the other, Polytron's Phil Fish is getting ready to show off his game. Fes At the PAX East gaming expo in early 2011. Fes The franchise has been mired in development hell for years, with Fish's acrimonious breakup with a former business partner seemingly putting the game's future in legal jeopardy. Meanwhile, Jonathan Blow has commented from the sidelines about Blake's 2008 success: braida hoarse oracle, an early harbinger of the indie game explosion.Braiding It has now been re-released as a new anniversary edition.

It's funny to see developers brandishing Xbox 360 controllers and arguing that the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace is the biggest and final thing in indie game distribution. Steam is only mentioned briefly, mobile app stores aren't mentioned much, and PlayStation and Nintendo aren't even mentioned. Refenes feels stressed because Super Meat Boy It looks like it won't get the promised placement on the Xbox front end, but it's a release date jitters that will leave most indie developers in 2024 hoping to get some attention among the half-dozen new releases each day. It seems strange by comparison. Main storefront.

The amount of noise developers have to cut through and the sheer volume of games being released may be the biggest change in the indie game scene between 2012 and now. But there were also major cultural changes. Indie Game: The Movie To some extent, the films are honest about the human struggle of game development: McMillen and Refenes speak movingly of the crushing stress and overwork that comes with releasing a game, while Fish and Blow are candid about the frustration and alienation they felt when they found themselves the focus of online debate.

Image: Indie Game: The Movie

But this was years before that discourse was weaponized by online harassment campaigns, years before unhealthy labor practices as a fact of life in game development began to be questioned, and years before the privilege of these four white male Rockstar game developers would be seriously checked. Fesand the scene where he seems to mean it is a genuinely shocking moment, but the film ultimately seems to embrace these developers' troubled mental states as a testament to their artistic authenticity, and by extension, the authenticity of the video game medium as a whole. You know, they're like Sid Vicious and Vincent Van Gogh.Swirsky and Pajot seem to suggest. They don't have the foresight to dispute the need to make games this way.

At the time, I was annoyed by Indie Game: The MovieThis is the casting. The filmmakers decided to focus on budding stars whose success seems already established or guaranteed, no matter what drama ensues. What about the vast majority who haven't sold a million copies, signed a promotional deal with Microsoft, or paid off their parents' mortgage? There remains a critical gap in this film's portrait. But what happened next to these four men takes a strange and heartbreaking twist.

Blow and Fish suffered public smears that were misguided at best and offensive at worst. Refenes and McMillen split up. It was difficult to regain success. McMillen, the most down-to-earth, continued to work in the band. Super Meat Boy With another smash, bondage of isaacbut for most of the past decade, Mugenix, first with Refenes and then without him. Blow, always a philosophically marginal figure, spent nine years witnessThen, somehow, he became an openly declared COVID-19 conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer. Fes It was a masterpiece, but the hotheaded Fish made a series of rude comments immediately after its release, festival 2apparently pissed, canceled it immediately, and has yet to make another game. (He seems calmer and happier now, though he keeps a relatively low profile.)

Image: Indie Game: The Movie

It's as if since Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson broke out in the '90s, they've only made one and a half hit movies together and then been forgotten. For them, this state of being forgotten may actually be a welcome thing. The games industry seems to be bad at supporting its most talented independent creators, both when they succeed and when they fail.

Or perhaps what Indie Games: Movies What these maverick artists miss in their rush to hero-worship is that making video games has always been a collective effort. During the release of Super Meat Boy and Fes Another hit of XBLA, Bastionby Supergiant Games. This tight-knit group went on to make many more games, sometimes working with a publisher, sometimes on their own. They supported each other and grew carefully. They created masterpieces in their own right. hadesand then somehow managed to avoid a flame war. Now they're following it up, and the sequel looks just as good. It's not the kind of sexy story to put in a video game doc, but maybe it's the one we all need to hear.