Film Review: Indie Game: The Movie

“Let me take my deepest vulnerabilities and put them in a game.”

The indie game creator of Braid, Jonathan Blow, stated this at the end of a documentary created by Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky. It follows the story of two independent games, Super Meat Boy and Fez. It goes through the inner workings, specifically with the makers. They all have the background of being misunderstood by most of the population. Indie games are the video games made by independent companies that, at the time the documentary was created, were not associated with the big name companies like EA Games, Blizzard, Bungie, Ubisoft, etc. The documentary barely describes what indie games are, but it does look at their success in the field of rethinking how video games are made.

Super Meat Boy during the documentary followed two men and their deadline of a few months at the time we meet them. The game they were creating was for and supported by Microsoft, but they were still independent in the creation process. The main creator of the game, Edmund McMillen, quit his job in order to make a full-length version of his ebaumsworld flash game. This is a trend seen in most of the creators of indie games. Another similar trait is that they are simply misunderstood by the real world community and make the games in order to finally be understood. When Super Meat Boy was released, the people reviewing it made comments that McMillen responded with, “That is exactly what I meant!”

The sense of being understood is strong and considering the quote at the end of the movie, indie game creators put a lot of effort into these games. They do it not for glory or riches, but just to serve that basic human need of a community of non-judgmental friends. It impressed me greatly that it wasn’t about the money because they put so much time, effort, and money to make the deadlines and put it up for everyone to play.

The second game was called Fez and had been highly talked about for four years and nearly forgotten. Several groups constantly harassed the creator, Phil Fish, but he continued creating and just began ignoring it. Though it wasn’t included in the documentary, Fish appears in the media after the release of his game and attacked YouTube game commentators who have done walkthroughs of Fez. Apparently, Fish believes they are pirating his work by showing any trailers or walkthroughs of the game, but luckily, none of this has officially been brought to court.

Phil Fish follows the same example as before in why he started developing Fez. He extended that response by stating that he saw Fez as a revamped old style gaming with no real enemies, just plain fun.

Indie Game: The Movie led a journey through the process of indie games with three individuals. The stresses and downfalls had a wonderful outcome for Super Meat Boy, but held some issues for the future for Fez. The creators wanted people to see the world through their eyes with a sense of understanding. Creators make games to express themselves, which leads to the thought: Doesn’t everyone want to find that one-way of being accepted?

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