Indie Game: The Movie

After doing the rounds and winning awards at Sundance, this movie's out!

On Steam, iTunes, and their site.

Indie Game: The Movie is a feature documentary about video games, their creators and the craft. The film follows the dramatic journeys of indie game developers as they create their games, and as they release those works, and themselves, to the world.

Indie Game: The Movie is about making video games, but at its core, it’s about the creative process and exposing yourself through your work.

The film tells the emotional story of a two-man team, Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, as they craft and release their first major game for XBOX, "Super Meat Boy". It follows Phil Fish, the creator of the highly- anticipated game, "Fez", as he shows it for the first time in 4 years at the giant gaming expo, PAX EAST. And, the film tells behind-the-scenes story an independent designer, Jonathan Blow, who made one of highest-rated video games of all-time, "Braid".

Four developers, three games, and one ultimate goal - to express one’s self through a video game.

They started a new Kickstarter project to raise more funds for production and editing after self-funding and an initial Kickstarter to fund their travel and filming. Take a look at the trailer videos and you'll see why the community responded and funded their goal in 24 hours.

http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/
http://kck.st/l1nunA

I donated yesterday Was surprised to hear they're in my home town of Winnipeg!

I'm in!

Awesome. Thanks for posting this! Also, it's funny how many indie game developers have beards...

Trachalio wrote:

I donated yesterday Was surprised to hear they're in my home town of Winnipeg!

Isn't there a Winnitron cabinet up there somewhere?

wordsmythe wrote:
Trachalio wrote:

I donated yesterday Was surprised to hear they're in my home town of Winnipeg!

Isn't there a Winnitron cabinet up there somewhere?

The original Winnitron is at Low Pub right now. I keep forgetting to go check it out

Sweet! Glad I was able to buy it at 10% off. Would have taken the free one, but I don't need a copy of SMB and would rather it go to someone else.

Can't wait to watch it tonight.

I got to see it in a theater full of game devs, artists and college students a month ago. Such a great experience. I absolutely loved it and I'm tempted to talk my wife into watching it this week. Highly recommend it for anyone that enjoys being creative or the passion of working hard on something.

Movie hits the interwebs today! On Steam, iTunes, and their site.

I ended up double-dipping by accident and bought a steam copy to have, and since I donated to Kickstarter they sent me an extra steam code. PM me if you want it. First come first serve. Claimed! Will also get a key for Super Meat Boy (which I already own twice) so once I get that someone else can be on the receiving end. Share the love and all that.

Gotta remember to pick this up sometime- certainly curious.

I quite enjoyed it. It got a bit heavy handed with its indie movieness, but it was still touching and well worth watching.

I have a Super Meat Boy code from Kickstarting as well. First PM gets it.

Just finished the movie. I found myself crying in the last half hour. I don't know, part of it is validation for a lot of the stresses I feel in my day to day work career, but so much of it is being happy that these people that put themselves on a limb backed by such solid principle find themselves to be successful is very liberating. Bravo to everyone involved. f*ck, I never cry during movies.

This movie was really emotional and really amazing. The human emotions from each of them gave me so much respect for every indie developer out there. I had no idea the amount of stress and things that they have to worry about.

I felt particularly bad for Jonathan Blow because he was simply misunderstood because of what the internet took of him. You can tell Phill Phish was super passionate and was so obsessed with making everything perfect. I also got a couple of laughs from some of his comments. The PAX moment made my heart drop for him. Tommy and Ed were my favorite simply because two opposite personalities carried each other through what seemed like hell and came out on top.

I am so glad I took time to watch this.

TempestBlayze got the code, enjoy dude!

I've been forcing myself to not watch this more since I got my digital copy because I don't want it to get old. There's been a handful of people online (mostly other known...outspoken people) who are saying that the film portrays the indie community as a bunch of whining, elitist drama queens but I think the movie shows their passion and obsession for making perfect things as you said.

My favourite line is still Phil Fish's first one "People aren't Female Doggo at Valve about Epi---OK people are Female Doggoing at Valve about Episode 3."

$5 in the Steam sale- I'll have to remember to pick it up before the 23. I have a hard time making purchases before I see all the daily deals, but that's a sweet price for sure.

Cool, thanks for the heads up demonbox!

demonbox wrote:

$5 in the Steam sale- I'll have to remember to pick it up before the 23. I have a hard time making purchases before I see all the daily deals, but that's a sweet price for sure.

You can get it DRM free from Amazon for that price, or so I've heard. Having to watch a movie on a Steam enabled computer isn't very convenient.

SixteenBlue wrote:
demonbox wrote:

$5 in the Steam sale- I'll have to remember to pick it up before the 23. I have a hard time making purchases before I see all the daily deals, but that's a sweet price for sure.

You can get it DRM free from Amazon for that price, or so I've heard. Having to watch a movie on a Steam enabled computer isn't very convenient.

Hold up... It's DRM free on Steam. You have to find the movie file in your steamapps folder, however. They have a wrapper sorta setup so that you can play it through Steam and have that menu, but the actual movie file is in there, DRM free.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
demonbox wrote:

$5 in the Steam sale- I'll have to remember to pick it up before the 23. I have a hard time making purchases before I see all the daily deals, but that's a sweet price for sure.

You can get it DRM free from Amazon for that price, or so I've heard. Having to watch a movie on a Steam enabled computer isn't very convenient.

Hold up... It's DRM free on Steam. You have to find the movie file in your steamapps folder, however. They have a wrapper sorta setup so that you can play it through Steam and have that menu, but the actual movie file is in there, DRM free.

Thanks! I had no idea. I was kind of hoping for that but didn't really look around.

Something Tommy from Team Meat said sort of stuck in my craw, at the 11:30 mark.

"If people wanna buy Modern Warfare or Halo: Reach that's fine because I think those games are sh*t, and if that's what people want then they don't want the games that I make 'cause I don't make sh*t games."

Where do I fit in all that? I have bought and played all of the MW games. I also have bought and liked Braid and Fez. There's been this weird "us vs. them" vibe through the film so far that I don't think helps endear the viewer to these guys, particularly the type of gamer that most of us here are.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Something Tommy from Team Meat said sort of stuck in my craw, at the 11:30 mark.

"If people wanna buy Modern Warfare or Halo: Reach that's fine because I think those games are sh*t, and if that's what people want then they don't want the games that I make 'cause I don't make sh*t games."

Where do I fit in all that? I have bought and played all of the MW games. I also have bought and liked Braid and Fez. There's been this weird "us vs. them" vibe through the film so far that I don't think helps endear the viewer to these guys, particularly the type of gamer that most of us here are.

That irked me at first too.

SixteenBlue, was it the part about Phil's old partner that bothered you about him? I had been sympathizing with him a bit til he went off like that.

Tommy bugs me more and more. The other guy from Team Meat seems pretty genuine and cool, though.

Blind_Evil wrote:

SixteenBlue, was it the part about Phil's old partner that bothered you about him? I had been sympathizing with him a bit til he went off like that.

The Phil's partner thing really started to bother me. He seemed to be portrayed really negatively, and a lot of the conflict involving him seemed forced. (i.e. They made a big deal about how he hadn't signed off on that form yet and it turned out to not really be an issue.) It doesn't help that since most of that footage has been filmed, Phil Fish has pretty much revealed himself to be an egotistical asshole who has trouble working with others which makes that one-sided portrayal much harder to swallow.

An interesting thing I heard one person mention that isn't brought up by a lot of discussion of this film is that a coincidental running theme amongst all three main storylines is that Microsoft are not very easy to deal with.

kuddles wrote:

An interesting thing I heard one person mention that isn't brought up by a lot of discussion of this film is that a coincidental running theme amongst all three main storylines is that Microsoft are not very easy to deal with.

That was talked about today in the IRC channel (because of the Fez patch issue), and I don't really know where I stand on it. It does suck that more than one patch would cost so much, but

A) we don't know the deal with other platform holders on the matter

B) that's sort of the exchange for going with a console release. You don't roll up to the millionaires' poker game with a couple hundreds in your wallet.

kuddles wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

SixteenBlue, was it the part about Phil's old partner that bothered you about him? I had been sympathizing with him a bit til he went off like that.

The Phil's partner thing really started to bother me. He seemed to be portrayed really negatively, and a lot of the conflict involving him seemed forced. (i.e. They made a big deal about how he hadn't signed off on that form yet and it turned out to not really be an issue.) It doesn't help that since most of that footage has been filmed, Phil Fish has pretty much revealed himself to be an egotistical asshole who has trouble working with others which makes that one-sided portrayal much harder to swallow.

An interesting thing I heard one person mention that isn't brought up by a lot of discussion of this film is that a coincidental running theme amongst all three main storylines is that Microsoft are not very easy to deal with.

Yes, that was a big part. Essentially everything at PAX.

I came in with a generally negative perception of Fish, first because of the Japanese Games Suck (they don't) deal, then the Minecraft Shouldn't Get Preferential Treatment (they should because yo 6 million sold = negotiating leverage) deal. I feel for him a little more after playing his game, but that crazy look in his eye when he was talking about cold blooded murder, I dunno.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I came in with a generally negative perception of Fish, first because of the Japanese Games Suck (they don't) deal, then the Minecraft Shouldn't Get Preferential Treatment (they should because yo 6 million sold = negotiating leverage) deal. I feel for him a little more after playing his game, but that crazy look in his eye when he was talking about cold blooded murder, I dunno.

Yeah that was awful...and just really stupid to do in front of a camera. As a developer I really hated watching the game crash at PAX too.

Crumb. I meant to pick this up during the steam sale and got wrapped up in gifting horse games instead.

Stumbled across this on Netflix Instant and am watching it now.

Edit: The point being that it's available on Netflix Instant if you haven't seen it yet.

Indie Game: The Movie captures what it feels like to have pressure of what your end product HAS to be. It's not every day you feel a personal commitment to the end product. Everything is important, and everything is at stake. I can't think of a worse way to live, because you're responsible for every failure along the way. Yet, I can't thing of a better way to live, because you're the one that made it possible. Your personal vision can lead to something great.