good back-story, and good acting

Crappy film

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The filmmakers focused on four of the most eccentric, pretentious, controversial indie developers they could find -- three of whom were essentially starving themselves while working on their games. It makes for an entertaining film, but it doesn't really represent indie development. That being said: I watched the film 5 times. 9 stars.

I was quite surprised by how well this documentary kept the viewer's interest. This is a documentary that follows three popular indie game makers. Some of the developers have had successes in the past and all of them had a lot of hype before the games were released. So the documentary is sort of biased in that it doesn't show a typical indie developer; rather, it shows the best of the best. As the title suggests, this documentary covers INDIE game-makers which means a team of 2 or 3 people developing a game. This provides a different perspective from big-budget studio games where there are 50+ people working on it.The filmmakers had full behind-the-scenes access to the developers. So we get to see their personal life and the impact it has on some family members.The film also imparts some good wisdom for indie developers. For instance, one successful developer that is profiled mentions how you don't want indie games to be fully polished and perfect like those blockbusters released by the big studios. Instead, being a bit rough around the edge, and having unique personality and feel is what one should aim for.If anyone wants to see the struggles indie developers go through, this is a very good introduction. A lot of long days and nights working on a game that may or may not turn out to be a success. The saving grace is that if the game does become a big hit, you will literally become a millionaire overnight. In some sense, this no different than what entrepreneurs trying to start other businesses face.

The first thing to say on this film is that you really will enjoy it more if you play indie games or know the couple of games that are mentioned here. This is not to suggest that the film will exclude you if you don't, but it is about these games and this culture but it will not hold your interest if you already have no involvement or interest in them. The film looks at the makers of indie games – ie not the 2000 people working on the next Grand Theft Auto, but the 2 or 3 people working on the game you'll pick up on Xbox Arcade or your phone for a few dollars and play to death over the following week or so. Early on it quotes many examples but mainly it focuses on Braid, Fez and Super Meat Boy in terms of experience development challenges, the feeling of success and the challenges of success.In this way the film does it pretty well because we do get all these things. I'm not sure if the makers followed many people and then edited down to be these specific guys, but their choices are good either way because the film gets a lot from these guys throughout. It wisely doesn't go into the real detail of writing games but keeps it accessible to those of us who just play them and have no understanding beyond that, but it does enough to help the viewer understand the effort and obsessive nature of the work, even if it could have done with an example of a total failure (the closest the film has is Fez, which doesn't succeed when the film closes but we know does in the end). The people are mostly engaging despite some of them (unsurprisingly) not being the most socially confident people you'll ever meet, the regular clips of games and the gentle soundtrack does add to the feel of a quirkumentary – which I guess it sort of is, but it felt like less of one to me since I'm sort of part of that quirk I suppose.It would have been good to have explored some bigger picture stuff above the characters here as well as following them, but the film still works well for what it does. It is limited a bit in its audience because the tight focus does need you to at least like gaming and to play indie games – but saying it like this makes me think it is not doing itself too much harm by "limiting" its audience to gamers, since there is a few of them around. So, if the film sounds interesting then it probably will be, as it captures the passion, frustration and success of the people making indie games in their bedrooms for years – and it mostly has engaging and likable characters to focus on while doing it.

**Includes some minor spoilers. will not spoil your experience**I watched the documentary last night and was just simply blown away about the people, their life-philosophy and the motivation to push forward and create something new. In one scene one of the protagonists told that "he would never want to work for EA or Epic cause he would lose his freedom of creativity in it". This in essence is what makes Artists great - they create something new and do it so well that it transcends the normal standard of standardized "materialistic" work processes - by far. It was interesting to see how the video game gurus in this documentary were actually even sad for people not understanding their work. In essence - they were disappointed for people doing shallow reviews after testing their games. Deep understanding of others creative work often springs into criticism - but thats only positive since it means that the other one has understood the creation and is able to add something new into it - thus being part of the logics of progress. 9.5/10 for the best documentary/movie I have seen this year.