[worth watching] Indie Game – The Movie

We might be late to the party but yesterday we splashed out a wild $10 to download and watch Indie Game – The Movie directly from the makers.

The very nicely priced movie came in numerous high-quality DRM free download formats including subtitles, captions and creator’s audio track and is a great example how film distribution should be done in almost 2013 rather than telling me I am not in the correct country.

You can watch the trailer here:

Like almost anything awesome, the movie by James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot originated in Canada and follows a few indie game developers in interviews: Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes building and shipping Super Meat Boy, Phil Fish trying to finish and get the rights to release Fez and Jonathan Blow creating Braid.

The imagery and movie making technique is amazing and beautifully done and the movie is a very interesting documentary about the issues indie game developers have to deal with: publishing issues, legal obligations, public feedback and above all personal problems and social anxieties. Whilst a portrait of highly gifted and intelligent people you will be hard pushed to find anybody “normal” in the conventional social sense here.

I was especially taken by the interviews showing the makers dealing with online feedback, demands for the game to come out, hate mail, odd reviews but also all of them reacting badly to positive feedback. As someone who publishes a lot online and spreads out whatever I do for free I could very much relate to these parts.

All in all this is a must watch for anyone who wants to publish in our market – not only games, but anything really. You won’t get car chases and shoot-outs but it is still a very much worth your while movie.