Survey about Indie Game: The Movie - for my friend's research paper

Igor Hardy · Sat 30/03/2013 10:02:35

My friend and adamant indie dev meetups organizer Tomasz Kaczmarek - who some of you may have personally met (or even listened to his talk) at the recent AdventureX - needs survey data for research papers. Big thanks to anyone that participates!

Why: Research materials and variety of perspectives for mine final essay â€œHow does â€˜Indie Game: The Movie' represent games and game cultureâ€ on Theory at Brunel University West London - Digital Games Theory and Design MA.
How: Survey monkey with 9 comment questions and 1 graded.
How long: Till Mid April
Rewards: My gratitude, putting your nicknames/names in my Final Work, interest in collaboration on some game projects
Who: Tomasz â€œFanotherpgâ€ Kaczmarek, indie trying to find himself in academia world. Organizing indie and gamedev related talks and events in Poland.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DTD8J9X

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32062.0

Radiant · Sat 30/03/2013 10:34:06

So what is indie game: the movie?

Stupot · Sat 30/03/2013 12:41:35

I bought the film on steam ages ago but still haven't got around to watching it. This might be a good excuse to finally watch it.

@Radiant http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/about/

Mati256 · Sat 30/03/2013 17:16:40

It's a great documentary, but you have to put with Phil Fish at some bits. I recommend watching it, specially if you have played Braid, Super Meat Boy (or anything from Edmund McMillen) or Fez.

Igor Hardy · Sat 06/04/2013 16:28:03

So... Anyone here did this? Anyone still needs a pirate copy of the movie or some other form of encouragement?

Cerno · Sun 07/04/2013 00:10:45

I got it a few months ago via HumbleBundle.
For me it was a very intense experience, especially the little tragedies that can befall an indie project.

I just did the survey. Hope it helps.

Armageddon · Sun 07/04/2013 07:50:39

Quote from: Mati256 on Sat 30/03/2013 17:16:40
It's a great documentary, but you have to put with Phil Fish at some bits. I recommend watching it, specially if you have played Braid, Super Meat Boy (or anything from Edmund McMillen) or Fez.

Yah Phil Fish is an arsehat.

Igor Hardy · Sun 07/04/2013 08:30:21

Thanks Cerno!

Fitz · Sun 07/04/2013 09:59:40

Filled it out just now, too. Would've done it sooner, but I was superbusy with updating Gray. Anyway, good survey. The one question I felt was missing from it is the question of bending the reality a little by omitting facts -- whether to steer the viewers' sympathy in one direction or the other, or to add some thrill to the story -- which is a very common practice in maaaany documentaries. Case in point: "Catfish" and "Sugarman".

frenzykitty · Sun 07/04/2013 13:10:02

Great doccie! Pity about the Fish character.

Cerno · Sun 07/04/2013 17:15:05

Just out of curiosity: Why the hate for Phil Fish? Was it his endless droning on about his former partner or just his personality?

frenzykitty · Mon 08/04/2013 16:51:16

For me, he was very self-obsessed and sulky.

Fitz · Mon 08/04/2013 18:22:13

Yeah, he is a loudmouth, has an ego, is erratic at times, and he talks before he thinks -- but he made Fez, so somewhere deep inside there has to be some good in him, right? And despite what he said about PC's only being good for spreadsheets, I knew he'd come around. And it happened -- mostly because he got screwed over by M$ (which was painfully predictable), but still - and Fez is now heading for Steam. So yeah, he might be the Axl Rose/Fred Durst of indie games industry -- but he cared about the game, you could see how obsessed with the tiniest details he was. You gotta give him credit for that.

Igor Hardy · Mon 08/04/2013 18:45:01

I mostly don't like him because of the drama he put on concerning the production of Fez. Including claims he'll kill himself if he doesn't get to finish the game. And the terrible TRAGEDY of having the game overhyped. So much that he felt he deserved a 2nd go in the IGF.

Also, for telling with a straight face that being good friends with the organizer of IGF and a good number of the judges doesn't give him any advantages in the competition.

Cerno · Tue 09/04/2013 05:21:42

Okay, thanks for the insight.

Some of the things you mentioned were not in the documentary (e.g. the IGF stuff), and others I can relate to after having seen the movie.
Although I can understand the pressure one must be under when your game hangs by a thread, I guess he was overreacting at times.

One thing I found fishy (hur hur) was when he went to PAX with only one bleeding edge, untested version of the game without a backup and was surprised when it contained a game breaking bug. Ah, the folly of youth

Armageddon · Tue 09/04/2013 06:33:59

I don't care about his personality at all, I don't like him because he released FEZ with lots of game breaking bugs and refuses to update it because Microsoft has an update fee that he didn't want to pay, it's a very small fee so I didn't see the problem.

KBlaney · Tue 09/04/2013 06:45:08

Quote from: Cerno on Sun 07/04/2013 17:15:05
Just out of curiosity: Why the hate for Phil Fish? Was it his endless droning on about his former partner or just his personality?

He's also come under some fire for some comments he made about Japanese games "just sucking" and being "joyless husks".

amateurhour · Tue 09/04/2013 19:49:02

Took the survey. I saw the doco a couple of months ago (it's on netflix now too btw) and it's a really well done movie.

fred · Sat 13/04/2013 23:04:48

I think it's a great movie. I recently helped with the Danish subtitles for the May 1st release, so might be slightly biased

Took the survey as well and would be very interested in reading the final essay.

There's also a documentary about Newgrounds in production (think it has been for some years) which I'm looking forward to: http://www.everything-by-everyone.com/

Cerno · Sat 13/04/2013 23:33:44

fred, this looks really interesting, but I just realized the Kickstarter ended in September 2010.
So, are they still in production or is the project dead? At least IMDB mentions a 2013 release (as of 2012).