The video games industry as we know it has been around since the late 70s. It has grown from a niche market to a 20 billion dollar industry. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 58% of Americans play video games. Because the medium is such a large industry, it’s ripe for an in depth exploration. This is exactly what filmmaker Jeremy Snead set out to do with Video Games: The Movie, a Kickstarter funded documentary.
According to the Kickstarter’s webpage, the main goal of the movie was to dissipate the negative perceptions of gamers. And to a certain degree, they accomplished this goal. Through numerous interviews we get to hear some great stories about how games have changed the lives of gamers for the better. These stories include how Mikey Neumann, a game designer at Gearbox, was able to cope with being cooped up in a hospital for an extended period by playing video games and how Cliff “Cliffy B” Bleszinski, the design director for Gears of War, talks about a married couple who found each other through playing the game together on Xbox Live. Stories like these help to paint a positive picture of gamers.
Unfortunately, that’s where all of the good points to this movie end. My first major problem is the lack of an organized structure. The movie consists of four chapters with each one explaining the history, culture, creation, and future of video games. In the history section, we go through a timeline of video gaming from early experiments of video gaming in the late 60s and early 70s to the current generation of gaming. It then jumps all over the timeline as it introduces different concepts within the other three parts. We go from looking at the release of the original Mortal Kombat in 1992 as an introduction to violence in video games then go all the way back to the Stone Age of all places to talk about the campfire as a transition into storytelling in gaming. They never even talk about the Crash of 1983, one of the most important moments in gaming, until after going through the timeline. The movie would be so much better if they organized all of their points throughout the movie according to the linear progression of the timeline rather than jumping to different points with each new topic. I know that talking about the gaming industry is a huge task because of how large and complex it is. But if it was organized better and had a more narrowed focus, it will works wonders with the audience’s engagement with the film.
The principal rule in any movie is to tell through showing rather than directly telling through exposition. The problem with this movie is that it relies too much on telling. And what little it has to show fails to tell the audience anything substantial. Most of this movie is just clips of interviews from industry luminaries like Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell and Medal Gear Solid series creator Hideo Kojima to famous actors and writers like Wil Wheaton and Max Landis. Another sizable chunk is devoted to pointless montages of gameplay. Only a small portion is given to people actually playing and enjoying games or working on games in studios. Although some of the aforementioned stories are really interesting and powerful, especially for talking about the community, it merely just lays out the facts of gaming and its history without telling us why it all matters. As it goes through the timeline, it just talks about each period of gaming without really talking about the games that defined these periods and what made them so special. The film shows people working on games in the studio and all of the behind the scenes developments for the motion tracking and graphics development but only scratches the surface when it comes to talking about game design and how the different mechanics of gameplay and story help to engage the player. I wanted to know why making choices in games mattered to the player, not just see a bunch of clips of video game characters making choices!
I will admit that it was a treat to see the star-studded interviewees and what they had to say. The infographics and editing was well done, and even some of the gaming montages were kind of clever, such as showing a bunch of iconic video game deaths when talking about the Crash of 1983. But instead of having original thoughts and explanations of what makes gaming truly intricate and important and backing it all up with interviews and footage, it uses the interviews and footage as the main event in order to mask the actual lack of thought and consistency. I could tell that Jeremy Snead cared enough about gaming and its culture and community, but he lacked an understanding about the design and care that goes into it and just wanted to make everything look cool. Which is a shame, because I can see even non-gamers getting into the mechanics that make a video game tick. It also doesn’t help matters in how broad and complex the topic is and it really needed a better structure.
I can see some gamers and the people who supported the project on Kickstarter liking what little this film has to offer, but I’m sure most of them would be disappointed. By calling this movie “Video Games: The Movie”, I think Jeremy Snead wanted to convey that this would be the one definitive movie about video games. But unfortunately, your video game documentary is in another castle. In fact, instead of watching this film, I highly recommend that you check out The Video Game Years on the Retroware channel on YouTube. It gives an in depth history of each year of gaming as well as the games that defined it. I also highly recommend they you check out the Extra Credits channel on YouTube. Each episode talks about a different aspect of video game design and mechanics. Any one of their videos is fascinating, and it’s all accompanied by great writing and humorous pictures.