Culture

Rialto Cinema - Moray Place
Friday 23 August 6:30pm

Rating: 2/5

The video game industry is currently nearing the end of a transitory period. The transition isn’t happening within the industry, but rather in how people outside of the industry perceive it. It is a transition toward an acceptance that video games are not only capable of becoming works of art, but are inherently artistic. Many of you may scoff at this, but I’m afraid that the decision has been made for you. Last year the Smithsonian officially opened its video game art exhibition and other museums and galleries all over the world have followed suit. Video games are officially art.

Us and the Game Industry is a documentary that follows a group of video game developers who are part of a sub-section of the industry: the Indie market. These developers are not paid or generally supported by video game giants such as EA or Activision, but rather independently fund and publish their work in order to retain creative and artistic control over their games.

Many documentaries have been made in the last decade that focus on these sorts of developers and their fight to have their work taken seriously. So, now that the debate has died down, what does this documentary have left to say? Unfotunately, it doesn’t seem to know.

The film consists entirely of interview footage with some of the most influential Indie developers in the world, including the team at ThatGameCompany, responsible for incredible games such as Flower and Journey. The film never introduces any coherent theme or objective, so at first all you have to keep your head above this sea of interviews is the title of the film. Us and the Game Industry is the main idea of the film: while it is never articulated in a clear or coherent fashion, the film gives you, as a viewer, a real sense that there is very little separating you from these developers. In a vaguely inspiring way, it makes you feel that you too could be a game developer if you so desired.

The documentary moves randomly between developers, and thus between seemingly disparate ideas and emotions. An attentive viewer, however, will soon realise that the real emphasis is on the sheer “Indieness” of the Indie market. The film showcases many different personalities within the industry, with the apparent goal of making it seem that these developers are all hipsters. However, this is clearly not the case: the hipster developers are clearly surrounded by plenty of “un-alty” individuals who simply do not receive the same level of attention.

From the beginning, the film makes clear its blatant disdain of the other side of the industry: the AAA industry. The AAA industry constitutes game developers who receive enormous amounts of money to make games that focus on spectacle and grandeur, but have little creative control past making what is guaranteed to sell. Some of the developers interviewed offer compelling arguments as to the flaws of such an approach, while others just came off as bitter that these developers earn more money than they do. In a somewhat inconsistent move, the film then ends by back-peddling and inplying that the whole goal of Indie development is the pursuit of money after all.

It’s a shame that this film fails to properly communicate its ideas and themes. What the gaming industry needs right now is a film that clearly demonstrates why video games are, and deserve to be regarded as, art. This film, unfortunately, is not easily approachable: even I – an avid game enthusiast who is aware of and interested in these developers and their work – often found myself bored by the neverending stream of raw interview content. Still, it is a rare opportunity to see behind the scenes into these small developers’ processes and works, so despite the film’s flaws, it is still a must-see for avid game enthusiasts. Unfortunately, they are the only people who will really care about what this film has to say – or should I say show?