Video Games: The Movie

"Video Games: The Movie" aims to educate and entertain audiences about how video games are made, marketed, and consumed by looking back at gaming history and culture through the eyes of game developers, publishers, and consumers.

Immediately there are some concerns: the intro runs a bit too long (but the use of Queen is a good choice). And then we have the necessary interview of Wil Wheaton (who is less annoying than usual here), but also some nice unexpected gems like the creator of "Metal Gear Solid" and the president of Nintendo. And then there is Chris Hardwick, who comes across far more dorky than he does on television.

There are some interesting statistics on ages, genders of those who play and purchase video games. As people generally know, the ages have been increasing and more women are getting into the gaming scene.

The film goes somewhat into history, with Nolan Bushnell of Atari widely thought of as the father of video games. Yes, they tracked down Bushnell for an interview, and he in turn gives the "father" title to MIT scientists. We also get a nice description of pixels and "bits" for those not familiar. The history is, perhaps, too brief, with many systems getting no coverage at all, and much of it in no particular order.

We have the legendary tale of the E.T. game made in five weeks in the fall of 1982, which helped launch the term shovelware, and indirectly killed off the Atari.

If this was re-edited to be more in chronological order, it would be a stronger film, but it is not a bad one.

To say that Video Games: The Movie bites off more than it can chew is an understatement; if it wasn't about to create ten two-hour long parts for a miniseries dealing with the complete history of video games, its mouth was never going to even remotely sustain what was trying to be forced into it. Director Jeremy Snead states that over forty-five hours of footage for the documentary was shot and he plans to put the footage to a sequel documentary or future Television projects because video games are "something that deserves more treatment in film and Television." I couldn't agree more, and Video Games: The Movie is a marginally effective starting point to get someone contemplating and, most importantly, recognizing the foundation in which their favorite games were expanded upon. The downside, however, is that this documentary isn't structurally sound, jumping back and forth from cherrypicking and analyzing the capabilities of a select few consoles before doubling back to try and create some kind of oral history, again, taking from random events.

The film, in the beginning, attempts to assess a select few video game consoles, like the Atari 2600, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo, and the PlayStation. During this time, we skip over generational conflicts and significant consoles, like the Sega Genesis, the Sega Dreamcast, more inventive and obscure systems like the Neo-Geo, Turbo-Grafx 16, and the Sega Game Gear, and the famed "bit wars." I have little doubt that Snead has footage on hard drives pertaining to these consoles and these features, but the documentary moves in a way that seemingly neglects their very existence. This is one of the many problems with tackling a broad subject in a broad manner.

After we reach the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, only briefly mentioning the revolutionary qualities of the Nintendo Wii, we double all the way back to try and pinpoint who to credit with the foundation of video games. Do we credit Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, who provided the first in-home gaming experience in the 1970's? Steve Russell, who created the first interactive computer game on the PDP-I by the name of Space War at MIT in the 1960's? Or do we credit the 1950's invention where light rays and magnifying glasses were used to create an even more primitive version of Pong known as Tennis for Two? Following that debate, we return to the jumbled timeline of events by working our way to the present starting with the video game crash of 1983, where video games were desperately close to becoming a fad. Following the crash, it was said that many people were tired of video games, yet a solid amount of people wanted to continue playing. This would eventually lead to Nintendo and Sega rising from Atari and Intellevision's ashes to bring about an entirely different gaming experience that was never before seen.

The amount of people in Video Games: The Movie is pretty astonishing, as many of them hail from different companies, bear different titles, and have worked on a plethora of different projects. With that, each one offers a unique perspective, or at least one well worth digesting and analyzing. One of the most talkative and fascinating souls in the film is Cliff Bleszinski, known for creating the Gears of War video game series. He talks about the creation of games in a way that breaks down the multitude and complexity of the moving parts that go into creating a game's story, rendering the graphics, writing and composing a score, and so forth, concluding it's like "The Avengers of talent" on display with every new video game and video games being the culmination of art forms like no other piece of art out there. He describes their significance by saying they exist as a "lean forward experience" rather than a "lean back experience" or the same experience you get when watching a film. Like reading a book, if you choose to remain idle in a game, the story doesn't continue. A film keeps on playing until an audience picks up the remote and commands what it wants it to do.

These kind of perspectives and philosophy breaking video games from the often oversimplified confines of ignorant opinions and vast generalizations keep the documentary afloat and moving. The way it humanizes gaming culture shows a true love and appreciation on part of Snead and his giant crew, with John Sharp stating that video games provide people with a safe place to fail and problem solve, two things that are greatly intimidating and a product of our fear in the real world. In addition, another woman states that gamers look to games as a means to fit in and be accepted since they often feel left out in the real world. Unlike in social cliques, social settings, or other environments, in video games, we're always welcome and always fit in.

This hominess provides Video Games: The Movie with a pleasant sense of seriousness, even if the film keeps making the grave mistake of doubling back on its timeline. As mean as this is to say, this was a documentary that simply couldn't be as effective as it needed to be from the start. The area of video games is far, far too broad and complex for one documentary to sustain all, if most, of its core areas of information and fact. The film is amiable enough, sure to provide audiences, including myself, with warm, fuzzy feelings of nostalgia and constant grins provoked by basically watching old memories, emotions, and feelings come to life on the screen, however, far too scattershot to warrant a recommendation. This one gets more like a wink and an the movement of a hand in the "so-so/more or less" manner.

Directed by: Jeremy Snead.

We love movies and documentaries on the video game industry and Video Games The Movie (2014) is the latest entry in this education/entertainment genre from the folks at Variance Films. The film runs 1:41 minutes and is available this week as a digital download on iTunes and also in select movie theaters. Video Games The Movie has some big names attached to it like Zach Braff, Cliff Bleszinski and David Perry as both producers and interview subjects along with Wil Wheaton, Nolan Bushnell, Reggie Fils-Aime, Chris Hardwick and many more interviewed on camera and features the voice of Sean Astin as the narrator.

The opening of Video Games The Movie is an elaborate montage of video games throughout the years – in fact the entire movie has a great array of graphics and gaming clips to delight the visual senses. Some of the subjects touched upon are things like the 'great debate' on who was the first person to create a video game – a conversation that generally revolves around M.I.T. scientists, Ralph H. Baer and Nolan Bushnell. More topics include the 'rise and fall' of the home gaming industry in the early 1980s and the now-debunked rumors of the E.T. Atari 2600 burial of cartridges.

Most of the talking head interviews are well done with style and good sound production. As a viewer you can see that the production team behind this documentary was given a great amount of access and time to the people being interviewed. There is a good amount of stock/archive footage from early video game commercials which was edited into the movie in a finely crafted way overlapping interviews and as sort of a 'buffer' between the serious stuff and whacky throwback to crazy early game commercials.

Overall Video Games The Movie is a finely crafted edu-tainment docu-movie. We're not quite sure if the target audience is meant to be for people learning about the history of video games or for those already familiar with it looking to reminisce on the early days of gaming. If you came looking for Zach Braff then you may be disappointed as his soundbites are few and far between however if you are a fan of Cliff Bleszinski talking then you'll be in for a treat as he holds the most screen time along with Wil Wheaton. It was a treat to see many familiar faces once again on camera talking about the video game industry – many of whom we have interviewed over the years here on COIN-OP TV as well.

On the one hand, I love the film's concepts fine. Video games are an incredible medium (one that outshines even cinema) with such fascinating history behind them, and the evolution of the gaming business and community on screen is quite wonderful. It says something about what a great artform it is that it brings so many people from different walks of life together, and even goes so far as to create lasting friendships and marriages. We may not realize, but sometimes, those seemingly insignificant connections we have create all the difference in the world.

However, that's the extant of the film's great qualities, and the overall film is not as interesting, or too engaging to the uninitiated. The film is built firmly on nostalgia and fond recognizability, especially during frequent and awkward montages, and something like that can't sustain an entire film. It wants to show us a comprehensive history of video gaming culture, but suffers from disjointed time jumps, and the fact that the film constantly throws interesting facts at us, yet seldom does it ever expand on them. It practically rushes through the crash of 1983 in maybe three minutes, and glosses over evolutions like the early rise of third-party developers and the indie gaming scene (Although, Indie Game: The Movie provides a much more expansive detailing of that very subject). There's so much potential in this film that it sadly never realizes. I realize there has to be a point where you have to make tough choices of what to show, but it really does just fall into an "Aren't video games great" showcase.

If you're looking for a nostalgic kickback, you should enjoy yourself fine, but if you want a much more comprehensive rundown of video gaming history, you'd be better suited reading various books, or watching Machinima's "All Your History Are Belong To Us" series of YouTube videos.

Calling this "The Movie" is a little ostentatious; it's actually a TV- style documentary — and I have to say I was quite disappointed. In short, it felt like a 2-hour long commercial for the video game industry.

Funded through Kickstarter and making close to double what it was asking, their pitch claimed this would be "the first ever in depth feature length documentary about the video game industry & the culture it's created," a claim which is demonstrably false... but one of the reasons they said they should be backed is because they would "tell the whole story... not just part of it." In this regard, the finished documentary completely fails. It's not hard to see why they needed to use Kickstarter to drum up funding; better and more professionally made feature length documentaries already exist, and this one apes most of their style while adding little to the subject.

One of the tricks that "Video Games: The Movie" has up its sleeves is this: it's constantly tickling your nostalgia bone through frequent fast montages of video games of yore. You'll see an obscure game you forgot you loved and think "Wow! I remember that one!" It's like the book "Ready Player One" in that regard; by merely mentioning something nostalgic, it's able to somewhat piggy-back on the feelings that memory brings... rather than inspire feelings on its own merits.

These documentaries always need talking heads, and what puts this one straight into the lower level of "television documentary" is the inability to give voice to actual industry veterans and people of importance to the gaming industry. These lesser documentaries always seem to fall back on using famous (or more attractive) people more than they use people of actual import to the topic, and that's definitely the case here. Wil Wheaton, Alison Haislip, Chris Hardwick, Chloe Dykstra... these are all fine entertainers to be sure, but you'll find little or no relationship with the games industry in any of their Wikipedia articles. Now, having famous actors talk about the influence of video games on their lives is fine — more interesting than any Joe Blow off the street, I'm sure — but these people are given way too much screen time, far more than the actual people from the industry. Much more valuable is hearing what Nolan Bushnell, Ed Fries, David Crane, Hideo Jokima, and the likes have to say about the industry. They're there, but edited down to small sound bites.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure they actually included interviews with ANY women at all who actually work(ed) in the games industry? Early on, they inform you that 47% of gamers are women, but ironically the documentary then itself immediately pushes women aside... leaving the representation of women confined to the couple of talking- head actresses and visuals of all of the deplorable imagery of the tropes Anita Sarkeesian has been pointing out. (I daresay you'll learn more eye-opening facts about video game history from Anita's Kickstarter project than this one...) Where are Amy Hennig, Jade Raymond, Robin Hunicke, Jane McGonigal, Kim Swift, Rhianna Pratchett, and all the rest...? So much for telling "the whole story."

Another major problem with this documentary is that it clearly comes from the angle that home video game consoles are the only really important story in the history of video games. It skips pretty quickly over arcade games, and with the exception of mentioning Doom, it completely ignores the home computer revolution that changed video games in huge ways. Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amiga... IBM PCs and the advent of dedicated 3D video cards... none of this gets so much as a mention... and yet arguably the biggest game of modern times, World of Warcraft, owes everything to the Ultima series that began on home computers, the risks Richard Garriott took with Ultima Online, and the development of PC gaming technology. Again, so much for telling "the whole story."

Other mishaps had the effect of pulling me out of the narrative; just a couple of examples: while someone speaks about the influence of the Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders, they show footage of the arcade version instead (there's a big difference). When the PS3 is introduced, it's done with the iconic music of the Halo franchise playing in the background — which was exclusive to Xbox. These inconsistencies happen throughout.

On a positive note, I have to say, one of the best things they did with their Kickstarter money was invest in the creation of an animated visual time-line. It becomes absolutely essential to the documentary, because the narrative ends up meandering all over the place. Prepare to watch the time-line fly forward, and then backward, and then forward, and then backward, making it possible to understand where you are in the disjointed story.

All that said, you're not going to watch this documentary and hate it... it's enjoyable enough... but you won't really learn anything, and you won't remember it for long. Alas, this is yet another example of a Kickstarter project that greatly overstated what it would ultimately deliver. Unfortunately, the world really could still use the documentary that they originally pitched to backers. Hopefully one day we'll get one.

In the mean time, if you're looking for more than what "Video Games: The Movie" has to offer, see if you can find "Video Game Invasion: A History of a Global Obsession" from 2004, or the Discovery Channel's 5-part "Rise of the Video Game" documentary series from 2007. Neither are perfect — the later seems a bit obsessed with a connection between video games and war, for example — but both have more to offer, I think.