Gameplay

I have a big issue with most gaming documentaries: they feel like propaganda.

It's usually the same core story: Atari -> The 1983 Crash -> Nintendo -> Doom -> PlayStation -> Xbox; then by followed by awkward self-promotion, about how games are culture, how they bring people together, how cool celebrity X likes games, how they make a lot of money, how they don't promote violence at all... It all comes across as a giant advertisement for the industry - a quite self-conscious and insecure industry.

Not here. Gameplay: The Story of the Video game Revolution covers not only the console generations, but the arcades, the computers, the social gaming, and - perhaps more interesting - the business behind everything.

You will learn about the groundbreaking games, the technological revolutions and the visionaries, but also about the clever and dumb business decisions, the lawsuits, the shady practices, the criticisms of gaming, its darker sides... all presented through stylish 3D animations, amusing historical footage and a solid, well-written narration.

Unlike other gaming documentaries, Gameplay isn't here to confirm what you know and make you feel awesome for being a gamer. Over its 90 minutes, this documentary will show you things you never heard about, tell you some hard truths and make you think. I suspect this is the reason why it got so little promotion within the gaming press.

My only complaint is that it could have more: longer run-time, more interviewees, more stories of pioneers like Roberta Willians, EA, the Amiga, etc...

But that's a rather unfair criticism. As it stands, Gameplay is already miles ahead of any other game documentary.

I thought the Documentary was very good. I thought it was informative, and really did a good job at going into the history of how video games came to be. Though as they aproached more modern times, they focused less on the consoles, and instead talked about things like Facebook App games and even Google Glass. And the ending was pretty bad. Ending with the hypothetical "what if the next step is combining ourselves with the tech?"

I thought it was great when talking about Atari, Activision, and early Nintendo. But it wasn't that great after that.

This does a great job of telling you the history of video games in 70 minutes, and an okay job at predicting the future of them in the final 20. Unfortunately, lots changed since it came out and many of the ideas went nowhere, but you can't fault them for that. The only thing that this movie lacks is any real critical look at video games. They address a few criticisms but then just dismiss them outright as if they are not worth thinking about. It might have behooved them to look a little deeper at various studies, manipulation of people, etc. But it's still a solid movie and worth checking out if you have Tubi.