News: Indie Games Get Their Own Indie Film

Video games and movies have a history of interaction dogged by failure. Video game movies and movie video games both tend to be terrible. There has never been a good feature film based on a video game franchise. Even documentaries about games, which should be rife given the rapid rise of games on the cultural stage over the last thirty years, have been few and far between. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is by far the best, and for several years now has been the only really stirring film, nonfiction or not, about real video games. (No, Tron does not count.)

Indie Game: The Movie could be #2. It is, fittingly, an indie film made by two indie filmmakers: Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky (pictured above). It follows the developers of three prominent indie games: Super Meat Boy, Braid, and the as-yet-unrelased Fez as they struggle against time, money, and their own limitations to make their dream games realities. An excellent trailer was released yesterday:

In another burst of good news, the filmmakers announced yesterday that Jim Guthrie, composer of the soundtrack to iPad sensation Swords and Sworcery, will be composing an original score for the film.

Indie Games: The Movie, like most of the games it describes (not Braid) was/is being produced on a shoestring budget. As is so often the case with such projects, the intrepid team of filmmakers require additional funds to finish the film, and have started a Kickstarter campaign to raise the $35,000. You can pre-order a DVD or digital version of the film from the film's website and your purchase will go directly towards it being mastered and edited. Since they only need about $2K more at this time, your purchase could have a considerable impact on the progress of the film's completion. It looks great already, and hopefully with our help, it will be beautiful and ready in time for its planned August release.