Have you seen Indie Game The Movie?
It's got a good amount of drama, good pacing, and is almost an advertisement for why not to be an indie dev ;)
It also probably couldve been made as a short series rather than a feature film... But it's definitely reqlity as in 'documentary' -- "reality tv" these days implies completely fake/constructed scenarios designed to challenge/judge people, not 'reality' :/

I was just about to mention Indie Game. I think there was a tiny bit of overreaction (especially by the guy working on Fez) but overall it was a really great movie.

Have you seen Indie Game The Movie?
It's got a good amount of drama, good pacing, and is almost an advertisement for why not to be an indie dev ;)
It also probably couldve been made as a short series rather than a feature film... But it's definitely reqlity as in 'documentary' -- "reality tv" these days implies completely fake/constructed scenarios designed to challenge/judge people, not 'reality' :/

I haven’t but I will check it out. Especially if I can garner any inspiration from it.

I am split though, and backed by the replies until now.

Basically there are 2 trains of thought:
#1: I want to see drama.
#2: I want to see how games are made.

Ironically, these are mutually exclusive. Games can be made under any situation, but the more drama there is the less the final quality of the game will be.
This has been my dilemma all along.

If my objective is to be successful, I need a lot of drama and a lot of insight into how big games get made.
I can show how big games get made in major studios, but there is no drama. If there was drama, the instigator would just be fired and the game would move on.
It follows that the only way to get drama is to go into indie studios, where there is indeed a lot of drama, but at least half of the target audience (myself included) would not be so interested in watching coming into fruition a game that will likely be mediocre at its best on the market place, and generally unnoticed.

I believe the only reason the movie even has a name is because Fez’s game took off, and that is just chance. A studio can’t operate like that.
If I film a show and then the released product does only 3 sales per month, my show will have no merit at all.
And it is like laztrezort says, some of the appeal comes from seeing how major games are made.


So my conclusion would be, considering the target audience, that a major studio would be necessary. Indie and small studios may have more drama, but the people who want to see drama do not discriminate; whether that drama comes from an indie or major studio does not matter.
The people who want to see how major games are made do discriminate. An indie studio with infinite drama is of no appeal. Exactly why I could not watch GaldorPunk’s link. A contest between indies? If no one cares about the end result, no one cares about what happens to get that result.
One of the most exciting moments of my career was seeing (and playing, testing, and optimizing (my main task—I took it from 3 FPS to 45 FPS over 4 months)) an in-progress Final Fantasy game, where the AI did jack-shit but look at the player and you could attack all you liked and watched the animations, but no damage was done.
Of course, thanks to that, you would have to restart the dev kit to get out of a battle scene.
Because of how much this interested me, I thought it would interest everyone else.
To give viewers an inside glimpse into all of this—how slow it was at first compared to how fast I was able to get it, how the enemies would attack while still in bind-pose sometimes (hilarious), and neither side dealing damage even when their animations did play, causing a forced restart of the game if you entered the battle screen for any reason—is what I would consider one of the main selling points.

So the only way to win is to find that magical formula for injecting drama into a major studio. Since major studios and drama are by definition mutually exclusive, of course the drama would be fake, but that is nothing new to reality shows.


Let’s say the sky is the limit, but indie studios and competitions are off the slate.
It’s major studios only, and also a dreamland. That is, a major studio but with drama that could never be in this world.

Now what do you think?
What studio would you choose?
What kind of drama would you want and not want to see?


Let your imaginations flare because that is exactly what this puzzle needs: Imagination.


L. Spiro