Video Games: The Movie, 2014
Written and directed by Jeremy Snead
SYNOPSIS:
Video Games: The Movie, a feature length documentary, aims to educate & 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.
Funded by a Kickstarter campaign, Video Games: The Movie is a documentary that charts the history of video games before focusing on the cultures that it created and where the medium can go from here. It’s incredibly interesting and very well put together with some decent interviews, but feels a bit lacking in certain places.
Video Games: The Movie wants to be more than just a history of the medium, which is very admirable, but it does cover the very early beginnings of video games before briefly chronicling the rise and fall of Atari all the way to present day. From there they go back to take a better look at the now infamous Video Game Crash of 1983 and how Nintendo rose from those ashes to reinvent the gaming landscape. While the documentary is fascinating when covering other elements, this is really when Video Games: The Movie is at its best. They have interviews with the likes of Zach Braff, Max Landis, Reggie Fils-Aimé (in full Nintendo sales mode) and Ernest Cline who give perspectives as those who grew up on these games, and it really makes you feel nostalgic for that first time you picked up a NES controller.
That’s not to say the other segments of Video Games: The Movie are dull or uninteresting, as the in-depth look at gaming culture is thoroughly entertaining. Even if you weren’t a part of the early days of Internet gaming or chat rooms and forums, Video Games: The Movie highlights a very intriguing subculture and how that has formed friendships, relationships and even marriage. Ready Player One‘s Ernest Cline has a great line where he says, “there are kids in this world who exist because their parents met in World of Warcraft“. It’s a really great look at a world that used to be considered “lame” and “uncool” but is now seen as fashionable.
Sadly, the section of present day gaming, how they’re produced and the possible future of video games is a bit lacking. It is interesting, but it’s just not as fascinating as the sections previously mentioned, particularly if you have a nostalgic view on games. It borders between feeling like an advert for current-gen consoles and a self-gratifying masturbation exercise. The interviews are as good as ever, but it is by far the weakest (and seemingly longest) part of the documentary. Perhaps if it was less self-indulgent, it wouldn’t feel so out of place.
Further problems arise in the documentary’s seemingly purposeful denial of SEGA’s involvement in video games. It charts Nintendo’s rise to power with the NES, SNES and N64, but doesn’t look at the impact of the Mega Drive (or Genesis), Master System, Saturn or Dreamcast. This also means the documentary skips over the “16-Bit Wars” of the early 90s, which is a truly revolutionary part of gaming history. They also don’t put a lot of stock into E.T: The Extra Terrestrial and Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 and their part in the downfall of video games. With that said, Zak Penn’s Atari: Game Over will cover this in detail and an adaptation of Blake J. Harris’ Console Wars by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg will look at the war between SEGA and Nintendo, so perhaps Jeremy Snead felt he didn’t need to go over this ground as others were already doing so.
Minor quibbles aside, Video Games: The Movie is essential viewing for fans of gaming and game culture. Jemery Snead has created a brilliant and interesting documentary that is a wonderful look at a medium that shaped many childhoods and adult lives. It highlights how this is no longer a culture that is resigned to “parent’s basements” and is now a multi-billion dollar industry and it makes you proud to be part of this world. If you have an affinity or nostalgic love for gaming, Video Games: The Movie is a must-see.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
You can buy and rent Video Games: The Movie from their website here.
Originally published August 1, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
