Video Games: The Movie

2014
6.1| 1h41m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 18 July 2014 Released
Producted By: Mediajuice Studios
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://videogamesthemovie.com
Info

From executive producer Zach Braff and director Jeremy Snead, "Video Games: The Movie" is an epic feature length documentary chronicling the meteoric rise of video games from nerd niche to multi-billion dollar industry. Narrated by Sean Astin and featuring in-depth interviews with the godfathers who started it all, the icons of game design, and the geek gurus who are leading us into the future, "Video Games: The Movie" is a celebration of gaming from Atari to Xbox and an eye-opening look at what lies ahead.

Genre

Documentary

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Director

Jeremy Snead

Production Companies

Mediajuice Studios

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Video Games: The Movie Audience Reviews

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Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Jeanskynebu the audience applauded
ShangLuda Admirable film.
TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
MartinHafer It needs to be pointed out that the subject matter for this film is way too broad to be crammed into a single movie. It would be like trying to cram WWII into a movie! It's just NOT possible and the only decent way to attempt this is to make a mini-series. So, because the film is only 105 minutes long, MANY important innovations are breezed over or ignored completely. For example, if you'd like a discussion of early home computers and the games you could play on them (such as the Commodore, Tandy or Atarti 400/800), look elsewhere. And, if you want them to connect the dots from one game system to another...again, look elsewhere. Instead this is NOT so much a documentary but some folks reminiscing about some of the highlights--THEIR highlights--not necessarily the real highlights. And, because it's THEIR highlights, they oddly spend more time talking about the SuperNintendo instead of the much more important and groundbreaking NES or never really talk about the Coleco or Intellivision systems. The bottom line is that you might enjoy this film but it's also painful to watch because it misses so much. Worth seeing but don't take it as a historical or systematic film. Heck, it bounces back and forth SO MUCH chronologically that you'd almost think the person behind all this suffers from a bad case of ADD!!
gavin6942 "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.
mantanz If you knew nothing about video games before watching this, particularly the history of gaming, you'd arguably come out the end of this "movie" knowing even less.The film goes into stuff like the politics around gaming, the social aspects, how stories now make up a big part of the gaming experience... basically all stuff you already knew because it was completely obvious, or didn't want to know, because it's too boring.There is no in-depth information on any of the systems at all. It started out withe a brief history of the 2600 but pretty much every other machine is ignored, as are the games. The Sega Genesis was mentioned once and every one of their other consoles were completely left out. Hell, even Sonic the Hedgehog was completely absent!I was expecting an in depth history of gaming, not a bunch of AAA execs sitting around talking about how the industry has changed and celebrities talking about what gaming means to them.On top of that, when games were mentioned, they never showed the bloody things and the endless montages were totally useless, as again, you didn't know what games you were looking at bar ones you're already familiar with.It had promise. They had a really cool 3D time line... if only they'd used it better and gone in depth into the different systems, key games, designers.There was no mention of the "console wars". As I mentioned earlier, Sega was completely left out of the film, as were Commodore, in fact, home computers were completely ignored, bar PC gamers with a few nods to Doom and WoW. How can they completely leave out the era of bedroom coders? Where was the info on how Atari died with the Jaguar? Where were the early CD-based consoles? WHERE WERE THE GAMES?!?!?!I am a gamer and a game developer and I feel completely let down by this "documentary".
jeremie-rone What is presented to us as a documentary is in fact a propaganda film that consists mostly in a series self satisfactory interviews of people of the industry who tries to convince you that video games is the greatest, most sophisticated, most advanced form of art. They will tell you that you can get married and form a family by playing world of warcraft, that if you are at the edge of death at the hospital, playing a Nintendo DS can save your life and that your kid will become the greatest artist if you let him play Candy Crush. I am exaggerating a little bit but not so much.In between, this moments of galactic void, a few uninteresting statistics and facts of common knowledge are quickly presented.Another controversial aspect of the movie, is the presentation of video game as the ultimate evolution in storytelling experience. In my personal experience, a story is almost never what makes a game interesting. I have played hundreds if not thousands of games in my life, and I can count less that 20 games with decent story-lines. One of the most still played and loved game in the world, Tetris, has no story at all.I think this really demonstrate the failure of the director to understand his subject and to really capture what separate video games from other forms of media.