Video Games the Movie is a documentary that was released this year about the history of Video Games. It tries to encompass the medium, the industry, to sum up the history, as well as the culture that surrounds video games, in about an hour and 45 minutes or so. I feel it fails in doing that.
I originally wrote this piece to place on netflix as a review, but being that I am an amazing writer it does not fit into their character limits.
I cannot shorten it, and I spent too much time to have written this and not post it somewhere so I figured I'd just post it as a blog. Please excuse any errors as while I always edit myself I have not put a lot of time into this other than the hour I have been writing my thoughts down and I just really needed to discuss this documentary and why it gets so much wrong.
If you have any questions about the documentary after reading it, don't be shy. Go ahead and ask. While in the review I say otherwise, the documentary is on Netflix so if you haven't seen it go ahead and watch it on Netflix. It's ok, but to me it's not as good as it could be. It's still kind of fun if you just want to watch others geek out on video games as a medium. That's something that can be fun, and the only thing the documentary gets right.
Below is the Netflix Review of it I wrote:
"I did really enjoy this as a sweet indulgence, but that comes with an addendum. While I enjoy this as a love letter to video games, and the people that have become successful because of video games, anyone engrossed in video game culture will notice a ton of flaws almost right away.
The most egregious flaw is the complete lack of PC gaming other than minor references (pictures mostly) to it's impact. For instance, League of Legends is on here as a short nod to how much PC gaming (LoL specifically) has impacted sports and branched out into it's own medium, but it almost blatantly ignores the impact of PC gaming from the mid 80s through the 90s which (as other critics before me in these reviews have stated) bridged the gap when consoles crashed and burned in the mid 80s.
They do reference the fact that the niche following is what kept gaming alive, but then go on to ignore the entire PC gaming culture which flourished and was well ahead of anything consoles were doing throughout the early to late 90s and how PC development slowly became partially neglected and abused because there "wasn't enough money in the medium anymore to focus on it" and how this caused a major shift in the industry and stifled the PC gaming market which could already outperform even the PS1 before PS2 even existed- or even earlier the NES, SNES, Genesis and others.
PC is not the only thing ignored here (which, with "PC" I am encompassing several systems including commodore, apple II, Dos/Win3.1 and many other systems which were all major contributors to the gaming market as a whole and where video games are now). Genesis, or to be blunt Sega as a brand, is almost glossed over like a redheaded step child being relegated to a mere mention which is then quickly cut off as if to say they don't want to talk about the competitor to Nintendo.
Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to say these systems are better. NES is very much a system which brought the main stream back into the gaming market, and is very much a touchstone in the history of games. Sega is as much a part of that as NES was, and it's really shitty (especially when you look at what Sega is now) that it was so ignored. Sega was a big deal in the late 80s and throughout the entirety of the 90s. That's more than a decade being a real competitor until they made bad decisions and the market didn't follow because by the Dreamcast it was too late for them.
I understand that the video game industry is vast, and has been for a long long time. ~2 hours is not enough time to even digest the creation of video gaming, or the main big companies that still exist today, and a lot stuff had to be left out or this had to be much much longer (interestingly they also glossed over Cliffy B's major impacts a bit. This is interesting because he was an Executive Producer on this documentary so good on him for not wanting to push that even though it very much could be argued that he is a huge contributor and influencer on what multiplayer gaming is as it exists today), but I think this would have worked better as a mini series with several episodes rather than one film.
That being said, this isn't a terrible documentary by any means. It does talk about where video games actually come from- which a lot of people I have talked to over the years don't know- and it does speak with several developers and masters of the craft which we all love now and had no idea were anything when we were kids enjoying the Atari 2600 or Nintendo.
There are also modern day movie/TV/Web stars and industry veterans you might know discussing games which is always fun to watch and listen to.
It's a shame, with how much this gets right, that it gets so much wrong and has to ignore very important pieces of gaming history and culture.
I do have suspicions that this may be because of a large percentage of producers on this film are video game industry veterans (J Allard is on there) and it's hard to say how much impact they had on it.
Again, though, I think this particular subject is too large to cover in one film. It's like trying to cover the entire history of the US in one film. While that is an even larger undertaking, I feel the impact is the same. Too many important things are left out.
There are other problems with this film (why does it jump around in time so much?), but you get the idea.
I am a video gamer which a huge passion for this industry, and I don't want to cast dispersions. The film has it's good sides, and is an interesting watch. It just misses the mark on being 100% recommendable.
3 stars. I don't love it, but I like it. It could be better, but it's ok."
Sorry. No pictures on this blog. I guess you'll just have to use your imagination.
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