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I just had one of those “what the hell did i just watch?!” moments again. Because i honestly thought that i would get to hear (and see) a lot more from John Romero and Tom Hall in the movie “GameLoading: Rise of the indies” (as both of them has had a huge impact on the video game industry). But they were just given a couple of minutes each (i think it was about 2 minutes to be exact).

And to be honest, most of “Rise of the indies” (the movie is about 1 hour and 30 minutes long) just focus a lot on a handful of indie games and people. Games such as “Depression Quest” and “The Stanley Parable” for example. And people such as “Zoé Quinn” (the creator of “Depression Quest) and Ben Kuchera (his the senior opinion editor for Polygon).

So while i was watching the movie i just felt like “Is this really the sequel to Indie Game: The Movie?”. Because that movie was watchable at least (for most part). But “Rise of the indies” was more of an “Public relations the movie” then anything else really.

Well, at least all the “Rise of the indies” artwork is really well done.

So no wonder that the movie just has an avrage score of 4.7/10 on imdb.com. But i made the mistake to not check Steam or imdb BEFORE buying the movie on Steam (as i thought that “Rise of the indies” would be anything but “Indie Game the movie 2: The pretentious hipsters strike back”). So i just flushed 8,99 Euro down the toilet…

Oh well, hopefully you guys/girls won´t make the same misstake that i made…The comments on Steam and Youtube speaks for itself really.

“A bunch of hipsters, many involved with industry corruption and contest rigging. A tribute to corrupt social justice gate keepers in the indie scene. Mainly white people with colored hair cause they are “special snowflakes.” Also could they be any more smug and self-important. Yeah the, “we are the real rebels”, crap aint sticking.” Brad DL, Via Youtube

“A whole lot of production to say almost nothing of value. It’s essentially a sequel to Indie Game The Movie, and more or less acts as a post-release advertisement for The Stanley Parable, Depression Quest, and a whole bunch of other gimmick software, all while fluffing the developers who made them. Also, Ben Kuchera is there for some reason that I can’t quite discern, given his lacklustre-yet-storied career of games “journalism” and known-and-visible history of PR favouritism and hypocrisy.

Other reviewers are talking about the “effort” put into this, and the “insight” it provides you with. Effort for what? Insight into what? It’s a sideways advertisement for an incestuous clique of developers receiving awards from their friends for experimentation, and waxing 60%-grade social-science final-assignment on the deep feels of developing a gimmick game.

Games made on a train ride by hipsters who can freely afford to globetrot while masquerading as poor people who are just scraping by. One of the spotlighted games is literally just a limited-feature music visualiser that uses live microphone input instead of an MP3. It’s amazing, truly – but not for the reasons this movie thinks it is.

Lucky me, I didn’t spend any of my own money on this. I sold a CSGO Lounge item to pay for it. But in the end, someone’s money paid for me to watch this, and for that I’m deeply sorry.

Don’t buy this. Don’t watch this. It’s barely even entertaining for free, and imparts no real knowledge upon the viewer regardless of how much they’ve paid to see it. This is a movie about the greatness of people, not the hardship of game development. Don’t pretend it’s anything but public relations.” – Ebola-Chan, via Steam

“Prefacing this review with the fact that I’ve written a handy guide here ( http://steamcommunity.com/app/357460/guides/?
browsesort=mostrecent&browsefilter=mostrecent&p=1&numperpage=9#scrollTop=0 ) to prove I’ve actually watched the content in case of any sync errors with steam showing 0.0 hours played.

Gameloading is a very frenetic, hard-to-watch documentary about a specific clique of game developers that identify as “indie,” but are actually very interconnected with one another.

At a run time of 1:33 including the credits, this film skips between over 34 interviews, but spends only meaningful camera time on a select few. While industry veterans such as Jon Romero and Tom Hall are a welcome addition to provide their insight, they have less than 2 minutes of cumulative screentime in favor of a sea of pink-haired hipster 20-somethings complaining about how poor they are despite toting Macbooks across the U.S.(and in a few cases, the Atlantic). There’s a clear narrative goal that is contradicted by the obvious facts and environments these globe-trotting trust funders inhabit.

What’s worse is there’s a call-out to Kickstarter backers in the credits, so on inspection the movie was backed there for over 100K, and they’re STILL asking for $9 a head on Steam?

Truly atrocious. I feel like I’ve learned nothing, was bombarded with unlikable negative personalities for 90 minutes, only to see them get rewarded with millions of dollars in the end for failing out of film school.

If you saw that Indie Game movie on Netflix, just save your money and watch it for free somewhere else eventually, it’s as empty and pretentious a film as the Stanley Parable, but without the interactivity.” – ImpactHound, via Steam