I can’t wait for the Psychonauts 2 documentary
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I feel like the thread title could be improved to either
“I want more game dev documentaries” or
“Game Dev Documentary OT” and use it to link to a bunch of the ones that are out there. Bethesda one is quite good, the Xbox 20 year anniversary one was good, and I definitely will be watching the Psychonauts 2 one.
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Then maybe merge this one in or close it. Either way the title doesn’t get to the point.
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The topics should now be merged.
Unfortunately when the merging happens, the chronology of the posts are not preserved.
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Added to the watchlist. Hope I get enough time to watch before I get distracted onto something else. Such is life.
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I honestly thought Double Fine documentary is broken up into small pieces. Didn’t expect to last over 30 minutes each with few exceptions. I have to make this a daily watch.
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It’s so good too! Very interesting, honest and unique.
Watching this, I really wish we got more stuff from all the Xbox studios. The secretive Area 51 bs surrounding much of the gaming industry is getting a bit old.
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Yeah, try telling that to Nintendo. Lol. But yes, I like more of this.
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I wish we had more from all studios.
However, is gaming industry any more secretive than other entertainment segments, such as Movies, TV or even the Music industry? Possibly even written books too.
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These kinds of documentaries are a dime a dozen in the movie industry. They love making behind-the-scenes docs, it’s a whole sub-industry unto itself. It’s died down a little with the peak of DVDs now behind us, but it’s still around.
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Yes, but these are all done after the fact. I was taking the secretive nature to be talking about the process before launch.
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Considering what Mort was replying to, I assumed we were talking about the new Double Fine doc in particular.
But even if you extend it to pre-launch I’d argue the movie industry is more open in terms of announcing projects very early, spec scripts sold, actors and directors expressing interest in projects before they’ve even signed on, directors leaving projects, etc, etc. There are very few secrets there. Hell, it’s even the norm for studios to call their shots in terms of release dates several years in advance.
Contrast that with the gaming industry and I think it’s night and day. Granted, there are lots of reasons for that, some good and some bad, but my point is mostly that the movie industry is definitely more transparent about what they’re working on. At least that’s my impression.
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Started watching, on episode 2 now. I love double fine and the openness of these videos is fascinating, but it seems unlikely that a lot of places would be willing to be this open,especially about failures and such, and they have to commit to it from the start. Can’t imagine filming for 6 years plus for this, and it definitely looks like an emotional journey that would be hard to be OK with if you’re used to hiding problems like most big companies are.
Watching part 1, so far it’s really good. Grounded and in depth. The way how Microsoft told them to make it fun in 3 months before they cancel it is how I imagine everyone today continue to believe they are like that: cruel and unfair.
To be fair, it sounded like that 3 month deadline was a decent ways into development efforts.
True, but sadly today’s day and age, anything can be seen like a crime against humanity.
I’d love to hear more about the games that just didn’t work out and were scrapped, or maybe concepts that were turned into something else over time.
Coalition for example were rumored to be working on two projects that ended up getting cancelled. It would be cool if maybe later down the line they showed us what it was they were working on.
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More such documentaries would be nice. But as long as most gamers behave like manchildren nothing of this will happen on a broader basis. Psychonauts 2 got there because their game was good. Imagine the reaction to the troublesome development of Crackdown 3, Watch Dogs, Scalebound or some outright cancelled games like the lastest rumours from The Coalition.
Impossible.
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