1) Who does the documentary primarily follow? What games were they developing?
The Documentary follows the two developers Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes who made supermeat boy and the other focuses on Phil Fish and his journey to develop his game Fez. The film also follows Jonathan Blow the developer of braid but at the time of making he's already released Braid.
2) How were the ideas for these games developed? What are they about?
Supermeat boy is a platformer that Tommy and Edmund took the idea from a basic flash game and improved upon it using some of their favourite childhood games as inspiration from their childhood favourites like Mario.
3) How long were the titles in development for prior to release?
Fez took around 18 months to complete development and that's with only two developers whereas Fez took around five years to make with 2 main dev's and three other animators who done the animations for characters and animals.
4) How is level design described in the documentary?
Level design is described as teaching the player the game and its base mechanics and they use a new mechanic each level like going from a jump to a boosted jump. In the later levels they should reiterate the mechanic and then introduce new ones to keep the player trying out new things and getting challenged.
5) Name some of the key mechanics that made these games successful / desirable ?
For Fez the 2D/3D was a huge deal as you could traverse a 3D world but with a 2D perspective and the world would rotate as you turned. For Supermeat they horizontal movement with running and jumping (and boosted) where you chain these in various ways with different timings in order to actually complete the level.
6) What are the genres of the games being developed in the documentary?
Supermeat boy is a horizontal platformer. Fez is that as well as an adventure and strategy game. Braid is a Puzzle platformer.
7) Name and discuss what went wrong and the challenges faced by the developers. Describe
any legal issues.
Phil Fish the developer of Fez faced a multitude of legal issues due to the fact he was in a legal dispute with his ex partner Jason DeGroot. When phil went to PAX to show off Fez he potentially couldn't make an appearance as his partner hadn't signed some forms which didn't let him do so without the risk of a law suit
8) How are the games marketed? How are they given exposure?
Supermeat boy was meant to be on XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) however on release there was an issue where it was displayed and people were struggling to find it or couldn't even find it at all. However after Tommy emailed xbox supermeat boy was on the highlighted page and was recommended to people.
9) What drives these developers to continue?
Edmund is driven by his passion for the game and the possibly that he could have a positive influence on a younger gamers life like how his grandma had one on his. Tommys drive comes from what seems like an obsession as he feels like he needs to use the game to self express and he wanted to help pay off his parents debts.
10) Why do you feel that these titles were successful or a failure?
I feel that supermeat boy was a success as not only did it have great reviews from critics and gamers saying how it was original and paid homage to previous popular platformers .It also sold nearly 10,000 units 2pm day of release which is usually considered a success and by 2012 it sold one million copies. Fez released after the indie game movie in april of 2012 to pretty great reviews and was able to sell 1 million across all platforms. So i would consider both of these games a success both financially and critically.
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