Making Indie Games

My reaction to the film that we watched in class, Indie Game: The Movie, is that making indie games looks like a very depressing job. The guys who were making Super Meat Boy, Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, seemed very stressed out. They had been working for a long time on the game, and when the time came for it to be released, Refenes especially seemed angry and depressed. He was taking some sort of drugs, which looked kind of sketchy.

The guy who worked on Fez, Phil Fish, was also stressed, especially at the second public appearance of Fez, when things were malfunctioning. He had worked for a long time on the project, and he was risking a lot of his money and time. He was relying on his final product to be at least a moderate hit, and it ended up being that way. But what if it wasn't? That would stretch anyone thin.

The man in the reading who was creating a game about his son with cancer must have had it much worse. Devoting his time to a project would stress him out regardless of him having a son with cancer that might die any day. Combined, that would put anyone into a deep depression.

The point that I'm trying to make is that when making a game, or a film for that matter, the money should not be the primary reason for making it (the man in reading probably did not have money at the front of his mind) but a passion for making the art and connecting with audiences through it, maybe impacting people's lives. Any indie film or game creator can probably expect to face depression and risk their living on their project basically. So maybe people should not be so intent on having the best comfortable lives and instead focus on changing people's lives.