We are back from another filming spurt on the road! The past 16 days were spent at GDC in San Francisco and then we high tailed it over to Boston for PAX East. Shooting went really really well and the film is markedly better for us making the trip.
SAN FRANCISCO: GDC was spent gathering some more general interviews with some knowledgeable industry folks. This material is important to help set some context for the audience, and help them understand how independent games fit into the industry at large. Because, as much as we would like to assume that people know what indie games are, that simply won’t be the case for a good portion of our audience. Our solution to this will be a bit of an indie-primer mixed into the opening credits of the film. Short, sweet, but effective...we hope :)
But beyond filming, GDC was super productive for IGTM - we met a lot of great people. Got some wonderful feedback and made some connections that we hope will help the film reach its full potential come release time.
BOSTON: Following GDC, we hopped a plane and travelled to the other coast to attend PAX East to film Mr. Phil Fish presenting the first playable demo of FEZ since it made its debut at the IGF awards 3 years ago.
From all angles, this is a pretty big deal. Firstly, the game looks great and is lining up to be a big title in 2011 (yes, 2011, get your XBOX Pts ready). But more importantly, Phil and Renaud have been toiling on this game, in a near-vaccum, for four years. Imagine that, working on something for four years, without much feedback, much validation, without much of anything really....except maybe pressure...there’s a lot of that with FEZ.
It was pretty exciting to watch someone’s baby be put out to the world. This is our second time in the delivery room (we followed Super Meat Boy’s release days as well), and we’re confident that people will be genuinely surprised at what goes on with a developer in these moments.
We would like to thank Phil, Renaud and the Trapdoor gang for being so generous with their time, opinions, emotion and booth space. Constant cameras and questions can be a drag at times, and everyone was nothing but open and accommodating ... even when they maybe would rather not be :)
Sooo ... FEZ? What’s the deal?
From a indiegame spectator standpoint, these are probably the FEZ PAX takeaways you need to know: FEZ is coming and yes, it is good. But of course, we have a relatively skewed opinion. Luckily though, the booth was super active and these fine people had a chance to play the game and post their thoughts.
