Indie Game: The Movie Page #2

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to be traditional in a way.

It's a 'Platformer'

This very well know thing.

But it's got a real distinct art style

And a very quirky

point of view.

Super Meat Boy is a retro Platformer.

Where you play as a boy with no skin.

Who's just Meat, basically.

He's trying to rescue his girlfriend,

who is made of bandages...

From an evil doctor,

that's a fetus in a jar...

... wearing a top hat and a monocle.

Dressed in a tuxedo.

During my early years.

Going through school and everything...

It was all 'Mega Man', 'Mario'

and 'Metroid'

Older, very very difficult games.

Every game on this wall...

... 'F Zero' was hard ...

... 'Mega Man' was very difficult.

'Spy Hunter' was stupidly difficult.

In Super Meat Boy,

we get to do whatever we want.

We don't have a publisher.

Or investors.

We don't answer to anybody.

A lot of that is shown in the game.

We get away with a lot of stuff.

We can have Dr. Fetus

give the middle finger.

Because he only has 3 fingers. So it's

not technically his middle finger.

We can put in any sort of humor

or parody that we want.

We have parodies of 'Street Fighter'

and 'Castlevania'...

... 'Mega Man' intros

... 'Bubble Bobble'

'Super Meat Boy' will release

on Xbox in 7 months.

People want to know:

Is this game going to be substantial?

Or is it just all the quirk

and character?

A lot of people think it's

going to be ...

... along the lines of Castle Crashers

In 2008, 'Castle Crashers' and 'Braid'

were the 2 games that...

... really made people look at go:

'Oh, I can download games on my Xbox.'

People are expecting this game to be

the next big thing on 'XBLA'.

As long as it comes out

and does something ...

Even if it made me $ 20,000

over the next 2 years or something...

That would be enough

to make the next game.

Based on

what I'm living off right now.

And I'd have to do that, because...

I'm not going

to go work at 'EA' or 'Epic'.

That sounds horrible.

That sounds like Hell to me.

So, if it comes out

and people don't like it.

And people hate it.

And it has a Metacritic score

of, like, 20.

And everyone thinks its awful...

It doesn't make a difference

because ...

Even though it's a game

that people are supposed to buy ...

... it's not a game

that I made 'for people'.

I made it for myself.

Ed and I made it as a reflection

of ourselves.

And we tried to make it as fun

and as accessible as possible.

Whatever. If people want

'Modern Warfare' or 'Halo Reach'...

...that's fine because I think

those games are sh*t.

If that's what people want.

Then they don't want my games.

Because I don't make sh*t games.

If you follow Indie Games...

... even remotely ...

'FEZ' is one of the projects that

you've been hearing about for a while.

It's been several years in development

FEZ has been in development

for the past 3 years.

FEZ will be memorable for

it's release ....

... or for never coming out.

And the winner is...

FEZ!

So FEZ wins an award at the IGF...

It was hardly finished.

It won on the back of small tech demo.

In the clear blue sky ...

... an awards ceremony ...

Within a week, I saw it on

EVERY major gaming website.

My name is Phil.

I'm an independent game developer.

It's mostly about this little 2D guy.

Who lives in a 2D world.

And then one day realizes that

the world is 3D.

All of a sudden, Phil,

who is making this game on his own...

... with a grant from

the Canadian government.

Is some Indie Gaming Rock-star.

This is f***ing awesome.

Phil is trying to walk around

in a Cubist painting.

That's what FEZ is ...

... you're walking around

a cubist painting.

2D characters in a 3D rotating world.

At any point, you're only

seeing one side of the world.

And everybody is clamoring.

They want to see the game.

"When do we get the game..."

"When can we play the game..."

There's been so much speculation about

When? Where? ... How?

If EVER this game is going to come out

FINISH THE GOD DAMN GAME!

I'm working on it.

As hard as I can.

All the time.

"What's taking so long"

"What the f*** are you doing Phil?"

I'm doing the best I can here!

I don't hear people b*tch about

Valve taking-

Well, no, they do b*tch about Valve

and Episode 3.

BUT NOT AS MUCH AS FEZ!!

And there's hundreds of people

working there!

ICO took five years...

Red Dead Redemption:

A thousand people. Five years.

GTA4:

A thousand people. Five years.

Nobody b*tches about that-

A THOUSAND PEOPLE!!

There's two of us here

"It's taking too long"

F*** OFF!

JESUS F***ING CHRIST!

Like...

It really gets to me.

I guess, that's the price you pay

for being indie.

And being the one guy that

people know is making the game.

You open yourself up to

these kinds of personal attacks.

That I wasn't ... uh ...

That's not something I was expecting,

when dreaming about being independent.

Not this Army of A**holes online ...

... to, not ruin my life,

but to make it that more ...

...hard to enjoy.

It's a complicated game also.

It was ridiculously over ambitious.

For my first indie game.

It's a classic mistake.

And we didn't realize

we were making it.

We thought it was going to take a year

We thought it was going to be

a simple game.

And it became a completely

different game many times.

[Phil & Renaud converse in French]

My name is Renaud.

I've been programming FEZ

since the beginning.

Since three years ago.

Day to day, it's just coding stuff.

Adding features. Fixing bugs.

That's what I do.

There's a lot of

personal pressure to ...

... finish what you've been working on

for so long.

And there's a lot of people

expecting it to be really awesome.

And much bigger than we've shown.

Because, every time we show something.

We say:
'oh that's nothing'.

'that's just a small part'

'you'll see how much better it gets'

The personal pressure is bigger to me

than the outside world pressure.

I really need to get this done.

It's a learning experience

I've made games before. But I've never

produced an entire game from A to Z.

For commercial release

On a real platform.

With Microsoft.

I've never done that before.

It's terrifying.

It's really really really scary.

Especially when you lose funding.

Or something like that ...

There's just no safety net there.

There's nothing to fall back on.

There's always the threat of

everything falling apart.

Any day now.

FEZ is now scheduled

to release in 2011

13 months left.

It was very difficult to make the game

But in some ways,

it was less difficult...

... than what I had

been doing until then.

Having a lot of big ideas about

what I wanted to do in games.

And not finishing anything that had

the impact I wanted to have.

[Jonathan has been making

games for 22 years]

I think as one ages

and establishes a pattern of that.

It becomes a little bit demoralizing.

You start to look at things and say:

"Maybe I'm never going to do the

things I thought I would."

Then one day, I said: I'm going to

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