Double Fine Adventure
I am such a ridiculously HUGE fan of Double Fine Adventure. The documentary created by Double Fine and 2 Player Productions as part of The Biggest Kickstarter of All Time(tm). Okay, it was the biggest one at the time it was done, earning over $3.3 Million to make an adventure game and a documentary.
If you’ve been around me long enough, you know that I am a huge adventure gaming fan. I was a fan of them long before I even knew what to call them. The first PC game I ever owned was called Putt Putt Goes to the Moon from Humongous Entertainment. Little did my eight year old self know, that company and those kid’s games were created by Rob Gilbert. He’s easily one of the godfathers of graphic adventures along with Tim Schafer and others. Double Fine Adventure covers the creation of the game, Broken Age.
I just popped in my blu-ray edition and watched the vast majority of it with the commentary on. I’ve seen this stuff no less than four times, but there are some cool tidbits you get from watching it with the commentary. It should be a bit of a testament to the quality of the documentary that I can watch it that many times and still enjoy it. The game ended up being amazing, but I’m that kind of nerd that almost enjoys watching the creation of something as much as I enjoy the end product. I thing it helps me to understand that everything starts as a ball of mush and can grow into something beautiful.
I struggle with the creative stuff and realizing that my ideas are worth something. Seeing people bring these weird ideas to life is fascinating to me, and it’s inspiring. Getting this in depth of a view at the creation of a game helped me realize that, yes there are brilliant people working on them, but they start out just as lost as anybody would when they start throwing stuff at the wall. There’s little idea as to what is going to finally take shape, but they just plow forward making some stuff.
Here’s a link to the ENTIRE documentary on YouTube. You dont’ get the special features, or the color correction and audio fixes, but you at least get to watch the doc. That’s the way I watched it the first time and I got just as much out of it.