blog

games.film without borders

Dominic Leave a comment

Maybe there are some sci-fi fans out there who are looking for a little distraction these days in the form of movies and stories about space games. For you guys, I’ve got something:

All of games.film’s content is available for free now. The “free” versions on our YouTube channel have been hidden, instead the paid versions (which were originally only available to buyers of space.games.film) can be viewed by everyone for free without watermarks and additional text panels. If you want to get the full space.games.film experience, check out this playlist here 😉 And you can download all the PDFs and browse through the anecdotes from the shop while listening to the soundtrack of the film.

Thank you very much to all buyers of our store items! Your support has motivated me to continue up to this point.

An update from games.film

Dominic Leave a comment

As you can see, not much is happening on our social media channels. games.film still is just us, Patrick and myself, and right now our focus is on work for other clients outside the gaming industry. We’d love to do films about gaming again, but we simply cannot afford more of our free time for it. Because of that, our social media channels will continue to stay quiet. But we hope to be back some day and are always happy to hear from you!

As for space.games.film, well, to put it bluntly: it hasn’t paid out for us. Like, not at all. We’ve invested a ton of time and our own money, but our shop doesn’t even pay for itself so far. The experiment of releasing a free version for everybody to watch and hoping for people to buy us drinks in our shop failed spectacularly. Or our film simply isn’t good enough. Whatever the case: thank you very much to all of our supporters! It really means a lot to us.

But let’s stay positive and have a look at the great things that happened during that time (besides the fact, that I became a dad 🙂 ). We got to know fascinating people, we went to interesting locations, and we had fantastic conversations. The game developing community worldwide is truly a very special one and I am glad, that we were a part of it. I will never forget the incredible hospitality that we were greeted with pretty much everywhere we went. And then there are the fans and the gaming community. We had exciting discussions at the indie arena booth during gamescom and the space.games.film premiere. I remember talking to a guy who traveled to Cologne all the way from Munich, his main reason not being gamescom, but the premiere of our film! We got and continue to get great feedback for it. Some go so far to say that it is, and I quote: “a very important piece of film for gaming history”. I can truly say that I am very proud of what we have achieved with the extremely limited possibilities we had. Just two guys who wanted to make a film about space games.

Let’s go on to the latest update. Some people simply don’t like to read subtitles, some find it more comfortable to watch a dubbed version. And now you can watch space.games.film in English! I put in some (or actually quite a few) extra hours and made a new version of it with complete English voiceovers. Because they’re AI using Amazon’s Polly, they’re far from perfect. Also I had to manipulate them a little since there were only three usable voices for the five German speaking main protagonists. Please keep that in mind.

Watch the film in English on YouTube.

 

I want to thank everybody again, who helped us on our journey, especially our main protagonists:

  • Thank you Björn Bartholdy! We could have continued to talk forever after the interview, but eventually had to come to an end. Your insights gave the film an intellectual edge.
  • Thank you Michael Graf! Our journey together was way longer then just with space.games.film and went on with other cool projects. Never loose your enthusiasm!
  • Thank you Andreas Suika! Documenting such an emotional part of your life was truly moving. I’m glad that we got to be a part of it.
  • Thank you Michael Schade! I won’t forget the incredible friendlyness we were greeted with at Rockfish Games when we first arrived. We felt like being a part of the team.
  • Thank you Bernd Lehahn! We didn’t witness a game being made by a team while we were at Egosoft. We witnessed a game being made by a family.
  • Thank you Rob Cunningham! For taking some extra time and then some more. Being in the (now old) studio with my wife was a very cool experience.
  • Thank you Chris Roberts! We are just two guys who wanted to make a film. And you are just a guy who wants to make a game. Talking to you on and off camera is inspiring.

 

That’s it from us. Now all that is left to say is: enjoy, take care, stay healthy, and let’s see what the future holds for us all. 🙂

Schnick & Schnack Podcast Nerdstar TV

Schnick & Schnack – Podcast with Dominic

Dominic Leave a comment

This morning I was a guest at a very relaxed podcast of NerdStar, and with the two fantastic hosts Maci and Daniel, I talked about space.games.film. It was especially great that one of our protagonists from the film, Andreas Suika, took part in the twitch chat and thus was also “present”. space.games.film and how the documentary was made in the first place were not the only topics. We also talked about science fiction, space games, fantasy, sci-fi TV shows and the film industry in general. After the podcast the film was then broadcasted in the stream.

The podcast episode can now be watched in the Twitch-Stream (where you can also read the chat) and later also listened to on Spotify (under “Radio NerdStar”).

Finally, here is a very nice quote from Andreas from the Twitch chat, which acknowledges and moves us in our work as documentary filmmakers: “My heart warms every time I see it. The film has touched my life very much. It captures an emotional moment of my life and I’m very grateful for that!”

Blackbird Interactive Project Lynx

Project Lynx – Deleted scene from space.games.film

Dominic Leave a comment

For space.games.film we shot many hours of footage, but only a fraction of it made it into the final cut. In the form of Deleted Scenes, we want to show you interesting interview parts and B-roll that didn’t make it into the film.

In the case of Rob Cunningham’s part in the film, this involved a scene in which he talks about a game with the working title “Project Lynx”. When we visited Blackbird Interactive in 2017 they were in the middle of developing the game, in which you disassemble decommissioned spaceships as a space worker to recycle their valuable parts. In terms of subject matter, it fit perfectly into the film. But the announcement date of the game was pushed back too far and the scene didn’t fit into the overall composition of Rob’s part, so we cut it completely.

“Project Lynx” was announced in early 2020 as “Hardspace: Shipbreaker” and released in mid-June 2020 for Early Access. Now that you have a direct comparison, it’s particularly exciting to see what has become of the vision from three years ago.

 

Brian Chambers at Gamescom 2016

Brian Chambers at Gamescom 2016 – Deleted scenes from space.games.film

Dominic Leave a comment

For space.games.film we shot many hours of footage, but only a fraction of it made it into the final cut. In the form of Deleted Scenes, we want to show you interesting interview parts and B-roll that didn’t make it into the film.

Gamescom 2016 was the start of principal photography for space.games.film. Our plan was to meet most of our protagonists there for the first time and also to do short interviews with them, which we would then use in the intro for the film.

At the booth of Star Citizen we had a meeting with Brian Chambers, then Development Director at Foundry 42 in Frankfurt (today Vice President Of Development). From the first moment on his enthusiasm and his personal way of narrating inspired us, which was also helpful for the direction we wanted to take with the film.

In the end it unfortunately didn’t work out to visit Brian in his studio. We were very interested in his thoughts about space games and surely he would have had one or the other exciting anecdote that would have pushed the film even further. But without an own part in the studio we had no choice but to cut out his interviews at the Gamescoms completely. You can watch the video to tell why we did that only very reluctantly.