From Bedrooms To Billions

I couldn't find an existing thread, and I hadn't heard of this until this morning. Thought this was worth sharing - another film about game development, this time focused on some incredible UK pioneers.

http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com

 

What does it say about the world that I'm curious to see it, and yet can't imagine paying for it! It's a crazy world we live in. Thanks for sharing @SteveJ.

Gigi

 

I can't help myself with this stuff. Since "Indie Game", I can't get enough of these video game documentaries. Plus, my wife is going away on the weekend, so I can kick back and enjoy this

 

Have any indie developers made a billion?

 

By the time they make a billion, they're no longer Indy . Like Marcus Person, aka Notch.

Gigi

 

I'd be happy to get back to making hundreds at this point. Although the documentary is about the entire video game industry, not any one particular developer. At least it appears that way, I haven't seen it.

 

Yeah, it's not a movie about indies. It's about the UK video game industry as a whole when it was first starting up.

 

Cool. Thanks for sharing. I enjoy things like this. I will definitely buy the video and watch it over my Christmas break! Looking forward to 6 days of vacation. Even with the holiday activities I will still have a good amount of free time to focus on game dev stuff! Can't wait. This 2 hours or so per day stuff is for the birds.

 

I'm the same - I look forward to holidays just so I can get some real work done I've got 2 weeks off in January and need to go nuts trying to make as much progress as possible in that time.

 

I don't want to make billions..... just a few million would do

 

Hmmm 30 uk pounds for this... more like 50-60 $USD ... too much.

 

been following this for a long time & i'll be receiving the bluray special edition soon. It's worth a watch but it's a bit overpriced imo

 

I definitely agree the "Special Edition" is a bit rich. I bought the Standard one - cheap enough.

 

As a little follow-up, I've now watched this and it is WELL worth the purchase for anyone a little older (like me!) who remembers the Spectrum and C64 days. Lot of great people/games in this that you'll recognise. I really enjoyed it.

 

Yeah i agree. I can relate to typing out the programs in the magazines. Never got any to work though, too many typos and no clue what I was typing. haha

 

This looks very interesting to me. I wonder if the "numerous game makings of and & industry stories" are covering more modern games or it is all the good ole days? In the upper right corner I see it mention the creator of Little Big Planet. I couldn't care less about that. But the C64, Spectrum, Amiga and DOS era stuff now that would be awesome!

Has anyone got the Special Edition yet?

 

It's ALL about the glory days. There's nothing in this film addressing modern games. Definitely more for the nostalgic than anything else. Though there are many insights there that are certainly valid and well worth the time/money for a modern developer (e.g. an interesting discussion about the way games were subject to copy-cat developers even back then, and how even then they felt as though everything had been done and innovation was extremely difficult).

 

I can remember getting OXO or Noughts and Crosses to work from code on the Acorn Electron (Cut down version of the BBC) and it was about 10 lines of code with lots of semi-colons; I didn't grasp how it worked but it played a good game and it was short enough to type in and get working.

OK things have changed but are we seeing a new cycle which has similar features to the old?!

Instead of magazines reviewing games we have youtube and twitch channels reviewing games.

Instead of 8 or 16 bit computers we have 32 and 64 bit smartphones and tablets.

Instead of mail order tapes we have app stores.

And instead of BBC or ZX Basic we have Unity.

The question is can a new generation go from bedrooms to billions?

 

I finally bought it and watched yesterday. It was cool but I always liked reading about the early game developers so no surprise really.

Oh the joys of typing in computer programs. Computes Gazette, Ahoy, Info and others. Those were the days. I still have a box of those old mags, some old Computer & Video Games mags from early 80s, a few books on C64 and Amiga Assembly language programming, text adventure books and others. Lol Probably have them til I am dead.

 

You can always see if the Bletchley Park National Computer Museum would like them?

 

eBay

 

No way! I still read those from time to time. The GameInformer mags that come in the mail on the other had I rarely even open. But they come as part of GameStop membership. But you open one and look at games basically same as opening all of the others

 

I received my special edition bluray on christmas eve