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After nine years, the gaming world’s radical transparency experiment is over. Twice as good, PsychOdyssey is a documentary series that documents the creation of the platform game in detail Psychonauts 2from the first sketches in a notebook in 2015 to the full release in 2021. The small film team at Two Player Productions recorded every step of the process, collecting more than 5,000 hours of footage. This was whittled down to a 32-part series, released for free on YouTube and finally rounded off with a thoughtful epilogue last month.

One might expect a documentary of this length to be exhaustive or indulgent, especially when dealing with such a technical subject, but it is engaging. How games are made is a subject that many gamers know little about, and PsychOdyssey offers a comprehensive picture of the process, showing the mechanics of human creativity, the brutal reality of the gaming industry, and the passion and heart of the people who choose to do it anyway.

PsychOdyssey was always intended as a standalone work and not as some kind of promotional material. There are other good collectives that publish gaming documentaries on YouTube, such as the deep dives into the teams of Noclip or People Make Games, but PsychOdysseyThe story benefits immensely from being filmed in real time rather than told as history. You are there for every breakthrough and every bitter argument.

Double Fine is a game studio known for its eccentric, creative games – led by Tim Schafer, one of the most popular personalities in the industry, known for the early Monkey Island Games and Grim FandangoWe observe Psychonauts 2 in Double Fine’s San Francisco office, from brainstorming to concept art to combat design. The team couldn’t have predicted how many surprises would hit development – several employees leaving the game for emotional reasons, someone ending up in the hospital, and the offices of the game’s backer being raided on suspicion of insider trading. Not to mention what was happening outside the office: the Trump presidency, the pandemic, the California wildfires.

To the documentary team’s credit, however, these events seem secondary to the emotional stakes within the company. The simple story of a team trying to pull off a creative project in today’s economy is filled with drama. The camera’s gaze encourages us to empathize with the producer who is constantly being double-crossed by her boss and the programmer who tries to raise issues about company culture. There are no real villains, but we see plenty of people in deeply unflattering moments – including Schafer himself. There’s also the uplifting story of a documentary team member who, on camera, slowly becomes tempted to become a game designer himself.

In the years following the pandemic, the gaming industry has seen mass layoffs, studio closures, and questionable acquisitions. Companies tend to prefer opacity in their communications, which is what makes Schafer’s decision to open his studio, with all its pros and cons, so remarkable. While most gaming documentaries celebrate the joys of the medium, such as the 2020 Netflix series High score or the film from 2012 Indie Game: The Moviehere we get a brutal look at an unsustainable system where creative people are worn down by unreasonable demands on their time and emotional resources. There are painful conversations about overwork; different management styles clash violently; and we witness an indie studio being acquired by an industry giant. Despite the unflattering light in which we sometimes see the company’s management, applications to Double Fine increased after the documentary aired – suggesting that the games staff have been eagerly awaiting more transparency.

The series is a revelation in the multidisciplinary endeavor of making a modern game. In the final episode, you have to agree with the designer who says, “It’s a miracle that a game even comes out.” It’s already become a cult hit, as evidenced by the recent special edition Blu-ray release (already sold out). This documentary may end up being a more valuable contribution to the gaming canon than the game whose development it documents. After watching PsychOdysseyyou will never look at a video game the same way again.

Now on YouTube