Pyramid Review
Über Goober
A Scum Crew Pictures Production
Produced & directed by Steve Metze
Edited by David Hobizal
Music by Pat Murray & Luke Ski
87-minute DVD; $20.00
Games continue to break out of their tuck boxes and hardbound books and make the leap to screens big and small. The Gamers and its upcoming sequel deal with the activities at the game table from a pseudo-fictional point of view, but a bookend piece by another group, Über Goober, is a documentary-style film about the lives and habits of games and gamers. Its scope isn't limited to roleplaying games; it covers miniatures and LARPs as well.
This DVD from Scum Crew Pictures tags most of the bases, including interviews with various figures from the industry -- Mike Stackpole, Peter Adkison, Gary Gygax (though curiously, Dave Arneson doesn't appear) -- but even these are kept to a minimum. The spotlight falls mostly on those who keep the hobby going day-to-day: the fans themselves. We're given a cross-section of these folks, including the guy who creates Egyptian miniatures using sand from his kids' sandbox; the policeman who designs dungeons during downtime; and the motley crew that engages in massive mock battles on the weekend.
Interviews are interspersed with footage taken from panels featuring some of the notables, and there are a few conversations with random passersby as the director assesses the popular view of roleplaying and roleplayers. These segments are hardly as . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 8, 2005
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