A Gamer's Life Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		2.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

A Gamer's Life Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 2, 2019

For a medium that's really only been around for about four decades, at least in something resembling its current form, video games sure do have a rich history through the years. A Gamer's Life, Directors Anthony Daniel and Adam Huffman's nontraditional Documentary that looks at the current state of the medium with emphasis on the competitive aspects of gaming, begins with a montage that features seconds-long clips of one of the most important games from each year, dating back to the late 1950s and early 1970s and moving on to showcase some of the truly great titles in gaming history: Super Mario Bros., Mega Man, Doom, and Halo, amongst many more. It's a rapid-fire, but necessary, rearview mirror exploration of where gaming began and how it has evolved, not just graphically or in terms of complexity but also competitively. The film doesn't necessarily dig all that deep and doesn't draw viewers into the nitty-gritty details of tournaments and life on the road. It's instead a series of interview snippets that together form a basic narrative, but it's not particularly engaging or groundbreaking.

A Gamer's Life follows -- loosely -- two competitive gamers: Josh Gantt and Derrick Robinson. But it's not really their story. Instead, the film is a collection of interviews with a number of gaming community and tournament personalities as they discuss a number of topics that connect their personal lives and gaming habits with the community-at-large and the competitive arena in particular. Through the interview process -- generally static shots of individuals standing still in front of the camera -- the film explores the life of a professional gamer, including team building and chemistry, the difficulty of competition and approaching gaming's upper echelons, game training, life outside the game and balance with the rigors of the competitive gaming scene, the industry's evolution, the relative dearth of money in e-sports, the prize pools and where the money comes from, finding success on Twitch, the increase in popularity of gaming and e-sports, the lives of famous gaming personalities and their personal histories in gaming, the opportunity for more people to compete beyond traditional “athletes," cosplay, and performance enhancing drugs and substances in competitive gaming.

The film does bill itself as a "non-traditional" Documentary, and it's certainly that. The film feels made for gamers, offering precious few external connections meant to pull in and engage casual audiences, including a number of scenes featuring two young boys talking up their gaming habits and their mother, who refers to their game console as a "Kindle" on more than one occasion, encouraging their love of the game and accepting of their growth into the world. But for the most part much of what's in here will go right over the heads of anyone who isn't up on gaming jargon, technology, and the current gaming landscape, which extends well beyond the living room console and out into the expansive, and increasingly complex, cyber realms. It's also heavy on static interviews which see various gaming community celebrities talking up various aspects of the current gaming landscape. There are encouragements, warnings, and rightly more talk about lifestyle rather than winning. It dives into some interesting material, including the money to be made in professional gaming, bonds and friendships formed behind the controller, and even drugs and stimulants and their place in gaming, but it's very scattershot, jumping from topic to topic with little feel for narrative flow and engagement. The interviewed personalities are all agreeable in their own ways but the film's failure comes in the editing room, struggling to find dramatic heft and narrative flow within its focal consistency.

A Gamer's Life Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Gravitas Ventures presents A Gamer's Life on a burned BD-R disc. The movie plays at a 1080p resolution and at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The image is heavily flawed but it's not a fault of Gravitas Ventures' encode. The digitally sourced material is fairly low end, unsurprisingly lacking the cinematic quality control of higher end productions. The image does serve the material well enough, but hardened videophiles will likely scoff at the regular, but not often severe, appearances of macroblocking (appearing more obviously and severely in darker locations and against darker backdrops) as well as various examples of aliasing and a fair bit of noise. The image is still well served by the 1080p resolution. Clothing details and facial features are adequately crisp and revealing. The picture is appropriately sharp, though some of the on-screen graphics could stand a bit more stability. Colors are perfectly serviceable, finding a natural feel for contrast and pop for the duration. Clothes are obviously the major source of color highlight but some of the background details scattered behind the interviewees find stable shading and pleasing accuracy. The picture is not a looker but it works well enough for the film's presentation style and modest technical construction details.

A Gamer's Life Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Gamer's Life features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. The track is appropriately robust even under the two channel configuration. Music during a gaming montage at the four-minute mark finds excellent balance, stage stretch, and clarity through the range of sharp-edged electronic notes. There's not much to it beyond this and some other examples of nicely intensive and detailed music. A little bit of background din at various competitions and interview locations comes across as muddy, but to the track's credit these are nonessential details. There are some differences in clarity to dialogue with a few examples when it must compete with those noisy convention and gaming site backgrounds while a couple of other places experience tinniness and hollowness. There are some lip sync issues. Take a look at the 14:20 mark for one of the most glaring examples. For the most part the spoken word images to the center with good essential clarity. Like the video, this is hardly a standout presentation but it serves the modest material well enough.

A Gamer's Life Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All that's included with this Blu-ray release of A Gamer's Life is the film's Trailer (1080p, 1:03). No DVD or digital copies are included. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

A Gamer's Life Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Gamer's Life does a good job of painting a broad picture of what the modern competitive gaming scene looks like. There is plenty of talk -- much of it interesting, little of it insightful, some of it sure to go well over the heads of most anyone not neck-deep in modern gaming's lingo and lifestyle -- of what life is like on the professional scene, both behind the controller and away from it. But the film could be more. It's not structurally engaging, at all. It's almost entirely made of static shots of interviewees. While gamers will find the various segments -- the stringing together of ideas, mostly, in connective chunks -- interesting enough, there's not enough content, structure, or feel for engagement to make the film worthwhile. It does emphasize its nontraditional structure, but there's more opportunity for documentary excellence in the world of gaming than what is explored here. Gravitas Ventures' Blu-ray release of A Gamer's Life delivers capable, but flawed, video and audio presentations that are clearly due to limitations at the source rather than anything on Gravitas Ventures' end. As for extras, only the film's trailer is included. Worth a look for anyone who lives and breathes gaming but a pass for most others.