The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

[RobRoy]

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising is apparently a follow up film to The Gamers, which I understand is even more low-budget, but which this film is not a sequel. I came across it on Netflix’s streaming, so I figured what-the-heck, and I have to say that despite the low-budget, sometimes painfully obvious real-world sets, and so forth, the plot of the movie worked well within these elements.

The plot is straight-forward enough, in that a group of gamers is having a hard time defeating a particular game module. One of them decides they need a different kind of group mix, and adds a newbie player as well. Basically, it’s more about the player relationships and their interaction, both inside the game, as their characters, and outside the game, dealing with game framework, arguing rules, etc.

There are allusions to a number of major RPGs, obviously Dungeons & Dragons, but also Final Fantasy, Munchkin, and others. They also deal with some consistent in-game issues, like killing NPCs just for fun, dealing with alignments, etc. One of the running jokes, which I greatly appreciated was a male player with a female character. This was handled very effectively, and very cleverly, by having the player show up in drag when he was acting generally out of character, but replacing him with a female character representation when in character. Some of the fun is watching to see if he is in or out of character.

Again, very low production values, but the acting isn’t half-bad, and the story unfolds in a reasonable manner, with the main crux being both the role-playing game itself, and the interaction between the players. If you have 90 minutes to kill, you could do much worse than this film.

[Michael]

I have a friend who keeps asking me to watch "The Gamers". I just haven't found time for it, but I understand it pokes fun at virtually every role-playing game stereotype and reality.

[RobRoy]

Originally Posted by Michael

I have a friend who keeps asking me to watch "The Gamers". I just haven't found time for it, but I understand it pokes fun at virtually every role-playing game stereotype and reality.

That's my understanding too. I have only seen this follow-up, which is not a sequel at all. But it's clearly written with a gaming audience in mind, and addresses a lot of the mechanics of the games.