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Do you remember the New Yankee Workshop? It was a TV series hosted by Norm Abram, and each episode Norm would make something out of wood. A table, perhaps, or a chest of drawers, or maybe even some serving trays. When I first got Sky TV in the late 90s I became obsessed with the New Yankee Workshop, I would watch it daily despite having absolutely no intention of even picking up a saw. It was oddly comforting, probably for the same reason cookery shows are still amongst the most popular things on TV: people enjoy watching other people make things. Video game creation may not be as visceral as wood or food, but as the recently concluded Double Fine Adventure series proves, it's just as compelling. It all started with an email. In 2011, Paul Owens of 2 Player Productions wrote to Greg Rice and Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions with a unique proposition. They wanted to make a documentary series charting the development of a game from beginning to end. Something small, something modest. "If you guys plan to continue working on smaller games," wrote Owens, "the development cycle could be short enough that funding through Kickstarter could be within reason." A deal was struck, and when Double Fine launched a Kickstarter on the 9th of February 2012 for the development of what has now become Broken Age, a portion of the money raised was set aside for 2 Player Productions to allow them to document the development. They likely didn't realise it would be a three year series, but their efforts paid off. It's one of the best video game documentaries ever made.
Granted, there aren't that many. Many of the more popular ones like King of Kong, The Smash Brothers or Machinima's All Your History series tend to focus more on communities and cultural movements. The closest comparison to Double Fine Adventure would be Indie Game: The Movie, and while they do share similar aspects - underdog stories, flawed and visionary creatives, artistic sacrifices - the fact that Double Fine Adventure unfolded over such a time span gives it that much more scope and room to really get to know the team.
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