Free to Play movie

Yesterday I watched the Free to Play movie, produced by Valve. I can be only seeing inside the Steam gaming platform. I’ve never knew that it has video player functionalities.

Without any further due, the verdict: very boring.

The film is about video gaming as an sport, particularly about Dota 2. It tells 3 parallel stories of players that will participate into the biggest tournament ever. The prize would be one million dollars for the winner. At the time, it was, but light years, the biggest prize in history.

The 3 main characters are not particularly captivating. They are portrayed as nerds that are taking a lot of pressure by family members to work or study instead invest the whole time into gaming. The characters keep saying that they are motivated and determined to win. But that is all. You see that they are facing difficult situations, but nothing different from a teenagers entering into adulthood: what should I do with my life?

Despite the fact that the announcement alone of a such big prize created a huge repercussion on the internet gaming community and media, the tournament is poorly described. During the whole film, I was never sure what was going on in the competition.

But one thing it was very impressive the CG scenes that describe some parts of the matches in the competition. I believe that Valve CG animators entered in action. They were short but very, very well done.

The bottom line is that this film is, in fact, a propaganda about video game as an sport and the Valve game Dota. It repeatedly say that this competition was a milestone and it might actually be the case. But even being free to watch, Free to Play is not worthy.