The making of.....(Insert game here)

[Ish]

I like these but only for the older games 8 and 16bit particularly. For newer games, as has already been said, they tend to come off as promo's.

The technical stuff gets repetitive after a while but the background info (people, politics, crazy shenanigans) stays fun.

[Eight Rooks]

Most of them are pretty naff, yes. Doesn't make the whole concept useless. And for films, I'd rather cut the bitrate and stick more (worthwhile) extras on the disc, but then I'm not a video/audiophile.

The Heavy Rain ones were pretty disappointing, actually. At least, the ones I unlocked were only about five minutes each. Best game-related thing I've seen so far is still the God of War II LE. Most disappointing is probably the FarCry 2 LE; the developer diaries for that looked like being excellent, but then they 1) seem to never have actually finished the bloody thing and 2) only stuck the first two instalments on the disk. I mean, anyone complaining about Making Ofs and the like holding up release or taking away budget; if only! I bought the AC II Black Edition in part because it said all AC II related promotional material... didn't even have all the trailers on, let alone Lineage.

[nakamura]

Would love to see a proper making of, and a real interview with Yasumi Matsuno regarding Final Fantasy XII. Did he really leave for health reasons? If not why did he leave?
His team clearly created the best gameworld in any J-RPG and maybe any RPG yet he never got to the end of the production.

[Eight Rooks]

Well, that is one area where games haven't caught up to films. Even the interesting Making Of stuff is largely pitched as fluff - it might be detailed, but it's still fairly 'Oh, everyone was so wonderful, it was just rainbows and kittens and candyfloss every day until we got the game out of the door'... the God of War II stuff is kind of surprising, in that it does allow the team to be shown run ragged and slightly pissed off at times, but the industry still hasn't turned tell-alls into an artform.

Reckon a few years down the line we'll get the story of Infinity Ward?

[Flabio]

Go read the game developer mag post mortem for 'Trespasser' and then tell me we can't do a warts and all 'making of'

[Eight Rooks]

Go read the game developer mag post mortem for 'Trespasser' and then tell me we can't do a warts and all 'making of'

Not released with the game, we can't. And yes, films do have Making Of documentaries or extras with current releases that are fairly happy to show the film-makers bickering, squabbling and sniping at each other (check out The Onion AV Club's excellent 'Commentary Tracks of the Damned' features for proof of that, for starters). The game industry still generally has to wait years before they're comfortable with spilling the beans.