I adore the boardgaming hobby, and I was intrigued the minute I saw that this documentary existed because I was interested to see how it would approach the topic. I appreciated that the film involved some specific designers, and explored their different journeys in releasing/publishing their games. It's also a lot of fun seeing a number of slightly obscure games I know and love as they are discussed and shown throughout the film. However, I felt like Gamemaster lacked focus. It covered tons of aspects of the hobby, but never settled down long enough to dig deep on any one of these topics. As a result, I didn't feel like I learned much of anything that I didn't already know from being an active member of the Boardgamegeek community. I suppose this might be a bit more educational for those who are just discovering the boardgaming hobby, but even for them I feel it lacks some of the information that would be most interesting. There is not a lot of time spent relaying the stories of game players, and what it is about specific games that draw them in and make them love playing. The film was more interested in the publishing process, which I suppose can be interesting for aspiring designers, but not for your average person. I still appreciated Gamemaster for shining a light on my favorite hobby, but I wish it was better so I could tell all my friends to seek it out on Amazon Prime so that it might spark an interest in gaming.
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