Eugene Jarvis

Before Google, Yahoo and even Apple, before the Silicon Valley cliché of informal dress code, skateboards running the corridors and wild creativity became commonplace, one company embodied the digital economy lifestyle and business style: the one firm coming out of the Age of Aquarius was Atari. The story of Atari is two-thirds the story of Nolan Bushnell, founder and visionary, and one-third the first and probably biggest boom and bust of the new economy some 20 years before the new economy even existed. Atari was showing that technology is cool, way before the personal computer revolution took place and they were reaching out to an ever-growing audience with something that is still cool today: video games. Atari literally introduced the digital world to the mass consciousness.

The Name of the Game is a feature-length documentary about the team up between the legendary arcade game designer, Eugene Jarvis, and the Finnish game developer, Housemarque. The end result of the collaboration was the critically acclaimed PS4/PC title Nex Machina. The film gives the audience an unprecedented access to the unpredictable and plain crazy world of making a video game – uncensored.

The oral history of a team of geeks and misfits in the back of a Chicago factory creating the biggest video games of all time. Midway Games pioneered the concept of live-action gaming, kick-starting a new arcade boom and grossing billions of dollars with hits like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam. The documentary covers much of Mortal Kombats history, including the creation of fatalities and characters such as Liu Kang, Kitana, Johnny Cage and Scorpion.