Watch All Work All Play: The Pursuit of eSports Glory Live For Free

Too much of everything

Pretty Good

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

All work all Play is not a riveting story. It is a success however. To date it is one of the few docs to get on Netflix, which is good for esports fans. More is always better. The best parts of the film follow Michal Blicharz. I also loved the opening moments of the film. A doc about esports must be hard to plot for a main stream audience. It requires a lot of explanation to get the viewer up to speed. Describing the game itself to a general audience is next to impossible but also somewhat necessary. I give these guys credit for what they did manage.

I think this documentary is a very basic introduction to those viewers that are unaware of the growing number of fans and lovers of eSports. It briefly shows Stargate as one of the main events at the competitions but ultimately ignores it to focus on the more well-known League of Legends. It then centers itself mostly on the team called Cloud9 from North America and a player (in another team) named Rekkles. Once again I just have to emphasize that it likes to keep things simple and is way too vague for anyone that identifies as a fan of the eSports leagues and tournaments. If you don't know anything about the modern gaming industry and the enormous fan base that it has, then I'd recommend this as a brief introduction to it. Something like 'League of Legends in eSports 101'.

This documentary was very disappointing. The director of the documentary said, in the live interview after the movie, that he did not really understand the game (League of Legends: LoL) the documentary is about. He only started to investigate eSports a little over a year ago and he does not play any "modern" games himself. The introduction shows 30 minutes of play of a Starcraft 2 game. Which would have been awesome, if it had anything to do with competitive eSports or with the main event of this documentary (IEM Katowice). But it was a random non-competitive game using a custom game mode. To top it off, the team who won the game said afterwards (during the interview at the end) that they had already won from the start but they purposefully did not try to win in order to make the game last longer. The rest of the documentary follows a few American League of Legends teams, which are competing to win an international LoL tournament at IEM Katowice. It turned out to not be very interesting for anyone except Americans who play League of Legends themselves, but those people would already have seen the event live, on twitch.TV, a long time ago. Other teams did not get any attention. Other games that were played on IEM Katowice were barely mentioned. And other events were not mentioned at all. eSports is huge nowadays but unfortunately this documentary only shows a single game at a single event and focused purely on a few American teams while ignoring the vast majority of eSports.The only thing that was actually interesting and entertaining about this documentary was experiencing the arrangement of IEM Katowice through the perspective of the organizer of this event, Michael 'Carmac' Blicharz.Seeing this documentary was mostly a waste of time and money, so unfortunately i would not recommend it to anyone.

The film shows that professional gaming is a real industry. The viewer base is growing exponentially. Video games can be more than just button mashing and a waste of time. At the highest level, it requires skill, discipline, sacrifice, team work, and maturity.We see most of the film's journey through the point of view of Michael "Carmac" Blicharz (the man in charge of organizing Intel Extreme Masters (IEM). I've heard of IEM from my Starcraft friends, but the film really gave me a sense of the scale of IEM. It feels like it's kind of like the Masters for golf or the U.S. Open for tennis. Suffice to say, winning one of these is a pretty big accomplishment.We also get perspectives from two of the top League of Legends (LoL) teams - Cloud 9 and Team Solo Mid. Most notably, the players Hai "Hai" Lam and Marcus "Dyrus" Hill.I'm not a League player. My only experience with LoL is playing through the tutorial and a couple of matches.So don't worry if you don't know anything or even care about LoL. The documentary isn't about LoL or is trying to push anyone to play LoL. It only uses LoL as a backdrop and I love the way it presented the rules without overwhelming someone with all the details.The amazing and inspiring thing was finding out rookies can get salaries of $30,000 and some professionals are well into the $100,000+ in earnings. I went in expecting some of them to say, "yea but I also have a day job."I really enjoyed the rivalry and mutual respect between Cloud 9 and TSM. There were moments I wanted to shout USA, USA, USA (I'm a sucker for patriotic moments in any movie).It's also the first time I've heard of Robert Morris University (RMU) and their eSports program. How freaking awesome is that? If I was 18 right now, RMU would definitely be on my list.I've read a lot of reviews that mentioned the documentary didn't create enough of an emotional connection between the characters and the audience. I disagree. I think the film did an excellent job with Carmac and while the film doesn't connect the audience to any single person as well as say, Free to Play or Indie Game the Movie, it did make me feel like I had a stake in certain teams winning.What did annoy me was the top of the heads on some of the interviews were cut off. I just recently took a head shot photography class and I understand it's OK to have a bit of the subject's head being cut off. However, when it comes to movies and especially documentaries, I prefer to see the entire head of the interview subject.I really didn't like the way the film started off. It begins with 30 minutes of Starcraft 2 game play. This was probably done to build hype for Legacy of the Void and has nothing to really do with the film itself.Be sure to stay after the credits roll, because there's an interview panel that provides some interesting insights from Carmac, Patrick Creadon (director), C9's Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi, and Jack Etienne (C9 founder).I've watched Free to Play, Indie Game the Movie, and I Got Next (fighting games documentary) and All Work All Play is my favorite gaming documentary so far.We can debate whether eSports is a sport and if professional gamers should be classified as athletes, but one thing is for sure. It really doesn't matter what you call it. If tons of people want to watch something and will actually pay to watch, it's the real deal.And plus, as gamer myself, it's just so awesome to see people playing games they love and actually making a living out of it!