Know Your History: 10 Video Game Documentaries You Need to Watch

Video game documentaries have come a long, long way.

From nightly news asides about how "video games aren't for kids anymore" to brilliant films like The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and Valve's Free to Play, the subject of video games, and its various cultural sub-strata , are fascinating to dissect.

Where once video games were merely catalogued and organized in a historical context, the films on this list humanize every component of the gaming world. Programming, publishing, competing, creating, and failing are all given their time center stage.

These are 10 of the best video game documentaries you need to watch.

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Less of a video game and more of a complete full-time lifestyle, Minecraft has been released on nearly every platform available.

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang is a Kickstarter funded documentary that charts the game's global appeal and follows creators Marcus "Notch" Persson and Jens "Jeb" Bergensten as their title goes from concept to reality. Minecraft has been optioned for a feature film and has even achieved that enviable pop-culture accolade of being dissected on South Park.

Minecraft is a phenomenon and The Story of Mojang is a brilliant first step in appreciating the game.

As the Game Boy continues to celebrate its 25 year anniversary, what better way to look back than a documentary that dissects the game that made the Game Boy a household name: Tetris.

This documentary follows the greatest world champion Tetris players as they prepare for the Classic Tetris World Championship. Tetris is often pointed to as a game that is perfect insofar as that it can't be improved upon. This documentary chronicles the almost 30 years of Tetris existence here in the States and even touches on the mystery surrounding the disappearance of former Tetris Nintendo World Champion Thor Aackerlund.

Back before we were all wired into consoles, smartphones, and tablets, leaving your house was the easiest, and in some places, the only, way to play video games.

During the early, disco-heydays of video games, arcades ruled the world. Pac-Man Asteroids, and Donkey Kong devoured quarters by the billions and ushered in a new gilded age for arcade owners and fans alike.

The documentary follows Walter Day and his world-famous Twin Galaxies arcade when video game champs were treated like rock stars and gaming got its first tentative hold in the main-stream conciousness.

And just like that, arcades were dealt a death blow by the arrival of home consoles. The once very public forum utilized to talk all of the shit, and back it up, quickly became a relic of by-gone era.

Not so in New York's Chinatown Fair arcade. The breeding grounds for some of the most accomplished and talented fighting game competitors in the world cut their teeth in the arcade. Two of the greatest—EMP Triforce and Justin Wong—were products of the fighting game scene in New York's Chinatown Arcade.

This documentary looks at what it takes to be a top-level fighting game competitor, warts and all.

Valve's documentary, FREE TO PLAY is the feature-length documentary that follows three pro gamers from around the world as they compete for a million dollar prize in the very first Dota 2 International Tournament.

Dota 2, alongside League of Legends, are largely responsible for the seismic shift in the popularity and mainstreaming of ESports. Valve takes a very real, and very human, look at the challenges and sacrifices these top-tier athletes contend with in order to compete at the professional level. Even if you've never played a MOBA and don't know what Dota may be, this documentary is a brilliant character study of those who seek to compete on the global stage.

Everybody knows what Street Fighter is.

Thanks to almost three decades of cultural relevancy, the series has a proven longevity few other series can match. Last year, Capcom celebrated the 25th anniversary of the venerated franchise and release this documentary charting the game's continued popularity.

From fans, to pro-gamers, to the developers responsible for the many installments of Street Fighter, I Am Street Fighter focuses on what has made the series such a pop-culture mainstay.

While World of Warcraft spent over a decade with its boot on the neck of the MMO world, Blizzards massively multiplayer online (MMO) title may have waned in popularity in recent years.

Second Skin offers a look at how MMOs provide a deeper form of escapism and immersion than your average console title. The people portrayed in this film discuss their obsession with the game and how it offers them a way for dealing with a sometimes less than welcoming reality.

This 2004 documentary looks like it was shot in the late '90s.

Lots of b-roll of midnight launches and game trailers, its got the MTV school of film-making stink all over it. But, Tony Hawk, a man who made a considerable portion of his fortune from video games, narrates and that makes the 'extreme' tone a bit more palatable.

More of an all-encompassing history of video games, Video Game Invasion covers everything from the arcades through the release of the first Xbox and touts the economic viability of the video game industry.

Easily one of the most watchable and engaging entries on this list, Indie Game:The Movie took Netflix by storm and made games like FEZ, Braid, and Super Meat Boy household names to massive swaths of the non-gaming populace.

Following three teams of independent developers as they navigate the emotional and bureaucratic obstacles of self-publishing, Indie Game:The Movie is an often heart-breaking look at developers and their devotion to their craft. A phenomenal doc that will appeal to anyone, regardless of their knowledge of gaming.

Probably the one documentary on this list that your family members have seen and talked about with you to no end.

Everyone loves Donkey Kong, right?

The competitive arcade scene of the 1980s was far more fascinating than we could've possibly imagined. Following perfect mullet owner and hot sauce baron Billy Mitchell and homespun hero, Steve Wiebe as they battle to beat one another's high scores on Donkey Kong.

Packed with drama, betrayal, and good old fashioned heart break, The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters is the high water mark for video game documentaries.