An upcoming event at The Music Hall will include a gaming party and a screening of video game-making documentary ‘Indie Game”

Boston video game maker Ichiro Lambe says most games start with a simple idea stemming from the phrase, “Wouldn’t it be really neat if...”

Lambe’s independent game development studio, Dejobaan Games, is currently at work on a new game called “Drunken Robot Pornography” (not nearly as R-rated as it sounds). The genesis of that title came out of a conversation that went something like this: “Wouldn’t it be really neat if you could run around with a jetpack and fight giant robots? That sounds really great, let’s prototype that out.”

“Drunken Robot” will be Dejobaan’s 16th game, following the indie studio’s 2009 release—take a deep breath—“AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!” (pronounced like someone screaming as they fall a great distance). “It’s a base jumping game where you leap off a perfectly good building, you create your own stunts for points, and then you flip people off for more points,” Lambe explains.

Guests at The Music Hall in Portsmouth on Thursday, Aug. 9, will be able to meet Lambe and try “Aaaaa,” along with several other new video games, before and after watching the documentary, “Indie Game: The Movie.” Part of the theater’s Wildcard Movies series, the event will include a screening of the film and a gaming party where guests can play games at five different stations, including on the big screen.

The documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and took home an award for Best Editing, follows a handful of obsessive indie game developers as they painstakingly labor to create new video games. It focuses on two creative teams, each consisting of two people, as they battle against the clock and dwindling funds to reveal their creative visions to the world.

According to Portsmouth video game writer Chris Dahlen, the film’s appeal stretches beyond the hardcore gaming community.

“What makes the movie compelling is definitely the stories of the people they focus on,” said Dahlen, who also makes a brief appearance in the film. “It’s always about the people, so whether you’re passionate about games or you never play games, it’s very easy to follow that story and find it compelling.”

Lambe said the story concept for “Aaaaa” arose after he learned about the extreme sport of base jumping.

“My creative guy Dan (Brainerd) and I, in late 2008, were looking at videos of these crazy base jumpers just flying off the sides of mountains,” he said. “It just looked like so much fun that we decided to take an earlier title that we wrote and say, ‘What if we were to take the buildings of this game and the physics of this game and just drop the player off the side of a building? What would that be like?”

The game turns base jumping into an urban sport in Boston. Players score points for gliding close to buildings, giving a thumbs-up to fans and flipping off protesters, and tagging government buildings with spray paint. Dejobaan’s new “semi-sequel,” which will be available to play at The Music Hall, includes the full original game with a bunch of new levels and a faster wingsuit.

Lambe started making video games as a hobby in high school, selling his first game in 1988. His interest began even earlier, when his father taught him how to use a computer as a child. While most dads played catch with their kids, Lambe’s father sat him in front of a monitor and showed him how to play games.

“I just loved it, all these things moving around on the screen. You could create your own world of things that just had their own minds,” he said. “By the early ’80s, I was just hooked, and I knew this is what I wanted to do.”

Though he earned a degree in physics, Lambe spent his spare time programming and landed his first job with a development company in 1993. He founded Dejobaan in 1999 and launched its first game, “MarbleZone,” that same year.

Running an independent studio isn’t easy. It requires long hours, endless meetings and late-night coding sessions, Lambe said. But being able to indulge his artistic whims and create whole virtual worlds makes it all worth while.

“It’s nothing short of wonderful,” he said. “This is what I’ve always wanted to do my entire life. You put your heart and soul into these games, and if you’re very lucky and smart, you get to sit there day after day working on these problems that you create.”

Video game development, Lambe said, entails the confluence of three fields: art (to come up with the designs and story arcs), science (for the programming and graphics), and business (to fund, market and sell the products).

“I get a great deal of artistic satisfaction by creating something, and as an indie developer, I can pretty much create what I want,” he said.

Chris Dahlen’s initiation into the world of game development came more recently. He’s been a video game journalist since about 2005, writing for publications like Paste, Variety, Slate and Edge. He co-founded gaming magazine Kill Screen and served as its editor until last year, when he decided to try his hand at development. 

His first gig was as a writer on Facebook’s version of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

He is also a writer on “Mark of the Ninja,” a new game set for release next month from indie studio Klei Entertainment.

“That was my first kind of big scripting job in writing scenes and writing dialogue and audio logs and stuff for a video game,” he said.

Working “in the trenches” has given Dahlen a new perspective on the video game industry. He’s been working on “Mark of the Ninja” for close to a year and has been receiving pilot versions from the studio since last October.

“I’ve played version after version after version and seen how they’ve changed different mechanics, seen how they’ve tried different things with the interface, and seen how some ideas that we were excited about didn’t work out and other ones became much better,” he said. “It’s really hard work, but it’s creative and it’s exciting and no two projects are the same.”

Independent game developers have been around for as long as video games, themselves. Some of the earliest prototypes began with individuals self-publishing games in their bedrooms for fun, Dahlen said.

“The first games that ever came out in the ’70s and early ’80s were people selling floppy disks that they just put in zip-lock bags with a photocopied manual,” he said. “Some really good game franchises started out that way.”  

Today, indie game makers range from small, one- or two-person teams to larger studios with dozens of employees. Some of the biggest successes of the last few years, like “Minecraft” and “Spelunky,” were created by individuals on tiny budgets but have grown into major hits published by Microsoft and released on Xbox.

Online tools like GameMaker can help people create their own games, and online distributors like Steam can help release them to the public. Mobile applications for phones and iPods have dramatically boosted the indie game scene. 

According to Lambe, the expansive but tight-knit community of indie game makers is a big part of the industry’s appeal.

“Across the U.S. and worldwide, indie developers tend to form communities and are very open about their successes and their problems,” he said.

Dahlen hopes to bring the gaming community, as well as non-gamers, to The Music Hall on Thursday. He’s been helping to organize the event, along with Joe Hinkle, who first suggested bringing “Indie Game” to the venue, and Doug Wilson, of studio Die Gute Fabrik. Among the easy-to-learn games they plan to include are “Super Meat Boy” and “Braid,” both featured in the movie, as well as “Aaaaa,” “Hokra,” “Proteus,” “B.U.T.T.O.N.” and others.

Dahlen said the party is modeled after similar indie gaming events like IndieCade or the Game Developers Conference in California.

“There’s this tradition of, people go out and just throw a party, either for a day or as part of a conference, and it’s just a chance for people to come out and just play a bunch of games, including games that haven’t been released,” he said.

There will be five playing stations set up in the upper and lower lobbies of The Music Hall, plus one in the main theater. Although the movie doesn’t start until 7:30 p.m., doors open at 6, and the event will continue after the film.

“You see the movie and then you can walk out and play the games that are in the movie, and play some other really cool new games,” Dahlen said.

The event begins at 6 p.m. on Aug. 9 at The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 603-436-2400, www.themusichall.org. Tickets are $9.

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