Production Story

How Always Be Running Was Made

Besides continuing to learn and play Android: Netrunner and bugging the players of the local game store, I filmed the last official three days of tournament play (Magnum Opus – 2018) at Fantasy Flight Games (the game's former publisher) in Roseville, Minnesota, where over 400 people from all over the world showed up to play one last game.

I interviewed 40 different players (with backgrounds as lawyers, pharmaceutical researchers, data analysts, and IT professionals, to name a few) and ad-hoc members of the coalescing group hoping to keep the game alive. All interviews were transcribed and an initial 30-minute unpublished short about the community of players was created.

In the intervening years since 2018, I’ve continued to casually play and the players formed their own non-profit (Null Signal Games) to support the game and to publish their own compatible expansions to Netrunner. This led to wanting to tell even more of the story and to follow up, now seven years later, at Worlds 2025 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

While in Edinburgh, I interviewed 40+ new and returning players and documented the multi-day tournament that was held at the beautiful Dovecot Studios, a tapestry studio, gallery, and cafe in an historic former bath house.

Artwork Commission

I just had to have a Netrunner card artist create custom art for the film's poster and identity, especially since a big part of Netrunner is the creation and collection of alternate-art cards made by the players. After reaching out to a couple sources, I contacted Matheus Calza in Brazil for the job. I think the results are stellar and my email descriptions were somehow made even better than I expected!

Production Process & Gear

The Worlds tournament livestreams were produced by dodgepong (2018) and Cado (2025), who brought their advanced technical wizardry to share the games with the public. I witnessed them toiling for very long hours and they did stellar, incredible work (as did all the volunteers at Worlds! truly amazing!)

The soundtrack to the film was licensed from Tripp Mirror, a Netrunner player and musician who has produced seven albums of Netrunner-inspired electronic music.

The 2018 segments were filmed in 4k video on a Sony FS7 camera with the Sony 28-135mm lens and Sony wireless lavaliere microphones. The 2025 segments were filmed in 4k on a Sony FX6 and Sony A7IV with 24-70mm, 24-105mm, and 70-200mm lenses and Hollyland Lark Max 2 microphones. Additional footage was filmed with an iPhone 17 Pro Max. Transcripts were done with MacWhisper. The film was edited, mixed, graded, etc, in Final Cut Pro on a Mac Studio computer with an Areca RAID server, dual 27" monitors, and Mackie studio speakers.

Funding

This documentary film was paid for out of my own time and my own personal funds and with the backing of some really amazing kickstarter patrons who donated $7290 USD to the project.