Always Be Running
a documentary look at the players and community around the Android: Netrunner game
The Death and Afterlife of Android: Netrunner
Who plays a dead collectible card game? And why?
Those questions kept coming to my mind back in 2018 after I excitedly learned how to play Android: Netrunner (A:NR) and almost immediately thereafter found out the game was being cancelled after six years in production.
A few months prior I had stumbled across an article describing the player-driven community that still surrounds the old Star Wars Collectible Card Game (SWCCG), some eighteen+ years after its discontinuation. Turns out both games have very passionate fans and strong Minnesota connections.
But mostly I was just bummed to learn something new and really cool and then have it be discontinued.
Details: Besides continuing to learn A:NR and bugging the players of the local game store, I filmed the official final last three days of tournaments (Magnum Opus – 2018) at Fantasy Flight Games where over 400 people from all over the world showed up to play one last game.
I interviewed about 40 different players and members of the group hoping to keep the game alive. All interviews were transcribed and a 30-minute story about the community of players was created.
In the intervening years, the players formed their own non-profit 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 Scotland.
Status: In Production with Part Two – October 2025
Follow: If you’d like to stay updated, follow me on Mastodon @tweak@ohai.social and if you’d like to support me in this one-man documentary: https://www.paypal.me/moonpost