Always Be Running
a documentary look at the players and community around the Android: Netrunner game
What happens when a game stops, but the players don’t?
What happens when a community loses the very thing it formed around?
Those questions kept coming to my mind back in 2018 after I excitedly learned how to play the collectible card game Android: Netrunner (A:NR) and almost immediately thereafter found out the game was being cancelled after six years in production.
Android: Netrunner is a two-player asymmetric expandable card game set in a dystopian cyberpunk near-future where elite hackers known as “runners” aim to thwart the control of mega-corporations by hacking into their servers (making a “run”) and preventing them from advancing their agendas. It was designed by Richard Garfield, who also created Magic: The Gathering.
Besides continuing to learn A:NR and bugging the players of the local game store, I filmed the official final 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 40 different players (with backgrounds as lawyers, pharmaceutical researchers, data analysts, and IT professionals, to name a few) 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 since 2018, the players formed their own non-profit to support the game and to publish their own compatible expansions to Android: 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.
While in Edinburgh, I interviewed 42 new and returning players and documented the multi-day tournament.
Status: Rough cut editing phase.
You can still late back on Kickstarter now
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, please join the kickstarter campaign above, or donate directly at: https://www.paypal.me/moonpost
Updates
Oct 24, 2025: WORLDS 2025 FILMED. The trip to Edinburgh to film Worlds 2025 was a success and the event was incredible. Congrats to ZomZraft on the win! Editing prep has begun.
November 2025: All interview transcripts are complete and key moments have been highlighted.
February 2026: Deep in rough-cut editing now. Finding the stories within the story and weaving them together.
March 2026: Rough cut work-in-progress screening at Docuclub to gather feedback about what works or needs attention.