Desirable work: Creative autonomy and the everyday turn in game production

Abstract

Based on an ethnography of gamemaking in the Toronto game development scene, I introduce the concept of the everyday gamemaker to reveal how the everyday turn of game production work has transformed the identities of gameworkers. Whereas, previous research has documented the extensive self-exploitation and willingness of creative workers to accept difficult and precarious working conditions, I uncover how everyday gamemakers “make-do” with these modes of cultural production by their desires to going it alone as independent gamemakers, establish second careers through employment and craft work, and find professional development opportunities to make games. I argue these desires shape the nuanced work and leisure identities of everyday gamemakers and evoke their widespread struggle to achieve creative autonomy in the circuits of game production.

Keywords

Cultural work digital labor ethnography game industry game production gameworkers media production studies working conditions

Introduction

Over the last decade, two critical developments have shaped the creative production of games in the video game industry: more game engines and tools are available for making games, and more distribution platforms are accessible for releasing those games to global audiences. The proliferation of these “open” distribution platforms (e.g. Apple App Store) and “free” production tools (e.g. Unity Editor) has created an everyday turn of game production work: the widespread proliferation of professionalized labor practices and technical standards to hobbyists, amateurs, and professionals alike. Based on an ethnography of gamemaking in the Toronto game development scene, I introduce the concept of the everyday gamemaker to reveal how the everyday turn of game production work has transformed the identities of gameworkers. I apply Stuart Hall’s (1992) notion of a “moveable feast”—the way multiple cultural identities can be shared and transformed over time—to describe how everyday gamemakers share multiple work and leisure identities simultaneously when participating in the activities of gamemaking.

Although the increasing overlap of work and leisure shapes most cultural production scholarship, much has overlooked the desire of creative workers to achieve “good” working conditions, labor practices, and cultural norms. David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker (2011) term “good work” as autonomy, interest and involvement, sociality, self-esteem, self-realization, work–life balance, and security. While my participants desired all these aspects of “good work” like many creative workers in the cultural industries, I found the desire for creative autonomy in the process of gamemaking trumped all. Whereas, previous research has documented the extensive self-exploitation and willingness of creative workers to accept difficult and precarious working conditions, I uncover how everyday gamemakers “make-do” (de Certeau, 1984) with these modes of cultural production by their desires to going it alone as independent gamemakers, establish second careers through employment and craft work, and find professional development opportunities to make games.

I argue these desires shape the nuanced work and leisure identities of everyday gamemakers and evoke their widespread struggle to achieve creative autonomy in the circuits of game production. Furthermore, the proliferation of tools and platforms to make and distribute games in recent years has enabled these desires to emerge across the spectrum of gameworker identities, like playtesters, programmers, and artists, looking to draw pleasure, meaning, and creative fulfillment from their work. Gameworker identities are far messier and more diverse than previously considered, and the emergence of the everyday gamemaker represents the wider desires of cultural workers to achieve creative autonomy in the production of their craft.

Cultural production and creative work

A common perception among creative workers is that cultural production is a labor of love where work and labor is a form of play. Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford (2005), Julian Kücklich (2005), and Ergin Bulut (2020) have critiqued the “work as play” mantras, which fuel these misperceptions. These perceptions contribute to the acceptance of difficult working conditions, including stress, burnout, work–life balance challenges, and health issues (Bulut, 2020). Amanda C. Cote and Brandon C. Harris (2021) recently examined some of these perceptions under the umbrella term of “crunch,” where workers in the game industry consistently perform extended periods of overtime for months on end in 100-hour workweeks. Cote and Harris (2021) found these perceptions are a form of “cruel optimism” (Berlant, 2011) where workers distinguish between “good” and “bad” crunch to accept difficult and precarious working conditions. These forms of self-exploitation are endemic to contemporary cultural production and has been well documented in the music (Threadgold, 2018), film and television (Meneghetti, 2020), and journalism (Cohen and de Peuter, 2020) industries.

The motivations for willing to accept poor working conditions have been analyzed in other cultural industries as well. Gina Neff et al. (2005) interviewed workers in the new media and fashion industries to understand why a normalization of “risk” had been accepted among cultural workers in exchange for autonomy, creativity, and excitement. They outline eight forces, which give rise to this condition of risky labor: the cultural quality of cool, creativity, autonomy, self-investment, compulsory networking, portfolio evaluations, international competition, and fore-shortened careers. Neff et al. found that this internalization of risk might be justified by the expectation of high rewards in the future, such as a major modeling contract or a multi-million dollar share in an intellectual property, even though the numbers of cultural workers who achieve those rewards are minimal.

Kathleen Kuehn and Thomas C. Corrigan (2013) introduce the concept of hope labor: described as “un- or under-compensated work carried out in the present, often for experience or exposure, in the hope that future employment opportunities may follow” (p. 9). Hope labor accounts for the free labor cultural workers invest in exchange for the possibility of becoming employed in their profession. Their definition of hope labor is different from Neff’s (2012) definition of venture labor because “we ultimately know that the realization of our hopes is fundamentally beyond our control” (p. 17). This distinction boils down to a perceived lack of agency with hope labor and a perceived abundance of agency with venture labor. Kuehn and Corrigan (2013) astutely point out that the cause for the rise in the use of hope among cultural workers are that the “contexts of precarity and alienation have created ripe conditions for hope labor’s proliferation” (p. 16).

Brooke Duffy (2016) also found in her study of creative workers in the fashion, beauty, and retail industries that they devote time, energy, and talent to activities that promise substantial material rewards like employment and high earnings, but frequently fail to deliver on these aspirants’ material desires. Duffy found this “aspirational labour” of creative workers to obscure problematic constructions of gender and intersectionalities with class like subjectivities of femininity and access to education, technology, and professional opportunities. Immaterial payment through branding visibility and personal connections in an oversaturated industry ensures many of these creative workers will experience risk unevenly in the hope they will achieve their desires in attaining “good work.” As gamemaking tools and distribution platforms have become ubiquitous and more readily available for everyday gamemakers to produce and release games, a subsequent abundance of games has saturated the market creating an environment where risk is increasingly taken on to achieve discoverability, opportunity, and financial success.

I found numerous instances where gamemakers placed themselves in precarious working situations just so they could make games. Precarious working conditions include low pay, long hours, lack of job security, poor work–life balance, and overextended mental and physical labor (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011). While job security and social welfare are concerns and priorities for everyday gamemakers, creative autonomy trumps all. I found gamemakers will perpetuate industry expectations and perceptions of game production but will also shape available working conditions into leisurely settings to make games on their own terms. I refer to these renegotiated terms as informal working conditions: the process through which workers “make-do” (de Certeau, 1984) with modes of cultural production. This is not to say that gamemakers are completely autonomous in how they make games; rather, they make-do with the available working conditions, labor practices, and industry norms to negotiate their own practices. I build on Brendan Keogh’s (2019) notion of “informal video game development practices” where formal industry modes of production are challenged by gamemakers looking to develop their games in a variety of leisure and work contexts. In a professional industry setting, such as studios and publishers, where employees sign legal contracts that stipulate their working conditions, there is little room for adjustment beyond the initial contract negotiations. Professional developers still have opportunities to appropriate working conditions to their own benefit, such as flexible workhours, but creative autonomy becomes increasingly limited the more closed a studio becomes through legal agreements, such as signing non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses in employee contracts.

While previous literature has drawn attention to gameworkers in these professional industry settings, such as playtesters (Ozimek, 2019), developers (O’Donnell, 2014), independents (Srauy, 2019), community managers (Kerr, 2016), and cultural intermediaries like convention organizers (Parker et al., 2018), I draw attention to the more leisure-based gamemaking activities that reflect ways in which everyday gamemakers renegotiate industry-based rules of engagement. When there are fewer legal contracts, obligations, and expectations, gamemakers have more space and time to contest the modalities of exploitation and oppression in the industry and to choose and perform more desirable working conditions (de Peuter and Young, 2019). Not all gamemakers will choose the most desirable working conditions, as they themselves perpetuate many of these precarious conditions through self-exploitation (Keogh, 2021). But gamemaking has become an everyday activity through the availability of tools, resources, and places to make professional quality games. This means leisure-based activities and practices are rapidly redefining what it means to make a game. As this article will make evident, professional gameworkers enclosed within these industry constraints will find time and space to achieve creative autonomy by either going it alone as independents, establishing a second career in gamemaking from home and other leisure settings, and seeking out professional development opportunities to network and collaborate with their peers in the game development scene.

Methods

This article draws upon a 2-year ethnography of 41 in-depth interviews with nine participants and over 400 hours of participant observations recorded as field notes in the Toronto game development scene from 2014 to 2016 (Young, 2018). Canada is in the global top 5 in terms of employment numbers in the game industry, with Toronto the home to dozens of independent and triple-A studios developing games for mobile and console platforms (Nieborg et al., 2019). Within Toronto, there is a vibrant community of gamemakers who participate in game jams, meetups, and socials, which make the scene an ideal place to learn, network, and make games for the global industry (Young, 2022). I interviewed nine gamemakers three to five times from 2014 to 2016 to follow their gamemaker careers and understand how they used industry tools and resources to create their games during different stages of the gamemaking process. I recorded multiple interviews with fewer participants rather than one interview with more participants because the goal of the project was to follow gamemakers through the process of making games. All participants are referenced under pseudonym names in this article to protect their identities.

While most of these gamemakers worked within the wider game industry as full-time, part-time, and freelance workers, they also participated in a range of leisure activities, such as game jams and home-based projects, which supplemented their skillsets and enhanced their professional aspirations. One-on-one interviews were recorded in person and, sometimes, over the phone when a participant had moved to another city for employment and career opportunities. Interviews followed a semi-structured protocol and lasted between 60 and 90 minutes, which included topics on participants’ career backgrounds, education and training, experiences and aspirations, tools and resources, working conditions, activities in the scene, and perceptions of the local and global game industry. I participated in 71 activities recording over 400 hours of field notes at speaker and micro-talk events, workshops, online and in-person discussion groups for gamemakers, social gatherings, 48- to 72-hour game jams to rapidly develop game prototypes, conversations on social media around in-person events and game industry discourses, and collaborative coworking spaces. This fieldwork is contextualized by a critical discourse analysis of gamemakers’ ecosystem of editors, tools, and resources, as well as news sites, developer forums, and unofficial documentation sites.

Everyday gamemakers

Stuart Hall (1992) referred to identity as a “moveable feast” where it is “formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us” (p. 277). Hall theorized the postmodern subject as an individual that has no fixed, essential, or permanent identity by looking at how globalization and neoliberalism has impacted our modern notions of cultural identity. By de-centering the subject, Hall (1992) emphasized how individuals not only shared multiple identities simultaneously, but also how their identities shifted depending on the cultural systems that influence their everyday life. While Hall’s (1992) focus was on notions of gender, race, and larger social groups, his work is relevant to cultural identities surrounding producers of cultural products—especially when these groups are influenced by effects of globalization and neoliberalism, such as mass migration, increased connectivity, the distribution of labor across geo-political boundaries, precarity and inequity within and across industry sectors, and the breakdown of homogeneous forms of identity.

Hall (1992) also discusses the “unconscious formation of the subject” (p. 287) where identity is formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than innate in consciousness at birth. Individuals inherit identities through established cultural systems of hegemony, such as the dominant discourse of the triple-A publisher business model in the global game industry. Aphra Kerr (2017) has shown how wider cultural industry characteristics, like the economic chain, sales revenues, and market characteristics can create “production logics” like triple-A publisher business models, which impact how creative professions are defined and emerge, retain, and disappear over time. In other words, if the primary discourse of gamemaking is the triple-A publisher business model, and the leading terminology within that discourse to describe gamemakers is developer, then, most gamemakers will self-identify as developers, regardless of the activities they participate in. These unconscious formations of identity, though inherited, can and do shift over time, and cultural systems, such as the game industry, change according to fluctuating norms and trends.

During my ethnography, it was rare for gamemakers to refer to themselves as anything but a developer. Of my nine participants, all of them could be considered professional developers, ranging from full-time employees at a studio or publisher to freelance workers on contract and independent developers creating and publishing their own titles. But the degree of their professionalized status was not always clear-cut as their career developed and their participation in a range of work and leisure-based activities varied. In the following sections, I analyze some of these identities according to three desires I uncovered in my fieldwork: going it alone, second career, and professional development. While these desires emerged in my fieldwork, these desires speak to wider motivations among creative workers to achieve creative autonomy in cultural production over the past two decades.

Going it alone

Going it alone broadly describes a creative worker who decides to work outside of the security or restrictions of an employer thereby taking on the career risk, financial cost, and legal responsibility to autonomously develop and publish cultural products as a business startup. In game production, this is where a gamemaker, or a small team of gamemakers, become independents and form their own studio or collective to produce the game autonomously and outside of employer or publisher restrictions. In this context, going it alone acknowledges a commitment made by a gamemaker to produce their own games, on their own terms, with the hope to continue to make more games if it is financially sustainable for them to do so. In many cases, these gamemakers supplement their independent startup with other sources of income and financial support. It is a risky career choice, but one perceived to be desirable if successful.

From my participants, Cody and Benjamin can be described as going it alone during the entire 2 years of my ethnography. Cody made approximately half-a-dozen small prototype-based games, which he released on his own personal website and several online marketplaces and communities. One of these games he released on the online marketplace, Kongregate. Within the first 2 months, the game had been played over 100,000 times by Kongregate’s player community. Over the next year, Cody released the game on several other websites, which brought the total play count to over 1,000,000. Cody gradually generated consistent monthly income from the ad revenue accumulated from these various online distributors, which enabled him to quit his job as a part-time cook and to make more games full-time.

As his success as a game designer grew, he took on freelance contracts with studios and independent developers to incorporate his art aesthetic into their games. Cody’s goal, though, was to become self-sustainable by generating consistent monthly income from his games and contract work:

I live fairly cheaply and I have, you know, I have [game title], which I’m really lucky that, you know, that pays me enough to, you know, pay my rent each month and food and it just covers that, which is really useful and handy . . . So, I mean like as far as money goes I’m definitely in a lucky situation for that and then the other thing is, the other contracts I’ve done were sort of a little bit of a bonus on top of that which let me buy a little bit . . . and stuff like that. (Cody, Interview 2)

Part of Cody’s strategy to become self-sustainable, outside of continuing to generate revenue and royalties from his games and take on freelance contracts, which bring in a consistent monthly income for him, was to establish a collective with other like-minded gamemakers in Toronto that could mutually benefit from each other’s contacts and resources. This does not mean they would necessarily build games together, though some of them did, but that they collaborate on projects to increase their collective visibility as gamemakers for contracts on games and installations at events and exhibits, and to potentially bring other talented gamemakers into the partnership. Says Cody,

We registered that [collective] as a partnership . . . I don’t really know anything about business stuff. But I’m pretty sure that we have a piece [of] paper somewhere saying that we are a [collective] officially. Yeah, so it’s more just like create a project on a game or something that will allow us to support ourselves, and maybe hire a few cool people. (Cody, Interview 1)

It is notable that this collective is not a corporation or a registered company that produces games, but a partnership agreement that brings in business to benefit the collective. This form of collective effort enables the group to not only reap the profits generated by the group, but also allows them to continue to work on their own game projects and other contract works, while they work on these profit-generating contracts and projects. As such, going it alone, can sometimes mean going it alone together as a collective or studio with shared aims and desires to achieve good work like security and creative autonomy.

Benjamin’s gamemaker career began after high school when he enrolled in a game design program in Toronto. He made games through class projects and at game jams across the city. After graduation, he began to work on a mobile game with a classmate in mid-2015. At the time, Benjamin worked part-time at a retail store while living at home with his parents. This allowed him to save money to make games full-time and start his own registered game company. In late 2015, he quit his job and formed a game studio with his classmate, Andrew, to publish mobile games for iOS and Android. In the following excerpt, Benjamin describes his experiences while forming his game studio:

So, I start my own company and see where this takes me. If I’m ever going to do it, it should be now when there’s less of a risk [emphasis added]. So yeah, hopefully, or, instead of getting a job where in the first year of a small company that can be successful, hopefully. (Benjamin, Interview 1)

Over our five interviews, the company made and released two game titles on the Apple App Store and Google Play. While the games were not financially successful in the sense that they enabled Benjamin and Andrew to subsist on the profits generated, it was important for Benjamin that he gains valuable experience, not just making games, but also learning how to run a company and produce commercial games. The availability of free game production tools, like Unity, and open distribution platforms, like the Apple App Store, enabled Benjamin to startup his studio without the significant costs of acquiring developer tools through venture capital and the time to establish connections with publishers to release his games.

Though Benjamin’s gamemaking activities can be considered a “risk” as his company was not generating enough profit to produce a stable monthly income, he developed his company from his parents’ home, which freed him from the financial burdens of rent, food, and other necessities of living independently. Dave O’Brien and Kate Oakley (2015) argue that the ability of parents to support their children not only through higher education but beyond, such as staying at home without paying rent and borrowing small amounts of funds, has a clear impact on the ability of creative workers from lower-income families from entering professions in the cultural industries.

Gina Neff (2012) refers to this type of risk as “venture labour” where workers think of their jobs as an investment or as having a future payoff other than regular wages. In Benjamin’s case, he established his own company to learn from the experiences of starting that company with minimal risk. Because he lives with his parents, if the company fails to generate profits, Benjamin avoids accumulating significant financial debt, and has the bonus of developing multiple games, which have been released on commercial platforms. In this sense, Benjamin has the luxury of making games without the necessity of designing a game whose aim is to specifically make profits. It is the current condition of creative work that to break into the industry and acquire success and income, workers must first make cultural products in their leisure time (i.e. not working for a wage) to attain visibility and experience. In cultural industries oversaturated with creative workers like the game industry, distinguishing oneself from other qualified and experienced workers is paramount. By going it alone with his business partner, Benjamin added a portfolio of games released on commercial platforms to his credentials that can potentially be leveraged for creative management positions within larger studio and publishers if his business fails. As a self-identified man with access to education and technology resources as well as the protection from the financial burdens of rent, food, and other necessities, Benjamin’s gender and class status meant that his experience of risk is less precarious than those of his female and minoritized peers pursuing the same desire to going it alone (Duffy, 2016).

Second career

A frequent trend among my participants and others in the Toronto scene was the emergence of gamemaking as a second career to their primary career. The opportunity to become a gamemaker as a second career is only made possible by the emergence of free game production tools and open distribution platforms in recent years to make and release games. In many instances, gamemakers worked toward building a reputation as a second career before going it alone and leaving their primary place of employment. For many others, making games as a second career is desirable as it relies on the income and free time provided by their primary career which still enables creative autonomy over the gamemaking process without the career, financial, and legal risk of going it alone. As creative workers hold multiple identities that fluctuate over time, it is not uncommon for workers to navigate back and forth between these desires as they negotiate modes of risk and precarious working conditions alongside their desire to autonomously produce cultural products.

Lisa worked as the UX lead at a major Canadian bank for website and mobile applications in Toronto. While Lisa has experience making games, she did not work on them all the time, so that, she found her experience in certain areas of game production to be limited:

. . . doing a game by yourself is a lot of work, and my development skills are kind of, you know [limited], just because I’m starting off with development really. So, unless I can work in a team with people, I don’t see me getting to where I’d love to be or where I’d really like to be for a while. Hopefully, I can do both at the same time. (Lisa, Interview 1)

Lisa develops these skillsets at game jams and makes small prototypes over a weekend, which she publishes to her personal website, not her professional UX/UI website for clients. Although there is some overlap for Lisa with her experience as a UI/UX designer for banking websites and mobile apps, that experience only crosses over with a specific aspect of game production. To become a gamemaker who can work on larger-scale projects independently, she would need more focused time to become familiar with a game engine and the various technical and functional knowledge that entails. It would require her to work more flexible hours and on projects that had relevant crossovers with her gamemaker aspirations.

As an experienced UI/UX designer, Lisa also worked freelance contracts, which supplemented her income and allowed her to build a clientele. During our interviews, she left her full-time job at the bank to pursue independent work as a UI/UX designer. Part of the reason for this change in employment status was so she could pick and choose more creative opportunities, and spend more time working on becoming a gamemaker:

Freelance is good. I’ve had more time to do things I want. Like work on the site. Pay is probably a lot less. I should probably keep a better track of my finances and actual monthly pay and stuff. It’s probably a lot less money, but it’s not like I’m struggling, so I don’t mind. I’m happier to have some time to do the things that I want to do [emphasis added]. (Lisa, Interview 5)

A desire for creative autonomy over work projects is not just a desire unique to gamemakers, but to all creative workers and their respective industries (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011). In their analysis of the cultural industries, Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011) analyze two types of autonomous work: workplace autonomy and creative autonomy. Workplace autonomy is the “degree of self-determination that individual workers or groups of workers have within a certain work situation” (p. 40). Creative autonomy is the “degree to which ‘art,’ knowledge, symbol-making and so on can and/or should operate independently of the influence of other determinants” (p. 40). While most examples I found can be categorized as workplace autonomy, where gamemakers “make-do” with their situation to be creative, these gamemakers also work on other gamemaking activities simultaneously to achieve creative autonomy. However, Lisa was the only participant who quit her job to attain creative autonomy, not only in her gamemaking projects, but also in her freelance work in UI and UX design. For Lisa, taking a significant cut in income is worth it if she gets to work on the projects she wants to work on. Moreover, getting to work on projects that enable her to use and express her creative-based skills, develops opportunities for her to stamp her mark as a unique artist and designer. What makes Lisa’s comments intriguing is how she balances her life between the work she must do to subsist and the work she wants to do to reach creative autonomy and financial stability. This balancing act reveals many creative workers’ desire for more creative autonomy and the risk they are willing to take to transition from a second career to going it alone.

Clay got into gamemaking during his teens working with level editors and designing board games. He went to university to study the humanities and met his partner there. While she worked on fiction writing, he would work on his gamemaking. Early in their relationship they both got positions as tutors where they would work with children for half the day; spending mornings working on their creative pursuits, and evenings participating in their respective creative scenes. As Clay says,

I had these hours in the morning where she [Clay’s partner] would just lock herself in her room and just write for a few hours and I had nothing to do. So, it was like “oh OK. Well maybe I’ll try to take a stab at making games.” So, when I took this job it was like I know that it always might have been a good idea to get some other job, you know, as a career [emphasis added]. (Clay, Interview 2)

Clay’s situation meant that while he lived on paid work, he could use a significant portion of his day to work on his games, and could then network and show them off to other gamemakers in the scene.

By the time I met Clay, he had been making games as a hobbyist craft for almost a decade, and had become proficient at game design, programming, 2D art creation, and music creation. During our interviews, he was going through the process of forming a company to sell his games commercially. Forming a company and becoming incorporated is a requirement to release a game on commercial platforms, such as the Apple App Store, Valve’s Steam, and Google Play, regardless of any profits made. Although Clay’s aspirations are to one day become an independent developer, gamemaking was still predominantly a leisure pursuit for him as his success as a gamemaker did not determine his financial stability. Clay could experiment, dabble, and not complete any of his games. By our final interview, Clay had released his first commercial game on the Apple App Store, even though he had been a gamemaker for almost a decade.

Like Lisa, Clay kept his job as a tutor precisely because it enabled him to have creative autonomy over his gamemaking activities. Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011) label this type of creative autonomy as “aesthetic” or “artistic” because Clay wants the time to produce the games he wants to make. He has the luxury to fail, which is an indulgence many creatives do not have. For example, Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011) also define “professional” creative autonomy, which is work by creative workers that find creative autonomy in professional projects, such as freelance work for other game companies, like the UI/UX work by Lisa and the art assets produced by Cody. While Clay has fixed hours every day where he tutors, Lisa and Cody take on freelance work, which can potentially lead to an overload of professional work limiting the amount of time they can spend on their own projects. This differentiation is critical because Clay has the time every day to potentially create experimental games, which push the boundaries of what can be considered a game without the stress and risk of producing a game that must be marketed to audiences for profit.

Professional development

A final desire that emerged was a focus on professional development to achieve creative autonomy over the different circuits of game production. Professional development in this context is not necessarily to improve an aspect of workplace autonomy, like studying user research methods to become a better playtester, but learning skills, collaborating on projects or freelance work, and acquiring knowledge to experience different circuits of game production, such as 2D art and programming. In a highly specialized and segmented industry, the ability to have workplace autonomy in a studio or publisher can be extremely limited. As such, the desire for professional development opportunities typically addressed gamemakers’ frustrations in autonomously producing games by pursuing activities that allowed for creative autonomy outside of their workplace.

Margot started her gamemaker career building small games in high school with role-playing game (RPG) maker 2000, which allows gamemakers to build RPGs. She later went to a 3D animation school and worked for several animation studios before moving into the game industry as an animator for console-based studios. She then worked for a major media publisher in their games department before moving to Toronto to work as a lead artist for a PC-based game company. From there, she transitioned to art director for a mobile game publisher. Margot’s career is very uncommon in the game industry, but frequently desired by gamemakers: working for industry studios and publishers, moving from entry-level developer to lead and creative developer, and gradually increasingly your role as the creative designer on game projects.

However, throughout her gamemaker career, she experienced layoffs, sexual harassment, and precarious contracts, which meant she had to constantly move around and search for new work. This was particularly evident when she contemplated leaving her current position as an art director, because of issues with male colleagues at her mobile game studio:

I think he feels threatened because I’m this young person who was brought in to run “his” department. This young woman was brought in to run “his” department and he’s like, “She’s not even a mobile game person she’s a video game person.” And I think that really scares him . . . I’ve been actively looking to move on. I have like zero trust now, and it’s just kind of like, the money’s great, it’s like a “good role,” but I don’t want to be there. (Margot, Interview 2)

Over our next several interviews, Margot’s relationship with several of her colleagues continued to deteriorate. She began to look for work elsewhere in Toronto, preferably in a similar management position to the one she currently had, and she also started to focus on other gamemaker activities, such as making prototypes with her partner at game jams, creating art assets to add to her portfolio, participating in gamemaker workshops, and attending socials.

These professional development activities were Margot’s way of enjoying gamemaking outside of her role as an art designer, and to continue to develop her skills and understanding of gamemaking. As Margot clarifies, gamemaking is something she is passionate about, and not being able to enjoy, let alone, work on games at her mobile studio is why she makes games at home and at game jams:

I have very separate projects at work and at home. I don’t normally think about my work projects at home, partially because they’re dreadfully boring . . . It’s like, who cares? But at home, it’s like, I can really dig into stuff that I’m actually interested in, and I learn a lot of new stuff and then that stuff that I learn I take back to my day-to-day life and in the workplace, and I can share what I’ve learned with people. (Margot, Interview 2)

For Margot, gamemaking is more than just a job or a profession, it’s a craft and an activity that she dedicates her work and leisure time to. However, Margot faces harassment, sexism, and misogyny daily from male colleagues who undermine her contributions to the workplace. These gendered issues in the workplace are endemic to the game industry (de Castell and Skardzius, 2019).

For Margot, working on games outside of her studio not only allowed her to achieve creative autonomy over the processes of game production, but also enabled her to transcend the misogyny, sexism, and harassment, which prevented her from working and enjoying the process of making games. Focusing on activities like game jams allows Margot to achieve creative autonomy over the circuits of game production—versus workplace autonomy over the processes tied to her position within a game company—emphasize how many professional gameworkers become everyday gamemakers through dissatisfaction in their workplace. Duffy (2016) has found that creative workers pursue these kinds of creative activities as it holds the promise of social and economic capital, even though the reward system for these workers is highly uneven. Duffy (2016) identified three salient features of these aspirational creative workers: authenticity and the celebration of “realness”; the instrumentality of affective relationships; and entrepreneurial brand devotion. Margot’s situation resonates with the “instrumentality of affective relationships” where she built active relationships with other gamemakers and organizations outside of her company to develop games. The drive to participate and control the creative act of gamemaking is one, which most, if not all, gamemakers’ desire.

Cameron began his gamemaker career in a game development program in Toronto, with a focus in programming and design. When he was in high school, Cameron held a summer job at a mobile game company as a playtester. While he was at the game development program, he maintained this summer position within the company. After graduation, the company offered him a contract as a full-time playtester with some responsibility as a game designer where he would focus on playtesting but could also assist the game designers in their design work. However, the position was not as desirable as one would think. As Cameron explains,

I’ve been trying to constantly shift my area of expertise to do something that they will hire me for [other than playtester], that they will let me like advance to. Whether it’s they need a 3D animator, “Well, let me just whip up a 3D animation portfolio in a month.” That didn’t happen, because that doesn’t happen. You just don’t get that good at something in such a short amount of time. Or like 2D artist, or 3D modeler, programmer. You don’t get good by trying to do those things for a month and then hoping that you have something good by the end of it. And that’s kind of the same reason that all my experience is doing game jams every year. (Cameron, Interview 1)

Like Margot, Cameron works on games at home or at game jams so he can develop his skills over time. Participating in community activities like game jams—where gamemakers collaborate to produce a game in 48–72 hours—is one particular activity where gamemakers have the time and space to achieve creative autonomy over the different circuits of game production. Ultimately, Cameron wants to shift away from his position as a playtester and become a full-time developer working as a programmer, 2D artist, or 3D modeler. The issue for Cameron though, is that he does not have professional experience in those areas, and developing his portfolio is perceived as the best approach to showcase his experience to employers.

This balancing act between work and leisure activities underlines how gamemaking is a way of life for some creators, and the context in which they make games does not always matter to them: what matters is that they continue to make games, regardless of their employment situation, and that they get creative autonomy in the gamemaking process. Making games at home is a way for Cameron to participate in the activities of gamemaking, which he does not get to work on in his full-time job as a playtester. Furthermore, there is a simultaneous frustration for Cameron because he can learn these skills and get quite proficient at them, but he cannot use them on any of the projects at his workplace. As such, Cameron’s desire to make games at home is doubly fueled by his ambitions as a gamemaker and his lack of professional opportunities to practice his newly crafted skills. Cameron is therefore in the precarious position of constantly improving his portfolio and skills without any guarantee of an opportunity to achieve his career goal of becoming a professional developer.

Ergin Bulut (2020) argues that playtesters participate in the “degradation of fun” where they are alienated from play and forced to develop instrumental and selective ways of play, such as repeating the same game mechanic repeatedly. In addition to Bulut’s (2020) definition, I argue that this “degradation of fun” is specifically designed by the game industry to remove testers from the processes of game development. Playtesters are typically only given access to game builds, which are pre-release versions of the game. In most, if not all cases, playtesters do not have access to the engine and tools the game is developed on. In short, playtesters, compared to other gamemakers, are the most removed from the creative process of game production. As such, for gamemakers like Cameron, who know how to make games, this is not only frustrating, but also removes them from the possibility of applying for and getting other developer roles within the company because they are the people who “play” games and not the people who “make” games.

Conclusion

Hall’s (1992) theorization of cultural identity as a “moveable feast” shows how the desires of gameworkers seeking creative autonomy has led to the emergence of everyday gamemakers, which shape how they associate with the craft of gamemaking in their work and leisure environments. As the experiences of my participants demonstrate there are a variety of gamemaking activities (e.g. game jams) outside the professionalized notions of game developers that enable these desires to occur. The aim of this article is to include a profile of the range of everyday gamemakers that contribute to the economic and cultural value of the game industry. Most of my participants share aspects of both professional and leisure game production, which come to shape their gamemaker identities in interesting and nuanced ways. This trend is not unique to the game industry as creative workers in multiple media and cultural sectors leverage their leisure, craft, and passion to achieve desirable work in increasingly platformized modes of cultural production that restrict creative autonomy through closed technical infrastructures, publisher business models, and tight governance protocols (Poell et al., 2021).

Over time, these identities shift according to the work or employment that brought in my participants’ sources of income. For example, Cody, Benjamin, Lisa, and Clay were in financial situations where they had the creative autonomy to work on games for several hours daily either as their main or second career. However, the motivations for these gamemakers are tied to their desire to achieve creative autonomy and not workplace autonomy, which has been enabled by the proliferation of gamemaking tools and distribution platforms available for producing and releasing games outside of the triple-A industry. For some, such as Margot and Cameron, this meant they could work on their own game projects outside of their industry profession. Others, like Cody and Benjamin, took on freelance contracts and managed their own studios and collectives, which enabled them to place their creative stamp on a game. This struggle to make games and find “good work” like desirable working conditions, labor practices, and industry cultural norms constantly motivates the actions of everyday gamemakers.

While the game industry establishes the terms through which these gamemakers create their games, gamemakers shape these creative processes of development to produce the games they want to make. Though it is acknowledged that these games are, in several ways, created through an industry pipeline of production, gamemakers challenge what it means to make games by taking on work and employment that meets their desire for creative autonomy in game production. In short, they “make do” with their situation so they can keep making games and attain pleasure, meaning, and creative fulfillment in their craft. To “make do” with modes of cultural production to achieve creative autonomy is not exclusive to the game industry and would explain why many creative workers undertake significant career, financial, and legal risk to achieve their desires in going it alone as independents, establish second careers to perform their craft autonomously, and find professional development opportunities to be part of the “scene” in cultural production communities.

In the years since completing this ethnography, access to professional quality game production tools and resources has greatly increased (Nicoll and Keogh, 2019), as has the ability for gamemakers to release those games on commercial marketplaces like app stores and console platforms (Kerr, 2017). While I am hopeful for the opportunities this brings to people entering the craft of gamemaking, recent research has demonstrated that incumbent studios and publishers control the revenue streams that gamemakers desire to continue making games (Nieborg et al., 2020). As these avenues of financial stability wither for everyday gamemakers, I fear precarious working conditions and labor practices will not only mitigate entry into gamemaking for most, particularly women and minoritized workers who have been historically marginalized in the desired circuits of production, but also eliminate the pleasure and joy gamemakers find in making games. As labor organizing movements begin to take form across several cultural industries (see Cohen and de Peuter, 2020), including the game industry (Weststar and Legault, 2019), in addition to creating safer, healthier, and equitable working conditions for creative workers, these movements also need to find ways to negotiate desirable working conditions and move beyond the exploitative and self-exploitative labor practices and industry norms of contemporary cultural production.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) under grant 137141.

ORCID iD

Chris J Young

Author biography

Chris J Young (PhD, University of Toronto) is a librarian at the University of Toronto Mississauga. His research interests include media industries, digital labor, and app economies. Some of his recent work has appeared in Television & New Media, Social Media + Society, and Canadian Journal of Communication.

References

Berlant

(2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Bulut

(2020) A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Cohen

de Peuter

(2020) New Media Unions Organizing Digital Journalists. New York: Routledge.

Cote

Harris

(2021) The cruel optimism of “good crunch”: how good industry discourses perpetuate unsustainable labor practices. New Media & Society. Epub ahead of print 7 May. DOI: 10.1177/14614448211014213.

de Castell

Skardzius

(2019) Speaking in public: what women say about working in the video game industry. Television & New Media 20(8): 836–847.

de Certeau

(1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

de Peuter

Dyer-Witheford

(2005) A playful multitude? Mobilising and counter-mobilising immaterial game labour. The Fibreculture Journal 5. Available at: https://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-024-a-playful-multitude-mobilising-and-counter-mobilising-immaterial-game-labour/

de Peuter

Young

(2019) Contested formations of digital game labor. Television & New Media 20(8): 747–755. DOI: 10.1177/1527476419851089.

Duffy

(2016) The romance of work: gender and aspirational labour in the digital culture industries. International Journal of Cultural Studies 19(4): 441–457.

10.

Hall

(1992) The question of cultural identity. In: Mcgrew

Hall

Held

(eds) Modernity and Its Futures. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 274–316.

11.

Hesmondhalgh

Baker

(2011) Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries. London: Routledge.

12.

Keogh

(2019) From aggressively formalized to intensely in/formalized: accounting for a wider range of videogame development practices. Creative Cultural Industries 12(1): 14–33.

13.

Keogh

(2021) Hobbyist game making between self-exploitation and self-emancipation. In: Sotamaa

Švelch

(eds) Game Production Studies. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, pp. 29–46.

14.

Kerr

(2016) Recruitment, work, and identity in community management: passion, precarity, and play. In: Webster

Randle

(eds) Virtual Workers and the Global Labour Market. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 117–135.

15.

Kerr

(2017) Global Games: Production, Circulation and Policy in the Networked Era. London: Routledge.

16.

Kücklich

(2005) Precarious playbour: modders and the digital games industry. Fibreculture Journal 5. Available at: https://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-025-precarious-playbour-modders-and-the-digital-games-industry/

17.

Kuehn

Corrigan

(2013) Hope labor: the role of employment prospects in online social production. The Political Economy of Communication 1(1): 9. https://polecom.org/index.php/polecom/article/view/9

18.

Meneghetti

(2020) The paradoxes of precarious labour in observational documentaries today. New Review of Film and Television Studies 182: 190–213.

19.

Neff

(2012) Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovation Industries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

20.

Neff

Wissinger

Zukin

(2005) Entrepreneurial labor among cultural producers: “cool” jobs in “hot” industries. Social Semiotics 15(3): 307–334.

21.

Nicoll

Keogh

(2019) The Unity Engine and the Circuits of Cultural Software. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

22.

Nieborg

Young

Joseph

(2019) Lost in the app store: the political economy of the Canadian game app economy. Canadian Journal of Communication 44(2): 57–62. DOI: 10.22230/cjc.2019v44n2a3505.

23.

Nieborg

Young

Joseph

(2020) App imperialism: the political economy of the Canadian app store. Social Media + Society 6(2): 1–11. DOI: 10.1177/2056305120933293.

24.

O’Brien

Oakley

(2015) Cultural value and inequality: a critical literature review. A Report Commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project. Available at: https://ahrc.ukri.org/documents/project-reports-and-reviews/cultural-value-and-inequality-a-critical-literature-review/

25.

O’Donnell

(2014) Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

26.

Ozimek

(2019) Outsourcing digital game production: the case of polish testers. Television & New Media 20(8): 824–835.

27.

Parker

Whitson

Simon

(2018) Megabooth: the cultural intermediation of indie games. New Media & Society 20(5): 1953–1972.

28.

Poell

Nieborg

Duffy

(2021) Platforms and Cultural Production. Cambridge: Polity Press.

29.

Srauy

(2019) Precarity and why indie game developers can’t save us from racism. Television & New Media 20(8): 802–812.

30.

Threadgold

(2018) Creativity, precarity and illusio: DIY cultures and “choosing poverty..” Cultural Sociology 12(2): 156–173.

31.

Weststar

Legault

M-J

(2019) Building momentum for collectivity in the digital game industry. Television & New Media 20(8): 848–861.

32.

Young

(2018) Game changers: everyday gamemakers and the development of the video game industry. PhD diss., University of Toronto. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/1807/89734

33.

Young

(2022) Scene tracing: the replication and transformation of global industry, movements, and genres in local game production. Lateral 11(1). DOI: 10.25158/L11.1.4.