The Independent Production of Culture: A Digital Games Case Study

Abstract

Throughout the community of game players, developers, and journalists, the term ``independent'' is used in a number of ways to describe a type of development next to, or juxtaposed with, the mainstream process of creating, marketing, distributing, and playing digital games. Yet, this ``independence'' is something quite different from what the literature on independent, alternative, oppositional, radical, or otherwise nonmainstream media tends to suggest or advocate. The contemporary context of game design and development practices throughout the industry forces us to rethink assumptions about independence and autonomy in creative labor, about the communicative practices between media companies across the entire business spectrum of the global media industry, and about diversity or homogeneity in the production of culture. In this article, we aim to articulate more precisely what it means to create, work in, and give meaning to independent computer and video game production.