Indie-viduals: Videogames’ Hegemonic (Re-)Production Culture

Localization from an Indie Game Production Perspective – Why, When and How?

This paper investigates the process of game localization from an indie development perspective. The global nature of the digitally distributed game industry gives opportunities for game studios of all sizes to develop and distribute games on a global market. This poses a challenge for small independent developers with limited resources in funding and personnel, seeking to get as wide spread of their game as possible. To reach the players in other regions of the world localization needs to be done, taking language and other regional differences into consideration. In an AAA or big-budget game production, these questions are handled by separate entities focusing solely on the localization process – but how do small independent game developers handle this? Indie game developers in Sweden, China and India have been interviewed to investigate the research question of how indie game developers handle localization in the development process. The results point to a widespread use of community- and fan translation, and that only basic localization is done i.e. culturalization aspects are not considered. The results also show that the reason for localizing can be both business decisions but also to spread a specific message using games.

Global Influences on Regional Industries; Game development in Nordic countries, China, and India

The game development industry has historically been strongly associated with a few particularly dominant actors, namely Japan and the US. As a result, video game development processes and game content that have originated from these actors are often used as a benchmark for what game development is and can be. Discussing the games industry from these perspectives can, however, gloss over important nuances that make other game development regions unique. With this in mind, this paper intends to discuss the ways in which different cultural and regional contexts are reflected in the structure of local game development industries and, to some extent, in produced game content. To inform this discussion, the authors use the foundation and growth of game development practices in three different regions: the Nordic region, India, and China. These three regions serve as specific exemplifying cases of how video game industries and praxis can take different shapes depending on what resources and components they have available. The paper concludes that all regional games industries and game development practices are heavily influenced by the precedent set by historically dominant actors. This results in game content and development practices that often mimics pre-established standards. But, over time, the conditions surrounding the formation of regional industries manifest themselves in more locally unique content and development processes.

‘If you are feeling bold, ask for $3’: Value Crafting and Indie Game Developers

This paper explores the practices that indie developers deploy to manage the risks they encounter while making, marketing through tools like that digital business card, and selling games. Building on concepts such as indie labour (Browne 2015) and theory-crafting (Paul 2011), this paper explicates the concept of value crafting as a better way to understand indie game developer practices. Indie developers engage in value crafting as a way to construct the value of their game and to sell it to a wide audience. This is reflected in debates about the pricing of indie games - there is no agreed upon standard for contemporary indie games, with price points now ranging from free (with or without in-app purchases) through $30 for individual games. Alongside the uncertainty of how to price a game, developers formulate elaborate marketing plans for various stages of their work, which can include running a Kickstarter campaign, promoting their game via social media, creating, moderating and participating in fan forums, gaining Steam Greenlight access, whether or not to release their game on Early Access, releasing demos, pitching their game to game journalists and local media, finding YouTube and Twitch personalities to play and promote their game, and many other activities. Indies who do all of these things also engage in lengthy discussions with one another to share information, usually incorporating detailed charts, graphs and statistical analyses. These post-mortems of their activities attempt to explain a game’s success or failure, as well as to rhetorically construct a particular activity as successful in some way even if sales figures are low- so it might lay the groundwork for future games, it builds a fan base, it teaches valuable lessons learned, and so on.

Breaking New Ground: Indie Community, Flash, and Newgrounds.com

Game Jams as an Opportunity for Industry Development

Game jams are social events involving the integration of enthusiasts from various game making disciplines (e.g. programming, art, design) to make games under constraints, such as a short fixed time (Goddard et al. 2014) and a common theme (Fowler et al 2013). Research on game jams has suggested that they have the potential to provide an effective and focused experience and that participants gain valuable skills in prototyping and collaboration (Fowler et al. 2013), exploring technology limits, experimenting with interfaces, and exploring themes (Goddard et al. 2014). This paper investigates whether game jams have an effect on the sense of community among developers in a weak and unsupported development ecosystem. Results from two local game jams suggest that they can in fact provide an opportunity for increasing awareness, familiarity, and participation amongst community members, and open up opportunities for identifying potential work partners – all essential elements in the move towards the development of a local games development industry.

B.Sc. Computer Game Development … Why not?

We were motivated to consider proposing/adopting a new curriculum by the decrease in student enrolments currently experienced by our computing science programs. This requirement for re-invigorating program enrollment (“more bums in seats”) provided the initial motivation for exploring potentially relevant curriculum/program changes and additions. Our research indicates that there exists a significant market niche in delivering suitable educational content relevant to the computer game industry. This niche, as yet remains undeveloped by the overwhelming majority of publicly funded university level academic institutions in North America. Acutely aware of the fact that a B.Sc. degree proposal with an emphasis on computer game development will draw both friendly and enemy fire, the curriculum proposed is a careful blend of both the established ACM and IGDA curriculums. It is reasoned that this will not only satisfy game industry needs, but that it will do so without sacrificing curriculum integrity of the computing science component provided by a normal B.Sc Computing Science.

Team Structure in the Development of Game-based Learning Environments

This paper examines the factors related to the composition of a development team of digital Game-Based Learning Environments. The aim is to examine the structure of a development team and the expertise, roles and tasks of team members. This study is part of the research project Human-Centered Design of Game-Based Learning Environments. The overall aim of the project is to construct a multidisciplinary and user-driven process for the development of digital Game-Based Learning Environments. The study was conducted according to the principles of development research and action research. The action research cycles consisted of four game development projects. It was discovered that varied expertise in different disciplines was needed in different phases of development. Guidelines for team structure of Game-Based Learning Environments development were presented in the results. Further research is needed on the development process of Game-Based Learning Environments to enable better collaboration of a multi-disciplinary development team.

The Hegemony of Play

In this paper, we introduce the concept of a “Hegemony of Play,” to critique the way in which a complex layering of technological, commercial and cultural power structures have dominated the development of the digital game industry over the past 35 years, creating an entrenched status quo which ignores the needs and desires of “minority” players such as women and “non-gamers,” Who in fact represent the majority of the population. Drawing from the history of pre-digital games, we demonstrate that these practices have “narrowed the playing field,” and contrary to conventional wisdom, have actually hindered, rather than boosted, its commercial success. We reject the inevitability of these power structures, and urge those in game studies to “step up to the plate” and take a more proactive stance in questioning and critiquing the status of the Hegemony of Play.

WADs, Bots and Mods: Multiplayer FPS Games as Co-creative Media

This paper will focus on the inter-relationships between media, technology and culture as demonstrated by the online multiplayer FPS scene, and will make explicit the degree to which game texts and associated technology facilitate culture and the formation of community, and how in turn such social structures inflect and determine the development of computer games, related Internet technologies and subsequent models for software development and distribution. Beyond the idea of “participatory media”, I argue that multiplayer FPS games have become “co-creative media”; neither developers nor players can be solely responsible for production of the final assemblage regarded as “the game”, it requires the input of both.