[DiGRA Italia] Indie Game Studies workshop at DiGRA 2018 - Turin, Italy

Tue Apr 10 18:14:41 UTC 2018

(apologies for cross-posting)

Dear list,
I will be coordinating the Indie Game Studies workshop at DiGRA 2018 in
Turin, Italy. The workshop is tentatively scheduled on July 24th,
2:30-6:30pm.
The workshop is a 5-years late 'sequel' to the Indie Game Studies panel
organised at DiGRA 2013 in Atlanta (GA) – more info below.

Places will be limited to a selected number of participants who intend to
bring their contribution as researcher and/or practitioners. If you would
like to join the workshop as a participant, please send an email to
contact at paoloruffino.com by Friday 25th May 2018 and include bio,
affiliation, and a short statement about your involvement and interest in
the study of independent forms of video game development (max 250 words).
If you would like to be considered as a speaker, please include a
description of your contribution (max 500 words).

If you are interested in the theme of the workshop but are still undecided
regarding your participation at the conference in Turin, please get in
touch with me, and I’ll keep you updated on the results and on any outcome
(publications, conferences, etc.) which might follow.

Confirmed participants include:

Casey O’Donnell (Associate Professor at Michigan State University, USA)
Celia Pearce (Associate Professor of Game Design at Northeastern
University, USA)
Emma Westecott (Associate Professor in Game Design and Director of
game:play at OCAD University, Canada)
Jonathan Lessard (Professor of Game Designer at Concordia University,
Canada)
Carl Therrien (Professor in Game Studies at Université de Montreal, Canada)
Nadav Lipkin (Assistant Professor of Media, Communication and Technology at
La Roche College, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
And myself, Paolo Ruffino (Lecturer in Media Studies at University of
Lincoln, UK).

Best,

-

*Indie Game Studies workshop *
July 24th at DiGRA 2018 conference (Turin, Italy)

At DiGRA 2013 (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA), the Indie
Game Studies panel and dedicated issue of the journal *Loading…*, curated
by Prof Bart Simon, brought the emerging forms of independent game
development to the attention of game scholars (Parker 2014). Five years
later, the indie scene has become richer and varied, and has been adapting
to mutating contexts of production and distribution. Festivals, incubators
for start-ups and small companies, workshops and mentoring schemes, have
been proliferating in the USA, Canada, Australia, Northern Europe, and the
United Kingdom. Numerous independent companies have been founded in the
geographical areas where the video game industry was already solid, and a
significant presence is establishing in parts of the world that have been
traditionally distant from the main hubs of video game development.

While the differences (economic, managerial, ideological) with the
mainstream productions have always been contested, the recent proliferation
of independent companies has further confused the boundaries that appeared
to separate the independent territories from the ‘official’ video game
industry. In 2013 the trade association TIGA estimated that in the United
Kingdom ‘83% of all studios that started up in 2011 and 2012 were
independent (as opposed to publisher owned)’ (TIGA 2013). It has been
estimated that, in 2014, 95% of video game companies in the United Kingdom
were micro or small businesses, according to NESTA (2014) and the British
government (GOV.uk 2014). In Australia, independent companies now form the
‘backbone’ of game development (Apperley and Golding 2015, 61; Banks and
Cunningham 2016). In 2013, a survey involving 2,500 North American game
developers revealed that 53% of them identified as ‘indie’ (GDC 2013), and
a subsequent survey by IGDA revealed that 48% of US game developers
self-identified as independent (IGDA 2014). Independence is no longer a
marginal or alternative mode of production, if it ever was, but the most
common type of organization within the video game industry. It appears that
almost every game developer is now partially or temporarily ‘indie’ within
their career, and the trend is expected to grow, consistently with the
recent developments of the cinema, music, and fashion industries
(Hesmondhalgh 2013, McRobbie 2016).

The workshop will explore the current state, meanings, and values
associated with independence in video game culture, through a series of
contributions and findings that analyse the domain from different
perspectives, disciplines and geographical specificities. What is at stake,
in 2018, when making claims of autonomy, self-management, and creative
control? Are indie games helping improve the diversity deficit in
gamemakers and audiences? Is there still room for independence, in a
production context where short-term contracts, individualism, and financial
risks are considered necessary to be involved in game development?

The workshop picks up where the 2013 DiGRA panel left off, bringing
together the most current research and theorizing on the topic of “indie
game studies.” Speakers, including some of from the original panel in
Atlanta, will present and compare research in a series of short (10-15
minutes) presentations. The presentation will culminate in a discussion, to
which participants will be invited to contribute, identifying patterns,
controversies and gaps, with a view toward continuing towards further
collaboration, research, publication and dissemination.

*References*

Apperley, T. and Golding, D. (2015) “Australia” in Video Games Around the
World (M.J.P. Wolf, ed.), Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press, pp. 57–70.

Banks, J. and Cunningham, S. (2016) "Games Production in Australia:
Adapting to Precariousness" in Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local
Labor (M. Curtin and K. Sanson, eds.), Berkeley: University of California
Press, pp. 186-199

GDC (2013) “GDC State of the Industry research exposes major trends ahead
of March show”. GDConf.com. February 28. Available at
http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.igda.org/resource/collection/9215B88F-2AA3-4471-B44D-B5D58FF25DC7/igda_surveyresults2014_v7.pdf

GOV.uk (2014). “Video games tax relief passes final hurdle”. GOV.uk, 27th
March. Available at
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/video-games-tax-relief-passes-final-hurdle

Hesmondhalgh, David. 2013. The Cultural Industries. 3rd Edition. London:
Sage.
McRobbie, A. 2016. Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture
Industries. Cambridge: Polity Press.

NESTA (2014) “A Map of the UK Games Industry”, Nesta.org, 25th September.
Available at https://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/map-uk-games-industry

Parker, F. (2014) “Indie Game Studies Year Eleven”. In Proceedings of DiGRA
2013: DeFragging Game Studies, Vol. 7, August 2014. Available at
http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/indie-game-studies-year-eleven/

TIGA (2013) “The UK Games Industry: Young, Independent and Mobile”.
TIGA.org, April 2nd. Available at
http://tiga.org/news/the-uk-games-industry-young-independent-and-mobile

UKIE (2017) “The UK Video Games Sector: a Blueprint for Growth”. The UK
Interactive Entertainment Association. Available at
http://ukie.org.uk/blueprint

-- 
Dr. Paolo Ruffino
http://paoloruffino.com
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