Indie Games

Oyuncular, farklı birçok teknoloji ve sanat alanının birleşiminden oluşan video oyunların yarattığı sanal gerçekliğin deneyimini edinirler. Bu etkenler genel olarak ürünün hedef kitlesi, yapım bütçesi ve hangi platformda (pc, konsol, mobil) oynanabilir olacağının belirlediği sınırlar dahilinde şekillenir. Grafik teknolojisi bakımından günümüzde piksel tabanlı tasarımlardan; fotogrametri ve üç boyutlu taramaya kadar çeşitli yöntemler bulunmaktadır. Küçük geliştirici gruplarından oluşan bağımsız stüdyoların ürettiği oyunlarda bütçe sınırı, oyunun teknolojik imkânlarını ve dolayısıyla sanat yönetimini de etkilemektedir.
Sabit kamera açılı izometrik harita tasarımı bağımsız yapımların sıklıkla tercih ettiği görsel anlatım tekniklerinden biridir. Aksiyon, macera, rol yapma, Rogue-like gibi çeşitli oyun türlerinde izometrik kamera açılı 3D veya 2.5D oyunlar görmek mümkündür. Hızlı oynanan ve kısa sürede tamamlanabilen Rogue-like oyunlardan, uzun ve yavaş ilerleyen rol yapma oyunlarına kadar bağımsız oyunlar için pratik bir yaklaşım olmuştur. Etrafı keşfetme, yeni malzemeler bulma, düşmanların veya tuzakların yerleşimi gibi bölüm tasarımını oluşturan her element belirgin fakat küçük boyutlara adapte olabilmelidir. Bu yüzden oyuncunun dikkatini çekecek zıt ve parlak renklerin kullanımı geniş alanlarda oldukça önemlidir. Bölümler geniş bir alanı gösterdiğinden göz takibini yormayan detaylar ve tekrar eden motifler üç boyutlu modellerin üzerine giydirilmiş genellikle el ile boyanan dokular (texture) ile oyuncuyu yönlendirir. Mekânlar, karşılaşılan düşmanlar, objeler ve efektler gibi bölüm tasarımı sorunlarının birbiri içinde estetik uyumu olmalıdır. Bu aşamada renk kullanımı sadece oynanış odaklı değil, hikâye aktarımı ve genel atmosfer yaratımı için de oldukça önemlidir. Oyuncuyu yarattığı dünyanın içerisine alıp, oynanış süresi boyunca atmosfer ile birleştirmesi oyunun akıcı olmasını sağlar.
Bağımsız veya büyük yapımlar olsun, her türden video oyunlar hikâyelerinin görsel anlatımını güçlendirmek için duygu ve ruh halini renkler aracılığı ile aktarır. Genel olarak oyun haritalarında bölümlerin birbirinden ayrımını ve hikâye anlatımını desteklemesi için renk paleti ile duygu, hareket ve etki oluşturulur. Örneğin; karamsar ve distopik evrenleri olan oyunlarda (Disco Elysium, This War of Mine) genellikle soğuk renkler ve deforme yapılar bölüm tasarımlarında baskındır. Diğer taraftan; Rogue-like, hack & slash ve rol yapma türü aksiyonun baskın olduğu oyunlarda ise (Hades, Dead Cells, Baldur’s Gate) parlak ve aydınlık renk paletleri kullanılır. Grafik teknolojilerinden bağımsız olarak oynanışı ve hikâye anlatımını etkileyen renk paleti seçimi video oyun tasarımının temel ilkelerindendir. Kısıtlı imkânlara sahip bağımsız oyunlardan izometrik yapıdaki örnekleri özelinde renk ve estetik tercihlerinin görsel tasarımlarına uyarlama biçimi bu makalenin araştırma odağıdır.

The indie game is a fairly new topic in the realm of academia and has contributed to the video game medium by resisting the profit and mass appeal approach of big budget video games. Through its independent creation, developers are able to create personal experiences for players that focus on creating a unique merger between visuals and interaction--the unique element that separates video games from any other artistic medium.
Indie games’ budget and software constraints push developers to find creative solutions in their artistic style, primarily using pixelated or hand drawn art styles in contrast to the photo realistic approach of big budget developers.
This research will explore the styles most relevant in the visuals of indie games, pixel and hand-drawn styles, conduct a case study through sampling different art style options based on the game Paper’s Please, conclude with quantitative and qualitative data of the two art styles, and whether minimalistic, stylistic, or realistic abstractions are more effective in particular scenarios and or different demographics.
The online survey received 752 respondents with results showing that players are least sympathetic towards a minimalistic pixelated image, and most sympathetic towards a realistic pixelated image. The ambiguity of pixelation, much like pointillism or a mosaic, creates a stronger sense of immersion between a player and the images presented through the interactive medium of indie games.

When the Sex Pistols “encouraged the young to become producers of culture rather than consumers” during the explosion of the punk music and art movement of the 1970’s, they were speaking to those who wished to find ways to resist capitalism, “the man,” and dominant cultural hegemony (Ensminger 5). In 2012, openly queer video game developer Anna Anthropy implored members of the gaming community to do the same, to “take back an art form” and become developers, designers, and producers (Anthropy). This dissertation utilizes an examination of two subcultural movements: the Gothic literary movement (and subsequent goth culture) and the queercore punk movement which splintered off of the more heteronormative punk movement. The examination will help establish connections and parallels to the contemporary indie gaming community and its queer subsect, occupied by members and creators like Anthropy. Utilizing punk subcultural theory, queer Gothic literary conventions, queer theory, and theoretical approaches to progressive cultural production, I seek to identify both an indie gaming community that leans more towards the heteronormative as well as a queer punk independent gaming movement that mimics and mirrors the queercore punk movement in its resistance to heteronormativity and capitalism. Punk ideologies and lifestyles demand resistance in myriad ways, and I’m suggesting that indie games made by individuals at little to no cost for both the producer and the consumer, featuring queer narratives and resistant game design, are the most punk of them all.

Trabajo realizado por los alumnos de la asignatura Mecánicas de Juego I de 2ºA del Grado Oficial de Diseño de Productos Interactivos en el Centro Universitario de Tecnología y Arte Digital (U-tad) con la colaboración de profesionales de la comunicación en el sector de videojuegos.
Este trabajo es el examen final de la asignatura de Mecánicas de Juego I, el objetivo era realizar una reflexión sobre cómo aplicar conceptos de gamificación dentro de los planes de comunicación de un videojuego independiente.
Con este fin se planteó la realización de una Gamification Jam en el que grupos de alumnos competían en la creación de estas estructuras, posteriormente los resultados fueron evaluados de forma externa por profesionales de reconocido prestigio en la intersección de la comunicación y el videojuego.
El trabajo de los alumnos y las apreciaciones de los evaluadores han conformado un primer boceto que creemos interesante para aquellas personas que estén planteándose aplicar la gamificación como opción en su estrategia comunicativa, ya sea en el ámbito del desarrollo de videojuego creados por universitarios, del ámbito independiente u otros sectores del diseño de productos interactivos digitales.

Profesor:
Carlos González Tardón
Evaluadores:
Eduardo Garabito / José Herráez / Bolo Muñoz-Calero / Elric Ruiz
Autores:
Sergio Arroyo / David Carvajal / Sergio Cobos / Carlos De María / Luis Dorrego / Daniel Elvira / José Carlos Guisado / Alfonso Jiménez / Damián Leal / Julio López / Juan Carlos Marcos / Ricardo Pascual / Ceferino Pérez / Manuel Jesús Segura / Agustín Taverner / Daniel Valles / Aleix Villanueva / Andrés Yordi

The past five years have seen an explosion of school curricula, scholarships, summer camps, and workshops designed to encourage females and people of color to learn to code and program their own games. Thus, this student underscored a mantra rather than a new idea in suggesting that “everyone can make games.” Desperate to refute the narratives of a toxic gaming culture perpetuated by Gamergate, many in the industry are taking action to boost diversity – interventions I call the “Everyone Can Make Games Movement." Although such initiatives are beneficial in many ways (ie: bringing attention to the industry’s lack of diversity, sparking interest in game design), I wish to challenge the use of the “Everyone Can Make Games Movement” as a viable “solution” to the game industry’s concerns regarding diversity. While more diversity in game development promises to bring fresh perspectives to a community saturated with narratives of white, cisgender men, ECMGM may also obscure systemic forms of oppression that female game makers and game makers of color experience.

In this chapter, I argue that the discourse of ECMGM is built on a post-feminist/post-racial understanding of the video game industry, one that fails to acknowledge institutionalized sexism and racism. Drawing on published reports and experiences of industry workers, I discuss the promise and peril of “Everyone can make games,” highlighting the ways in which the culture of sexism and racism is built into the work culture of much of the game industry. In order to eschew racism and sexism in gaming, however, the industry is in need of widespread, systematic change. I suggest beginning by restructuring work cultures so that they stop privileging white, cisgender male employees and disempowering members of marginalized communities that the industry claims to embrace. This type of social justice and feminist project is necessary to making the vision of ECMGM a reality.

Playtesting sessions are becoming more integrated in game development cycles. However, playtests are not always feasible or affordable for smaller independent game studios, as they require specialized equipment and expertise. Given the recent growth and prevalence of independent developers, there is a need to adapt playtesting processes for indie studios to assist in creating an optimal player experience. Therefore, our research focuses on challenges and opportunities of integrating games user research in the development cycles of independent studios. We worked with three studios conducting playtests on their upcoming titles. In line with the CHI2016 #chi4good spirit this paper contributes to the important topic of adopting user research methods for indie and small game studios. We believe that the games user research (GUR) field must advance towards demographics that will benefit from GUR but are under-represented in the community and this paper is one of the first that will contribute to this.

Este trabalho busca elucidar o que são os chamados indie games, jogos digitais produzidos de maneira independente por pequenas equipes, geralmente desvinculadas de estúdios e/ou publicadoras de grande porte. Os jogos indies contrapõem-se às obras conhecidas como triple-A, isto é, detentoras de alto padrão de qualidade e provindas de vultosos investimentos em desenvolvimento e marketing. Intentamos, assim, compreender os desafios inerentes à produção de games independentes, bem como abordar como a internet e a plataforma Steam têm sido importantes facilitadoras no desenvolvimento e publicação destes jogos.

The maintenance of rules within the ‘black box’ of code, away from human eyes, constitutes a major difference between digital games and the social history of their analog counterparts. Meanwhile, the incorporation of new types of human behavior into digital games’ rulesets has placed games on the cutting edge of machine surveillance technologies. This article examines several digital games that stand in opposition to these trends, by opting out of monitoring certain aspects of player behavior, and opening social dynamics of trust and cheating that digital games have historically avoided or shut down. Chief among these examples are Asphyx (Droqen, circa 2012) and With Those We Love Alive (Porpentine, 2014), two games that incorporate player breathing into their mechanics, while forgoing any technical means of monitoring players’ respiration. In place of the usual command/output logic of human–machine interaction, these games map a more intimate alternative, in which players’ relationship to their avatars and in-game actions is built from a foundation of trust, shared truth, and consent between human bodies and software operations.

The article provides a comparative account of two paradigms of independent videogame production: the Japanese dōjin (doujin) games and the increasingly global indie games. Through a multilayered analysis, it expounds the conceptual metaphors associated with indie and dōjin games, traces the two movements' respective histories, situates them in wider media environments, and compares their characteristic traits.

The term "meaningful play" had entered the gaming vernacular in recent years, particularly in conjunction with independently developed ("indie") videogames, but little to no consensus still exists among scholars and gamers as to what exactly makes an act of play "meaningful". In order to approach this question from a scientific and analytical perspective, the present study borrows the methodology and concepts of semiotics, the formal study of signs and meaning-making, and applies them to Journey, a popular videogame lauded by critics for facilitating meaningful player experiences.

The study builds upon the ludic framework, a semiotic theory of meaningful gameplay currently in development by the French videogame researcher Frederic Seraphine, and consists of two parts. First, we give a brief overview of the three key theories underlying Seraphine's work (the semiotic studies of Charles Peirce and his students, the cybertextual studies originating with Espen Aarseth, and the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics framework), before examining the ludic framework itself in detail. We then analyze the production background and history of Journey and perform a semiotic analysis of select elements of its visuals, mechanics, and levels in an attempt to better understand its way of creating meaningful player experience. Finally, we draw conclusions both about the applicability of semiotic analysis to contemporary games and about the question of meaningful play itself.

Definition:
An indie game is a game created by an independent team of developers, typically with limited resources, without a publisher or with no significant involvement in the artistic process on the publisher’s part. Indie games are often experimental and/or employ a retro aesthetic. While the label is usually associated with digital games, it can also apply to analogue (e.g. tabletop) games.

This dissertation explores thoroughly the design of the so-called indie games. It portrays in detail the design activities undertaken by indie designers and the design context in which indie games are devised. With this knowledge, a comparison with game design as it has been formulated by academics and game industry veterans is undertaken. This with the purpose of finding out if the design of indie games represents a different paradigm in regard to game design. This work takes the reader through a series of chapters providing the epistemological context to analyze comparatively the design of indie games and game design. The indie games movement is defined and contextualized within indie cultures and put in perspective in relation with mainstream games. The historical and theoretical foundations of game design are also covered. And to get an understanding around what designing implies, theories from the disciplines of design, engineering, architecture and product design are explained. Thirty award-winning designers of indie games at Indiecade and the Independent Games Festivals of the Game Developers Conference participated in this research providing accounts on their repertoire of design activities. These accounts were analyzed using design theoretical standpoints and then composed as a case of study to be compared with game design.

M.A. thesis as handed in 14.07.2016. Humboldt Universität, not published.
In December 2012, Bandung-based Company Digital Happiness turned to the internet community to promote and fund their planned Indonesian horror survival game DreadOut with a Indiegogo funding campaign. They wanted to introduce new and “unique” experiences of Indonesian horror to the gamer audience. The planned indie game  created quite a buzz in the indie- and horror-gaming scene, due to its genuine and mostly "new" setting and ghostly appearances. But is DreadOut really unique? If so, in what ways? And if not, which known formulas, conventions and intermedial representations can be identified?  While this thesis does not seek to construct the Indonesian context of the game as “too different/other” to be decoded, it rather aims to differentiate between the features and formulas aimed primarily at an Indonesian audience, the features which are globally sold as “truly Indonesian” and those which are adapted from existing international horror (video game) conventions.

Literary Gaming is placed within the burgeoning fields of digital-born literature and indie/art game research. It explores a body of digital artefacts situated on a continuum between ludic e-literature and literary art games and engages with hybrid receptive and interactive processes that combine reading and gaming. Informed by avant-garde modernist and postmodernist theories, such as Situationist détournement and deconstruction, and ludological concepts of chance, choice, rules, fun, forms of play (Caillois 2001/1958), (illusory) agency (McCallum-Stewart and Parsler 2007) and procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2007), this monograph offers close readings and "playings" of texts that inhabit different places on the literary-ludic spectrum. The analyses are positioned within the broad trajectory of functional ludo-narrativism (Ryan 2006), which aims to examine how elements of game design, gameplay, narrative and (poetic) textuality concur to evoke distinctive receptive and interactive experiences.

Media theory and critical theory both engage with the relations between ideology
and technology. Media theory constitutes itself around the assumption
that media technologies ‘format’ or even ‘determine our situation.’2 Critical
theory aims to question ideologies by analyzing the dominating structures
and power relations behind them. While the underlying paradigms of media
theory had been developed within the framework of war technologies—Alan
Turing’s machine, Claude Shannon’s communication theory, or Norbert
Wiener’s idea of cybernetics—, critical theory, as conducted by Walter Benjamin
amongst others, had emerged out of the engagement with social and
cultural developments in an ever more technologized modern world. Here,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud amongst others,
served as patrons of thought in questioning the existing power relations. My
aim in this essay is to bring those two theoretical approaches together in order
to ask whether computers and computer games may open up spaces of possibility
to envision utopian societies.

"The emergence of indie games since late 1990s is gradually gaining grounds in the gaming industry as well as prestige among gamers. Against the tides of "revolutionary" transformations in game engines and AI improvement constantly advocated in industry rhetorics at promotions, advertisements and gaming conventions, indie games usually take a opposite direction abandoning the contemporary novel inventions and ceaseless pursuit of the "new": rather, they intend to re-adapt the nostalgic past such as the retro-style 8-bit graphics and popular genres such as platformers on the vintage consoles. This “retromanic” tailoring became almost the default aesthetic choice of indie developers and its re-adaptation represents somehow truly "novel" alternative to the cliqued mainstream narrative of progress. At the same time, many indie games have been dubbed under the celebrated "novel" genre- "serious games" or “games for social change”, which usually opposes the contemporary games obsession with killings, explosions and whatnot while seeks to address serious social issues through a playful learning process.

In an attempt to comment on the phenomenon of indie games as well as the academic rhetorics around it, I intend to reframe “retromania” and novelty of these indie games in conjunction to a larger cultural phenomenon- hisperism. As Jones (2013) remarks, "hipsterism, though, offered only a willfully weak reanimation of the signifiers used in previous shows of resistance and opposition, effectively forming a counterculture without the ‘counter’”. Similarly, many indie games usually possess a nostalgic salute to the "glorious" past as well as a cynical take on the present. However, fundamentally as games, many are shopworn genres with a re-branded aesthetic and political gloss. On the surface of narrative meaning, it may seem radical but at its core, the game is a conservative iteration of existing game genres. “Many of today's so-called "serious games" are in fact quite reactionary at the level of the algorithm, even if they cloak themselves in progressive political desires on the surface” (Galloway 2007). There is an evident segregation here: "at the realm of the material, nothing changes; at the realm of the ideal, there is only a semiotic change". If there is to be any truly novel changes, an alternative algorithm of play has to emerge, which requires not only the developers, but also the central actors, the players, to change."

In this paper I aim to explore the genre of independent (“indie”) games through a fan studies framework. The history and development of digital games is intimately connected to enthusiast and fan practices. Indie games are small-scaled productions made by young professionals, fans or small studios. These media are increasingly becoming mainstream, as evidenced by their distribution through service platforms, such as Steam or Playstation Network. Though indie games are increasingly part of the game industry, they also act against it. Today, independent game have become almost synonymous with quality games, cult and avant garde, pointing towards the maturization of games as a medium. The rise of independent games echoes the development of other media, ranging from film to music (Martin & Deuze, 2009; Westecott, 2013).

I capture this genre through a case-study of The Stanley Parable (2013). This first-person game tells the story of “Stanley”, an office worker, who one day awakens to find his office empty. The game was originally a modification or “mod” built in the Source Engine of Valve. After its initial success in 2011, the game was developed further and released on Steam. The Stanley Parable became an instant indie classic, as evident by its nominations for prices and its praise by critics. The Stanley Parable can be read as a fan creation – a derivative work that both affirms and transforms tropes of digital games. The game, for instance, relies heavily on gaming capital (Consalvo, 2007). Its references include levels from other games such as Portal and Minecraft. I pay specific attention to the narration of the game, which is self-conscious and ironic. An external narrator voices the actions of ‘Stanley’, and criticizes the player that does not comply to his story. By criticizing interaction and storytelling, The Stanley Parable is exemplary of the counterculture of independent games that emerge partly in compliance with the game industry and partly as a response against it.

The concept of emergence--that a certain thing may emerge from several distinct (and not necessarily related) parts, which is different, larger in scope, and mostly originally unintended or expected--exists in many fields such as Philosophy, Information Science, and biology. With respect to the modern video game, emergence can potentially manifest as emergent narrative and/or emergent gameplay. Furthermore, emergence in games can potentially manifest through true technological, procedurally-generated gameplay and/or a game design which encourages emergence from the game elements within the mind of the player.
In this paper, we engage in a critical discussion about what it means for an interactive video game to have emergence. Firstly, we will be briefly discussing what emergence means to other scientific disciplines, and in doing so delineate specifically how we will be using the term "Emergent" in reference to interactive video games. We then frame the discussion of Emergence in games by considering a range of recent video game examples, and a close critical look at the indie games Papers, Please and Gone Home. From these analyses, we propose a concept of "Player-side emergence in games," in which emergence in the form of narrative is expressible and observable in games as the result of the current technological capabilities of games, which relies not on the game software itself, but rather upon the complex system of the human mind for reconstruction of the game experience and a subsequent expression of emergence.  In this proposed concept, the constituent narrative pieces offered by a game can be expressed emergently as a unified, overall game narrative experience by the player mind. Based on this concept, we propose that emergence in a game need not wait or rely upon the advent of a truly, technology-based procedurally-generated platform, but rather can be an expression of player-side experiential reconstruction. We conclude that emergent narrative between video game and player can manifest so long as a human player can be encouraged via the game's mechanics towards an overall narrative reconstruction whose blueprint does not wholly originate from the source game, and we also contend that such an emergent design consideration can be potentially useful for designers who are trying to deal with the trade-off of Ludo-Narrative Dissonance in their games.

(This paper was selected by the program committee as a Meaningful Play 2014 Top Paper. It will be submitted to the Meaningful Play 2014 Special Issue of the Journal of Games and Culture. Due to the copyright requirements of the journal, only the abstract is available in the conference proceedings.)

Indie developer Kristopher Poulin-Thibault speaks with Samuel Poirier-Poulin (no relation) about the creation of the video game Looking Back. The interview starts with a brief discussion about the RPG genre and quickly moves toward a broader discussion about autofiction, trauma, time, memory, retro games, and language. Poulin-Thibault reflects on the interconnectedness of these topics and their influence on identity construction. // Le concepteur indépendant Kristopher Poulin-Thibault parle avec Samuel Poirier-Poulin (aucun lien de parenté) de la création du jeu vidéo Looking Back. L’entrevue débute avec une brève discussion sur le genre RPG et se transforme rapidement en une discussion plus large sur l’autofiction, le trauma, le temps, la mémoire, les jeux vidéo rétro et les langues. Poulin-Thibault réfléchit sur le lien qui unit ces sujets et sur leur influence sur la construction identitaire.

More and more often creators of independent video games decide to reject the escapist form, that serves only as a mean of entertainment. The developing empathy games trend consists of productions that focus on topics usually not associated with video games; those topics are serious, describe real problems or are a type of social commentary, often being a record of personal experience of their authors.
Can video games be a tool of building empathy? Are they focused on emotional or cognitive empathy? What means are used to build it?
This text is an attempt to answer these questions through the analysis of three independent productions from the empathy games trend: Depression Quest, Gone Home and That Dragon, Cancer. Although all of them on their semantic level touch difficult, personal problems (mental illness, growing up and coming out, child’s sickness and death), every single game uses different tools to build their narration and immersion. Depression Quest uses hypertextuality and multi-linear narrative. Gone Home narrates through gradually discovered objects. That Dragon, Cancer is a gathering of impressions, arranging metaphorical images, documentary recordings and texts, as well as mechanics that allude to other video games.

“Play” has been a central concept in video game studies for the last several years. Through a close look at the recent Danish-developed game Inside (2016) and an overview of the medium, this paper argues that “work” is an equally productive concept, one that foregrounds the ways that video games simulate capitalist forms of physical and intellectual labour, usually as a means of accumulating digital goods. From the twinkling coins of 1985’s Super Mario Bros. to the outfits, arsenals, and emotes of 2014’s Destiny, gamers trade physical labour—their “work” at a ludic interface—for digital wealth.

Presenting various scenes from the game, I also contend that Inside functions as a compelling subversion. “Work” is still central, and in fact the game’s setting is a kind of self-enclosed industrial wasteland. But here the “work” of the player and her avatar, a young boy, lead not to wealth but to repeated death and horrific transformation, opening the space for a thoughtful exploration of the technocultural nexus of labour, repetition, and death that is so dominate under advanced capitalism. The paper concludes by considering the potential for interactive media to critically investigate how we work and, relatedly, how we die.

AbstractThe essay discusses the role of paratext in framing players' experience of videogames, focusing on the indie game scene and specifically examining three types of paratext: game title, game description, and the readme file. It cites examples coming from the author's experience as an independent game creator and as a player. The focus on concrete manifestations of paratext reflects the author's belief that examples should not only be used to illustrate theoretical arguments about paratextual phenomena, but should help deepen our understanding of them.KeywordsParatext, videogames, indie games, meaning-makingIntroductionThe concept of paratext (text accompanying and supporting another text), popularized in game studies by Mia Consalvo (2007), provides a productive framework for game scholars and has been successfully utilized in a number of subsequent studies. Most of these studies seem to have followed Consalvo in focusing on paratexts created by media audiences in ...

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http://www.tara.tcd.ie/handle/2262/90862




This research presents a practice-included platform study of the arcade videogame interface as a self-reflexive art medium. It frames the arcade as both platform and genre, with particular focus on the mid-1980s to late 1990s, the JAMMA era.

Arcade platforms represent a set of technologies designed for consumer level play but traditionally closed off to non-developers as creative mediums. This thesis addresses their nature as aesthetic interfaces, not just for game play, but also as expressive digital materials.

The view of the arcade videogame interface presented encompasses a holistic perspective reaching beyond the communicative link of the audio-visual feedback and input controls, to include the external physical form of the arcade cabinet and associated peripherals, in addition to all communicative links within the system architecture. This expanded view also considers the interface as defined by environment and user context.

In order to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of this research, the methodology draws heavily upon the platform studies approach. This includes technical and historic research alongside case studies of how the system constraints were harnessed to best aesthetic effect. Data sources consulted included archive materials, technical manuals, first hand interviews, and feedback received from exhibitions and online reviews. These findings were complimented by first-hand tacit research of the arcade videogame interface as an artistic medium.

Control, Arcade Operator, and VR SuperGun are a trilogy of interactive self-reflexive meta artefacts that form the material art-practice element of this thesis. These experimental prototypes combine into an experiential, critically reflective composite overview of the arcade interface. Each artefact was created within aesthetic constraints equivalent or approximate to those faced by arcade game creators in the 1980s and 1990s, pragmatically augmented with existing and emergent technologies.

The overall study contributes to understanding of JAMMA era arcade videogames as material and aesthetic forms, and their role as a convergent link across new media art, interface design, game studies, and indie-game development.

This paper explores how the human computer interface of the experimental indie game Control was augmented through five different exhibitions across both new media art and indie game spaces. Interface elements considered include the tangible control input type, the style of visual display used, as well as the situated space of the game installation itself. Each installation setup encouraged a different style of interaction with the artifact. Observation of users in the exhibition spaces both live and through promotional video documentation alongside feedback given both in-situ and through press reviews provided valuable feedback into the development of the game, influencing its future development path.

You can download the paper at: https://dl.acm.org/authorize.cfm?key=N47806

This issue of Uplink analyzes four indie videogames created between 2017-2019, showcasing how digital artists, transnational audiences and fan communities are beginning to leverage the institutions of the digital commons to create works of art superior to those of vastly larger videogame studios with far greater financial resources. While the contemporary revolution of indie videogame production is still in its first decade (it began in 2013), it has already shattered the three-decade monopoly of large-scale media corporations over the circuits of videogame production, distribution and consumption, and opened the door to new types of democratic cultural production and audience participation.

The first case study compares contemporary indie game scene and the shareware game scene of the 1990’s. This two moments in video game history share interesting institutional resemblance: (1) willingness to bypass intermediaries, (2) strong connection to the homebrew movement and (3) innovation in distribution of low budget games. Sometimes the analogies are straightforward (e.g. shareware packs bundled with game magazines and contemporary digital game bundles). Sometimes both scenes seem to function almost as reverse images of each other but the formal similarities are striking. For example, the crowdfunding model used by contemporary indies as well as the notion of “early access” (you give us the money, we eventually give you the game) seem to be the exact opposite of “episodic” shareware model (we give you the game, you eventually give us the money).

However, to call contemporary indie scene a “second wave” of shareware would be too far fetched, as there are striking differences. Firstly, tracking the histories of developers and genres that originated from the shareware movement leads to a paradoxical conclusion that the shareware scene is more of a precursor to the contemporary “AAA” games then indie games, as it was mostly absorbed by the mainstream. Secondly, some of the most prominent design characteristics of indie games were surprisingly not present in the shareware space. For example, appealing to retro aesthetics was not prevalent in the shareware scene. Last but not least, it is not obvious why the popularity of shareware withered. Will this be the fate of contemporary indie scene too?

This article seeks to develop an approach to independent video game production through a synthesis of recent work in assemblage theory and critical political economy. As an alternative to the (still important and useful) institutionalist political economic work of Kerr (2006) or Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter's immaterial-labour oriented study in Games of Empire (2009), I propose studying videogames through their historically and materially specific context, thinking about videogame development communities as assemblages (DeLanda, 2006). Both approaches have the tendency to reduce videogames – in the former to the institutional character of the organization, and in the latter to an overdetermination of discourses and material in global flows of capital. The assemblage of videogame production should not be conceptualized as an object overdetermined by global capital's immanence towards new forms of immaterial labour. Rather it is negotiating its way through capital, state bureaucracies, aesthetics, ad hoc decision making and the flows of bodies through urban spaces. The work of videogame production is both immaterial and expressive, as much as it is firmly grounded in existing material relationships to a panoply of objects. This paper then has two goals: 1) to illustrate an ontology and method of political economy and 2) contribute to the growing scholarship on indie games.

At the ten year anniversary of the Global Game Jam] we collected community provided stories and images from around the globe. We simply asked our community to share their experiences, which we have arranged chronologically for our readers. Some of the stories are funny, some demonstrate perseverance, and yet others just remind us how wonderful the Global Game Jam has become. The stories are included in the original language of the author, with English translation, and provided without major editing. They share the tone and spirit of the authorÍs own experience. The Global Game Jam] experiment started 10 years ago and it has grown from 1,650 participants in 2009 to the more than 42,000 people who participated in 2018. This growth and successes comes from the tapestry of individual efforts that makes each year bigger and better than the previous. Much like a Global Game Jam, this book was created by pooling the time and effort of people all over the world.

This short essay represent a philosophical and game studies effort to analize the masterpiece created by the californian software house thatgamecompany, Journey. In order to do that in a little space, this essay present the first part of itself as an introduction to the curriculum of the company and to the founder Jonova Chen, showing off all the skills this great indiependent developers already demons-trated with every other game title in their own past. In the second part the essay tries to underline the masterpiece technical features, all the innovation aspects and at the same time the aesthetic behind style choices and narration. The goal, on one hand, is to catch the essential meaning and the meta-phorical message that lies under the cover of an innovative, silent and colorful indie videogame for PlayStation; on the other hand the essay tries to put Journey in a critical relation between the past and the future of thatgamecompany, but also with other videogames that rassemble it, as well as with the established US and international critics.

What's LV stand for? – dichotomy between humanity and monstrosity in Undertale The means of expression, narrative and gameplay in contemporary video games, especially those that might be called mainstream, are quite limited and repetitive. The reasons behind this situation are high production cost which leads to using the safe and popular motives that are easy to sell. To find games that are innovative and avantgarde one should consider the analysis of independent branch of the industry. One of the examples of games that avoids using clichés is Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015). In the gameplay and narrative the game refers to classic productions of jRPG and " Shoot 'Em Up " genres. The narrative is a simple story about a kid that accidently falls into underworld inhabited by monsters. This basic concepctions are just the starting point. The author uses intertextuality, emmersion and plays with clichés to build the truly postmodern game. One of the focal point in Undertale is dichotomy between humanity and monstrosity. In the complex approach to this topic the game explores such themes as references to the modern culture, classic fairytales, mythology, and, innovative gameplay and narrative mechanics. The purpose of this text is to analyze these elements in the context of building monstrous and demonic figures. Abstrakt: Współczesne gry wideo, szczególnie te należące do głównego nurtu produkcji wysokobudżetowych, operują szeregiem powtarzających się środków wyrazu, rozwiązań narracyjnych i mechanicznych. Przyczyn tego zjawiska można doszukiwać się w potrzebie dopasowania się do wymagań rynku – wydanie oryginalnej, nowatorskiej produkcji niesie za sobą ryzyko porażki finansowej. W związku z tym, produkcji awangardowych, łamiących schematy należy poszukiwać, przede wszystkim, w nurcie gier niezależnych. Przykładem produkcji łamiącej powtarzające się w grach schematy jest Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015). W warstwach mechanicznej i graficznej produkcja nawiązuje do klasycznych gier z nurtu jRPG i " Shoot 'Em Up ". Fabuła, w najbardziej podstawowym sensie, opowiada o dziecku, które przypadkiem trafia do podziemnej krainy potworów. Te założenia stanowią zaledwie

The commercial emergence of “indie games” since 2008 represents a fundamental challenge for contemporary game studies. As we still do not have a clear definition of the indie game, its popularity and commercial success have made the conceptualization of this type of game even more complex. Far from being a pure videogame model, completely separated from the mainstream sphere, indie games often involve hybridizations and ambiguities between the alternative and the mainstream.

Thus this article aims to problematize the neat conceptualizations of indie games as an opposing “genre” to mainstream games by exploring the many tensions and nuances between the alternative and mainstream dimensions that can be identified within indie game production, culture and design.

The first part of the article focuses on the production and distribution issues, as well as on the cultural construction and artistic legitimation of indie games. The article then posits a design-centered analytical approach to indie games inspired by Kellner (1995) and based on “procedural rhetorics” (Bogost, 2006; Flanagan and Nissenbaum, 2014). This approach is used to look at commercially successful indie games, which we consider to be an especially suitable object of study for exploring and understanding contemporary culture through the frictions between hegemonic culture and counter-culture, progressivism and conservatism, capitalism and anti-capitalism, as well as the way we conceive these notions.

Consumer-grade game engines such as Multimedia Fusion and RPG Maker have dramatically extended the reach of digital games as a medium. They have also spawned online communities, where conventions and canons of using these tools have evolved. These partly stem from the functional constraints of the game engines themselves and are institutionalized through manuals, examples, tutorials, and games made with them. However, some members of game engine communities actively seek to challenge these conventions by experimenting with the engines and finding ingenious ways to put them to unexpected uses. Such experiments can be regarded as a form of metacommentary on the engines’ capabilities and limitations. While arguably impractical and inefficient, they enrich the scope of what can be done with the engine and can contribute to its further development.

This brief paper provides general context in the emerging mobile game type, affection games. Affection games require players to flirt, hug, or kiss to meet their goals in the game.  To date, the largest subset of these games is kissing games.  The paper provides a general analysis of the 10 most widely distributed kissing games in 2013 and 2014, which account for more than 3,000,0000 mobile game installations. To add detail to the overview, two case studies are provided which exemplify physical device kissing and virtual in-game kissing. The download activity, player comments, and history of the games are used to provide a simple overview of affection game characteristics as they relate to human-computer interaction and play.  Such analysis provides a peek into the mildly taboo space of affection games and the ways in which mobile developers are effecting the genre.

In this article, I construct a post-play reading of the dating-sim Hatoful Boyfriend (MIST[PSI]PRESS, 2011) - a cult favourite among fans of Japanese popular culture and beyond.  At first mistaken as a bad game, fans were surprised to find something unique. The game is deceptively weird. While its surface, particularly the concept and visuals, seem to create its strangeness and ambiguity, the actual weird resides in its deconstruction of the dating-sim genre. In this close-reading, I analyze the unusual storytelling, structure and mechanics of this bizarre parody game and explore the tropes and conventions of Japanese popular culture which are subverted to determine this a strange dating-sim.