1. Creative Territories:
Images and imaging technologies.
Dr. habil. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)
Some thoughts on the independent games industry
(November 10, 2014)
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 1
2. Short biographical background
• 3 years in Sales, Planning &
Strategy at Nintendo
– Working with indie developers as part of the
Mario Club Europe program
• Teaching game studies and
experimental game design at the
University of Bayreuth
– Molyjam 2013, GGJ 2014
– Teaching game development and
prototyping to humanities students
– Internal game jams as part of the project-based
work processes
• WG Analytical Game Design at the
University of Utrecht
– Helping to institutionalize (independent)
game design as a cultural technique
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 2
3. The relationship between
tools/technologies and creative
development
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 3
4. Unity and Game Maker: Studio
• Bridging the gap between
truly independent and
‘commercial’ game creation
• Integration with universities
and academies crucial
– Cf. e.g. Unreal Engine 4 price drop
• Economic Ecosystems
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 4
5. Built-in ‘bias’
• Ready-made standard assets
– Lens flares, orbital camera etc.
• Tutorials and demos
– ‘Angry Cats’ demo in Game Maker:
Studio
• Pre-set options
– Grid snapping in Game Maker: Studio
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 5
6. Asset marketplaces
• Leverage marketplace dynamics to keep
both amateur and experienced
developers involved
• Hold the ecosystem around the game
engine together
– Similar to how speculation ensures market liquidity and
creates connections between ‘buyers’ and ‘sellers’.
• Cheap or free assets encourage and
facilitate playful appropriation
– Empowering also inexperienced developers to focus on
innovating without having to ‘reinvent the wheel’
• Facilitate the creation of games primarily
as a medium of expression
– E.g. autobiographical and highly idiosyncratic games
– De-emphasize audiovisual assets
– E.g. also dedicated tools like RPG Maker
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 6
7. Tutorial culture
• Tutorials and shared assets for
every conceivable purpose
– E.g. walking on spheres, sniper rifle view
• Long-term consequences for
the perception of games as a
medium
• Tutorials become embedded
into the actual process/tools
– Asset store
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 7
8. Awareness of tools
• Availability of tools on different
levels of abstraction
– Overview
– More dedicated tools like AGS or Twine
– Makes more people aware of how games
are created.
• Changes awareness of
production contingencies
– Cf. “operational aesthetic” (Mittell, 2006)
in complex television narratives
• Close-read specific tools such
as Twine or Puzzlescript as
socio-technical systems
– Niederer and van Dijck, 2010
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 8
9. Good Hubbing Guide:
Evidence for the benefits of
independent game production
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 9
10. Interrelations between AAA and indie development
• Established companies gradually experiment
with emulating ‘indie’ practices
– E.g. game jams at companies like Double Fine
– Idiosyncratic company cultures at Valve and Linden Labs
(van der Graaf, 2012)
• Commercial mainstream games include
design elements from independent games
– Media comparative perspective: similar dynamic between avant-garde/
indie films and commercial films
– E.g. movies by Peter Greenaway
• Split screen
• Extreme color grading
• Merging of typology and filmed space
• Problematizing the notion of ‘independent’
media creation
– Institutional and discursive origins of independent film
– Comparisonswith independent radio stations and their
opposition towards (or: independence from) public radio stations
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 10
11. Implications of indie game distribution channels
• Institutionalizing lower price
points has enabled new kinds of
experiences
– Truly iterative games
– Games that are not fun
– Games that deliberately use minimalist
aesthetics
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 11
12. Indie games ‘simulating’
game aesthetics
• Shifting the focus from individual
games towards independent
game development as a whole
• Indie games collectively
‘simulate’ game aesthetics and
gameplay mechanics through
quantity
– Conceptually comparable to a genetic
algorithm
• Successful ‘mutations’ (i.e. the ones that
prove popular within independent game
discourses) are iterated on and can evolve
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 12
13. Good Hubbing Guide:
Need for Outreach
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 13
14. Challenge: ‘Game pollution’
• Risk of becoming a self-centered
system
– Similar to the current start-up ecology
– Ignoring actual ‘demands’ in favor of
increasingly standardized processes
– Too many games to find an audience
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 14
16. Good Hubbing Guide:
Activities that foster sustainable
innovation and growth
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 16
17. Case Study: Analytical Game Design
• Attempting to address salient
questions in games research and
innovation not by producing texts but
by creating small gameplay prototypes
– Film experiments pioneered by filmmakers like
Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Kuleshov fostered
contemporary film theory in the 1910s and 1920s
• Games by ‘reflective practitioners’
(Donald A. Schön, 1983)
– A slow year (Ian Bogost)
– Passage (Jason Rohrer)
• However:
– Not (easily) modifiable
With the montage experiments, users increase
knowledge not primarily by watching but by re-creating
and playfully modifying
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 17
18. Case Study: Analytical
Game Design II
• Use available analytics tools and
metrics provided by the game
engines
– Not to monitor economic but rather persuasive
goals.
• Raises questions about how the
game prototypes can and should
be…
– … archived,
– … discussed,
– … indexed/cited,
– and remixed.
(cf. e.g. Research through design: Zimmerman et al.,
2007)
• ‘Forking’ and discussing on the same
platform
– Enabling an actual ‘experimental culture’
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 18
19. Creative Territories:
Images and imaging technologies.
Dr. habil. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)
‚Mapping the Collective‘ Panel
(November 11, 2014)
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 19
20. The Dutch Game Garden
Tiered system of support:
• Talent scouting
– Co-organizing game jams
– Collaborating with institutions of higher
education to identify creative and
entrepreneurial minds.
• Accelerator program
– small groups are assigned a mentor with
industry experience to help them build a
profile
– Complemented through workshops on
entrepreneurship
• Incubator program
– Affordable office space on-site
– Counseling on topics such as HR, legal
issues and accounting.
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 20
21. The Dutch Game Garden II
• ‘Cultural’ and practical differences
between independent work routines
and working for a large company
(Guevara-Villalobos, 2011)
• Workshops with formerly supported
indie studios
– Company culture and task distribution
– Bridging the gap between independent and
‘commercial’ game development
– Partially interesting also for an extended audience
• DevClub as an extension towards
academia
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 21
22. Geographic distribution
• Despite digital communication
and asset pipelines,
geographical proximity still
plays an important role
(Norcliffe and Rendace, 2003)
• ‘Axis’ between Utrecht,
Hilversum and Amsterdam
– Collaboration with A Lab in Amsterdam
(April 2013)
– New section in Hilversum (May 2014)
– 30 minutes by car with Hilversum in the
center
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 22
23. Expanding the existing concept of the DGG:
Cross-pollination with other start-ups
• The DGG already (to a lesser
degree) hosts app creators,
online media developers and
digital (marketing) agencies.
• Production pipelines and
especially the markets for these
‘products’ increasingly
converge
• Confront game studios with
different, unusual types of
audiences
– Post-demographic consumerism
– Learning to think ‘outside the box’
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 23
24. Expanding the existing concept of the DGG II:
Institutionalizing contact with ‘micro game creators’
• People today create games
for very different reasons
– EX: Angelinas Verden
• Opening up to ‘micro game
creators’
– Would not necessarily consider
themselves part of the games industry
– Have different goals and interests than
developers with an industry focus
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 24
25. Expanding the existing concept of the DGG III:
Optimizing distribution
• INDIGO games exposition
• Focus more on distribution
channels
– Curating its own digital distribution
channel?
– Providing easy and affordable modular
solutions for issues like monetization,
analytics or micropayments
– Help developers looking for new and
more uniquely audience-specific ways
to distribute their games
• E.g. Supermarkets, gas stations etc.
• Maybe not in traditional retail form
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 25
26. Comparison: The Werk 1 in Munich/Germany
• Focus on the federal state/province
level
– Also in terms of activities (Bavarian culture and
events)
– Intrinsic ‘competition’ between independent game
funding and infrastructures in different federal
states
• FFF Bavaria
– Funds films and television productions as well as,
more recently, digital games
– Local focus: direct collaboration with two film
academies in Munich
• Internationalization
– Becomes a venue for international companies
• Intel RealSense Hands-On Lab
• Microsoft Developer Days
– State-funded trips to SXSW Austin and similar
events
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 26
27. Comparison: The Werk 1 in Munich/Germany
• Focus on single educational
events rather than constant
training
– Talks, workshops, symposia
• Foster ‘gaming culture’
– E.g. sharing rooms with local clubs for
game nights etc.
• ‘Environmental storytelling’
– Big, open (and multifunctional)
entrance area
– Rooms can be used and combined
depending on the type of event
Creative TerritoriesWorkshop – 12/11/14 Slide No. 27
