Slide No. 1Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

Creative Territories:Images and imaging technologies.

Dr. habil. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)

Some thoughts on the independent games industry(November 10, 2014)

Slide No. 2Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 3Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

The relationship between tools/technologies and creative

development

Slide No. 4Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 5Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 6Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 7Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 8Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 9Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

Good Hubbing Guide:

Evidence for the benefits of independent game production

Slide No. 10Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 11Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 12Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 13Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

Good Hubbing Guide:

Need for Outreach

Slide No. 14Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 15Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

Slide No. 16Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

Good Hubbing Guide:

Activities that foster sustainable innovation and growth

Slide No. 17Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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) modifiableWith the montage experiments, users increase knowledge not primarily by watching but by re-creating and playfully modifying

Slide No. 18Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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’

Slide No. 19Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

Creative Territories:Images and imaging technologies.

Dr. habil. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)

‚Mapping the Collective‘ Panel(November 11, 2014)

Slide No. 20Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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.

Slide No. 21Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 22Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 23Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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’

Slide No. 24Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 25Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 26Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 27Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14

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

Slide No. 28Creative Territories Workshop – 12/11/14