BREAKING OUT OF THE INDUSTRY: THE INDEPENDENT GAMES MOVEMENT AS RESISTANCE TO HEGEMONIC VIDEOGAME DISCOURSE by Peter Anthon Christiansen A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Communication The University of Utah May 2013 Copyright © Peter Anthon Christiansen 2013 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF THESIS APPROVAL The thesis of Peter Anthon Christiansen has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Sean T. Lawson , Chair 01/09/2013 Date Approved Robert R. Kessler , Member 02/05/2013 Date Approved Robert K. Avery , Member 02/12/2013 Date Approved and by Kent A. Ono , Chair of the Department of Communication and by Donna M. White, Interim Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis is to examine the way that the videogame industry has evolved as a complex sociotechnological system and how the discourse surrounding the industry, as well as videogames as a medium of expression, has shaped that development. This shift in the nature of videogame creation from individual authors and small studios to the monolithic entity known as "the Industry" was accompanied by the creation of an ideology that defines the identity of a community and places constraints on videogames as a medium. This is the ideology of the "hardcore" gamer. In order to understand this ideology, its impact and its significance, I will focus on the discourse surrounding the videogame industry and particularly on the limits of this discourse. One such area of discourse where antagonisms arise is in the growing community of independent game developers. The independent games movement can be looked at as a direct result of what Laclau and Mouffe refer to as articulation – the process by which relationships are established in such a way as to alter the identities of the elements themselves. As the videogame industry became increasingly articulated, the identities of games, gamers and game makers became more and more narrowly defined. This increased areas of antagonism within the discourse, allowing for resistance and the possibility of disarticulation. Though the independent games movement has grown substantially in recent years, the degree to which this movement resists the ideology of the videogame industry is unclear, as is the role of the technology in this process. This paper will examine these relationships through the discourse of both the mainstream videogame industry as well as that of the independent games community. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................iii LIST OF FIGURES................................................................................................vii Chapters 1 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................1 The Birth of an Industry......................................................................................4 Move for Independence......................................................................................9 Genesis of Research Problem..........................................................................13 Survey of Literature..........................................................................................16 Research Methodology.....................................................................................27 Organization of the Thesis................................................................................31 2 ARTICULATING THE INDUSTRY.....................................................................34 Out of the Lab...................................................................................................36 Homebrewers...................................................................................................43 The Crash.........................................................................................................50 Out of the Ashes...............................................................................................51 Graphics and Gore...........................................................................................59 The Political Game...........................................................................................71 The Monolithic Industry....................................................................................76 Hegemonic Videogame Discourse and its Limits.............................................79 3 HARDCORE IDEOLOGY...................................................................................83 Hardcore Players..............................................................................................84 Hardcore Developers........................................................................................87 The Casual Other.............................................................................................91 The Limits of Hardcore Discourse....................................................................94 4 THE INDIE GAME MOVEMENT......................................................................102 Independent Games as a Technology-Oriented Movement...........................103 Independent Games as Resistance to Hegemonic Discourse.......................108 Contrasting Organizational Structures............................................................115 Alternative Economic Models.........................................................................123 5 AN INDIE GAME ECOLOGY...........................................................................130 Articulation and Actor-Network Theory...........................................................131 Mapping the Industry......................................................................................140 Mapping the Indie Scene................................................................................152 Following the Maps.........................................................................................159 6 CONCLUSION.................................................................................................163 Ideology, Resistance, Articulation and Actor-Networks..................................166 Theoretical Implications..................................................................................168 The Future of Videogames.............................................................................171 Recommendations for Future Research........................................................174 REFERENCES...................................................................................................176 vi LIST OF FIGURES 1.1: William Higinbothom's Schematics for Tennis for Two. (Brookhaven National Laboratories, 1958)...........................................................................6 2.1: Nintendo's 10NES chip (Edwards, 2007)......................................................54 2.2: The infamous Daikatana "Bitch" ad reflected the hyper-masculine culture that developed around games in the 1990s...........................................68 3.1: Development tools like Valve's Hammer Editor allow modders access to many of the same tools that developers used in creating the original game.............................................................................................100 4.1: Screenshot of Aquaria. Taken by author. (Bit Blot, 2007)...........................111 4.2: Screenshot of Mighty Jill Off. Taken by author. (Aunte Pixelante, 2008)....114 4.3: GitHub network graph showing development on the Monocle Engine. Colored lines show the different developers involved and different branches of the project..................................................................119 4.4: Screenshot from Cave Story. Taken by author. (Studio Pixel, 2004).........128 5.1: Actor-network map of a typical videogame..................................................142 5.2: Actor-network map of Rogue Leader...........................................................144 5.3: Actor-network map of Factor 5 during the development of Rogue Leader..145 5.4: Actor-network map of the mainstream videogame industry.........................147 5.5: Map of the videogame industry as a sociotechnical-discursive system. Antagonistic relationships are shown with dotted lines................149 5.6: Actor-network map of Super Meat Boy........................................................153 5.7: Actor-network map of the independent games scene.................................156 5.8: Map of the greater games industry as a sociotechnical-discursive system...........................................................................................158 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION From its humble beginnings in the latter half of the twentieth century, the medium of videogames has become a massive multinational industry. Where game designers once had to acquire the prerequisite skills to bring their visions to life themselves, large development studios now command resources comparable to the motion picture industry (Nichols, Farrand, Rowley & Avery, 2006, p. 5; Williams, 2009, p. 41). However, with the development of any large sociotechnical system, the flow of information and resources is accompanied by a flow of power toward certain groups and away from others. In the United States, there is one ideology that is commonly associated with videogames. It is embodied in the concept of