Game development and production practices are complex and highly reflected processes—worldwide. This explorative article discusses video game development as a cultural and creative industry in India, including the industry’s history and introducing recent trends which indicate profound transformations—the use and implementation of Indian cultural heritage in game settings. In the rather short history of Indian game development as compared to other countries—a significant number of games made in India first were produced around 2010—the industry has already lived through big changes and challenges. This article aims at introducing Indian game development and argues that especially independent (so-called indie) game studios in their search for their own, region-specific game development and stand-alone characteristics for Indian games increasingly turn to what they perceive as their own cultural heritage, including, for example, elements from history, art (music, dance, dress styles, and others), and architecture.
This is the introduction to the special issue on video games and cultural heritage.
KEYWORDSVideo games; cultural heritage; games research; digital heritage; digital culture Video games are already recognised as a component of the increasingly diverse ways in which we frame and consider the concept of 'heritage' -though so far, scholars have most often discussed and critiqued the depiction of history (as cultural heritage) in video games themselves (e.g. Cassone 2016; Copplestone 2017; Reinhard 2018). Also, certain triple A games (the term used for high budget games produced and distributed by major companies and publishers) already attracted a large amount of scholarly research in relation to their use of imagery of the past, for example, Assassin's Creed (e.g. Hammar 2017; Shaw 2015), and Call of Duty (e.g. Gish 2010; Pötzsch and Šisler 2019). This has included sharp critique of historical inaccuracies, sometimes paired with conceptions of video games as platforms that can challenge 'historical authority' (e.g. Salvati and Bullinger 2013), through to the exploration of the potential of video games as a medium through which to present research (namely, on history) itself. An example of this is Spring's (2015) imagining of video games as a viable and more accessible alternative to monographs for presenting historical research as a 'scholarly game', taking advantage of the flexibility and multilayeredness of the format.Heritage understood in a broader sense and as including elements beyond history, such as specific art forms, Indigenous heritage and so forth, and video games has attracted much less attention so far (see, e.g. Barwick, Dearnley, and Muir 2011;Zeiler 2020). For example, the potential of indie games (produced and distributed by smaller companies and individuals) co-produced with Indigenous communities in this field (see Campbell and Grieve 2014; Radde-Antweiler, Waltemathe, and Zeiler 2014).
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