Reflections on the casual games market in a post-GamerGate world

Shaw, Adrienne; Chess, Stella

doi:10.5040/9781501310591.ch-019

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 6 publications

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“…As the contexts within which gamework happens have expanded, so too have the competing range of developer demographics, esthetic tastes, and political positions among gameworkers. The Gamergate backlash stands out as one particularly violent example that saw many women, nonbinary, transgender, and queer developers speaking up, at great personal and professional risk, about a range of entrenched issues in the game industry only to be targeted for further harassment (see Shaw and Chess, 2015). Indeed, issues of gender discrimination loom large behind the seemingly overnight appearance of GWU International.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and opportunities for collective action and unionization in local games industries

Keogh

Abraham

2022

Organization

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The games industry has seen a burst of new interest in the prospect of unionization. The efforts of organizations like Game Workers Unite have attracted much favorable coverage in the enthusiast and trade industry press, increasing awareness amongst videogame audiences of the difficult working conditions facing professional game developers. However, often missing from these discussions is an articulation of what unionization would look like for the significant number of game developers working in precarious conditions in small, often informal teams. The fragmented nature of contemporary gamework presents challenges in aggregating worker power similar to those found in other fields of creative or precarious work and entrepreneurial careers, where contingent work is typically organized around piecemeal, project–based funding arrangements. In this paper we draw from empirical research with Australian game developers to identify a number of barriers to unionization posed by small-scale game production. We also identify how within these same circumstances, novel and alternative forms of solidarity and collective action are beginning to emerge. The article ultimately argues that any successful attempt to unionize videogame workers will need to both account for, and take advantage of, the complex situation of small-scale videogame production in local contexts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and opportunities for collective action and unionization in local games industries

Keogh

Abraham

2022

Organization

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Literacy: Articulations of Unity Across Development, Education, and Enthusiast Contexts

Nicoll

Keogh

2019

The Unity Game Engine and the Circuits of Cultural Software

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From aggressively formalised to intensely in/formalised: accounting for a wider range of videogame development practices

Keogh

2018

Creative Industries Journal

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Beyond the dominant North American and Japanese console manufacturers and multinational publishers, the global videogame industry is fragmenting. New audiences, distribution platforms, and development tools are expanding the videogame industry into an ecosystem that is at once broadly global and intensely localised. Taking advantage of this nebulous environment are increasingly visible fringes of hobbyists, amateurs, students, and artists that are pushing videogame development in new directions in terms of aesthetics, design process, and distribution channels. The activities of these fringe creators represent a critical but undertheorised aspect of the videogame industry. This article builds on Lobato and Thomas's notion of 'informal media economies' to suggest that the work of these fringes can be usefully considered as informal videogame development practices. It provides a historical look at the videogame industry that demonstrates how it transitioned from a period of aggressive formalisation through the 1980s to the early 2000s into a more intense intermingling of formal and informal actors and processes in the early 2010s. In doing so, this article traces the shifting conduits of creative practice, commerce, and power that these emerging informal practices represent so as to more fully account for the contemporary global videogame industry.

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Reflections on the casual games market in a post-GamerGate world

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Challenges and opportunities for collective action and unionization in local games industries

Challenges and opportunities for collective action and unionization in local games industries

Literacy: Articulations of Unity Across Development, Education, and Enthusiast Contexts

From aggressively formalised to intensely in/formalised: accounting for a wider range of videogame development practices

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