Independent gamework and identity: Problems and subjective nuances

Abstract

In this paper, I suggest to explore industry experiences, ideas and beliefs that motivate game developers to go ‘indie’ or engage as independent workers in their productive life. Through this analysis, we can observe the politics and cultural features that inform different trajectories and approaches to independent gamework. These subjective configurations become markers that allow us to understand with more detail the contested and varied nature of the independent developers’ identity. The identities of independent development are embedded within the economic and cultural structures that harness specific forms to understand and embody their sense of autonomy. Constrained by the demands of their work, developers struggle to make sense or to justify their choices as ‘authentically independent’, revealing subjective affinities and consent between market, political and artistic ideas.