The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist by Brendan Keogh

The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist by Brendan Keogh

Understanding the precarious reality of videogame production beyond the corporate blockbuster studios of North America--with insights from 400+ game developers.

The videogame industry, we're invariably told, is a multibillion-dollar, high-tech business conducted by large corporations in certain North American, European, and East Asian cities. But most videogames today, in fact, are made by small clusters of people working on shoestring budgets, relying on existing, freely available software platforms, and hoping, often in vain, to rise to stardom--in short, people working like artists. Aiming squarely at this disconnect between perception and reality, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist presents a much more accurate and nuanced picture of how the vast majority of videogame-makers work--a picture that reveals the diverse and precarious communities, identities, and approaches that make videogame production a significant cultural practice.

Drawing on insights provided by over 400 game developers across Australia, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Brendan Keogh develops a new framework for understanding videogame production as a cultural field in all its complexity. Part-time hobbyists, aspirational students, client-facing contractors, struggling independents, artist collectives, and tightly knit local scenes--all have a place within this model. But proponents of non-commercial game making don't exist in isolation; Keogh shows how they and their commercial counterparts are deeply interconnected and codependent in the field of videogame production.

A cultural intervention, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist challenges core assumptions about videogame production--ideas about creativity, professionalism, labor, diversity, education, globalization, and community. Its in-depth, complex portrayal suggests new ways of seeing, and engaging in, the videogame industry that really does exist.

Brendan Keogh, a Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology's Department of Communication, is the author of Killing Is Harmless: A Critical Analysis of Spec Ops: The Line.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262545402
ISBN 10	0262545403
Title	The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist
Author	Brendan Keogh
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2023-04-18
Number of pages	248
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable