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Aspects of Independent Game Production: An Exploratory Study

Published: 12 November 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed independent game production rise to a prominent position in the digital game industry. Be it by the fresh, innovative take it brought to the scene or by its rebellious attitude towards what is perceived as mainstream, the term “indie game” has become somewhat of a buzzword. The following study displays a series of findings of research fieldwork aiming to advance the study of indie game development by investigating organizational and managerial practices commonly adopted by these developers. Relying on semi-structured interviews conducted with lead developers of seven Brazilian indie game firms, the connections, similarities, and differences among these developers’ firm structure and project management practices and those of the larger game industry is explored, utilizing the lenses of scope, organization, time, cost, and quality management as a starting point. Given the growing and significant relevance of the game industry as a whole, this empirical study offers pragmatic data on the still-niche research topic of indie games.

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cover image Computers in Entertainment
Computers in Entertainment   Volume 16, Issue 4
FINAL EDITION
November 2018
82 pages
EISSN:1544-3574
DOI:10.1145/3292146
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 12 November 2018
Accepted: 01 June 2018
Revised: 01 May 2018
Received: 01 August 2017
Published in CIE Volume 16, Issue 4

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  1. Independent games
  2. game development
  3. indie
  4. project management

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  • (2023)Understanding and Mitigating Challenges for Non-Profit Driven Indie Game Development to Innovate Game ProductionProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580976(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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  • (2022)Level Design Processes and Challenges: A Cross Section of Game DevelopmentGames and Culture10.1177/1555412022113922918:6(821-849)Online publication date: 20-Nov-2022
  • (2022)Reporting on the project development practices of total conversion game mod teamsCreative Industries Journal10.1080/17510694.2022.207759017:3(295-317)Online publication date: 20-May-2022
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