...

Had some more thoughts about the whole thing...

This post is an addition to my post "A Deadzone of Living Games: Remake", which you can read here.

It might sound like I'm bemoaning the death of a once radical cultural movement, but this post is not about "Selling out". Whatever similarities exist between the death of Indiegames, or similar events in the music industry, they exist because the driving forces behind them are the same.

While the process I tried to describe is mostly concerned about the economics behind them, I want to re-iterate that the idea of the "Deadzone" cannot be fixed by a rejection of the financial aspects behind it alone. If Indiegames is a Deadzone than this also applies to the design principles that it deploys and the works it produces.

So to reject the Deadzone then means to also reject the accepted ideas of Game Design that it fostered.

As much as there is a personal responsibility to anything that any of us are doing, this piece and these notes are not about guilting or shaming people who participate in these systems. It is my position, that structures shape humans into certain behavioural patterns and (again), while we all have to find our own paths through them, we all contribute to their survival just by existing within them. The key aspect behind the concept of the "Deadzone" as Max Haiven lays it out, is that it creates and perpetuates these structures of oppression without the intentional input of specific human beings.

So as much as we all to various degrees contribute to the continued existence of the deadzone, we cannot change it by appealing to everyone's individual responsibility. So the question isn't about which behaviour is more or less bad, and whether or not it's morally okay to participate in them. It's about identifying the reasons why things are the way they are and then charting a path towards a more desired environment.

While I personally used the term "Commercial Games" to refer to the part of videogames that has mostly been financialized and unified, I think "Industrial Games" is actually a better term and I will use it from now on.

I think "Industrial Games" works better, because instead of lumping smaller, experimental and marginalised commercial games into the same pot as larger, more conventional "Indie Games", it instead splits the non-industrial parts of videogames, regardless of their commercial aims, from the parts of videogames that have been wholly subsumed by financial interests.

At the end of the day, while their budgets are still very far apart, the conceptual differences between a smaller "Indie" studio that pursues mainstream commercial interests and a monolithic AAA studio are much smaller, than they are between the small studio and a single person (commercial) passion project.

In my "Notes about Evil Game Design", I wrote "Evil Game Design might turn into Good Game Design if it is commercially successful". Whatever shape a rejection of Industrial Game Design might take, it too will always be at risk of being consumed by Capitalism. In fact: Should it ever get any substantial traction, its demise is almost inevitable, unless it is coincided with the fall of Capitalism itself.

This might sound bleak, but the best reaction when faced with oblivion is to boldy step towards it, not to fall into despair. In order to open up the possibility for victory, we first need to accept the possibility of perpetual defeat.

To Quote Max Haiven again: "Revenge is the reckless determination that what you love has value, in a world where it is rendered worthless."

The reason I wish for a different approach to videogame design, production and distribution, is because what exists right now, is incredibly hostile to anything that does not fit its very tight definitions.

I personally have been actively participating in this space for over a decade and have been following it for even longer. In those years I've seen countless highly talented people emerge and either had their work rejected by the existing structures, or saw it being warped into a more acceptable, but also less interesting form. If I had to describe a personal vision for a living, non-industrial videogames culture, then it is one that enthusiastically allows everyone to create things without fear of being rejected.

What exists now is full of fear and not all of them can be alleviated by everyone being a bit nicer to each other. There are larger structures that too need to be dismantled. However, it is my firm belief that videogames, like any other part of our lives, could be a starting point for this larger process.

This is why this all matters and this is why despair, as convenient as it is, has no place.

We all wish for something better, we all dream of something better, we all are convinced that something better is possible. So let's figure out a way to build it together.