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force as “empire,” which more accurately captures the element of force
involved in these networks (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 2009), that may
swerve too far in the other direction. I can certainly understand the reading
of empire, but can also imagine alternative readings that are less pessimis-
tic. The rise of independent game development, for example, hints that this
is more hegemonic than despotic and the empire is changing in response.
Even the early history of video game development is infused with refer-
ences to a broader counterculture rooted in the 1970s, which came to be
captured by the world of Atari and others that erased the labour of a game's
creator behind the publisher's label (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 2009,
6-14). This push and pull between developers, publishers and distributors
continues to be felt throughout the game industry even years after its birth.
The counterculture of developers and their complex relationships with man-
ufacturers and publishers is rarely felt outside the small circle of producers
who understand the rules and implications of the industry's structure.
A constant fl ow of games from Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe
forms the majority of the global fl ows of commercial game titles, with ris-
ing communities of game developers in China and Korea creating content
specifi cally for their internal markets. Cultural production, if that is what
it is to be called, is constantly swirling with cross-cultural border transgres-
sions. Video games in particular seem at home with this situation, with
“Japanese” characters resembling “Western” characters and these creations
roaming from game title to game title.
There are even a handful of particularly transgressive titles, such as
Kingdom Hearts , which exemplify the kind of meandering culture that
infuses video game development. This game was a collaboration between
Square Enix and Disney Interactive Studios, in which Disney characters
appear alongside characters from the Final Fantasy worlds made popular
by Square Enix (2002).
Although video games are software, they are more than software, and
too often they and their producers remain lumped into the same categories
as software developers. Assumptions are made about what compromises a
game and its production process, which continues to hold the video game
industry and the art of game production back from its full potential. As
the conversation about games and art progresses, so too should the con-
sideration that video games, like the numerous other forms of media, are
something quite dif erent.
Perhaps most importantly, the gross mislabelling of video games as
software and game development as software development signifi cantly dis-
torts the creative labour and interdisciplinary of the worlds of video game
developers. Whereas game development companies have had little interest
in opening their doors to cultural analysts, the broader social imaginary
about what game developers do, as illustrated in movies like Grandma's
Boy , distort and misinform the broader public about precisely what goes
into the creation of a game.
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