Curator's Note
As the longest running indie video game showcase, the Independent Games Festival (IGF) is approaching its 20th anniversary. As IGF chairwoman Kelly Wallick said, “I see the IGF as facilitating a yearly conversation about what it means to be an independent developer.” These annual “conversations” carry significant material and symbolic weight and are mediated through corporate commodity chains, privileged social networks, and hostile cultural fields. During this milestone for the organization and following an eruption of social violence in 2014 targeting women in the industry, it is worth reflecting on how this influential intermediary has shaped discourses around indie games.
At the 2016 IGF Awards, Microsoft awarded eight participants of The Girls Make Games program the Rising Star Award. As the young girl developers stood on stage (setting a record for the most girls or women to appear on the IGF stage) they appeared humbled and expressed hope about their futures in game development. The program founder pleaded with audience members to welcome girls into the community, “I urge everyone here to just kind of extend a hand out. That’s all you need to do...” Framed as medium cheerleaders rather than industry players, these girls reinscribe boundaries of belonging and request inclusion on the terms of goodwill rather than merit.
That same year, Tracy Fullerton, Director of the USC Game Innovation Lab, was granted GDC’s Ambassador Award. Developer Jenova Chen playfully introduced Fullerton by presenting her impressive 25 year “resume” by unrolling a long piece of paper across the stage. In her acceptance speech, she warmly reflected on her experience of the community stating, “It is full of such love and passion...and all the good things in life.” While Fullerton’s presence symbolizes a commitment to diversity, her role as “ambassador” positively bridges the cultural divide and eschews her ability to directly acknowledge the tensions in the industry.
Such practices construct a fantasy indie community that is free from abuse and inequality. These highly visible “diversity initiatives” champion evolving the medium over protecting girls and women who are rendered metrics of this progress. While I am not suggesting that including girls and honoring women should be avoided, I am suggesting that the terms of these inclusions be carefully considered and analyzed. As we approach another season of “conversations” about what it means to be an indie developer, it is important to listen for the terms of inclusion, belonging, and acceptance.
Comments
Myth-making in the imagined indie community
Great post, Aleah. What I really appreciate about your research is your attention to how big, public-facing initiatives like IGF serve as a kind of myth-making engine for the "imagined indie community" (as Pierson Browne calls it), which nevertheless have significant social and material implications. There's something very specific about awards like Rising Star and Ambassador (or Lifetime Achievement) in that they often seem to serve as correctives to established narratives; however, as you rightly point out this can gloss over ongoing issues and even make them more difficult to address. Alison Harvey and Stephanie Fisher have also been doing important work in this area, poking and prodding at the conventional wisdom about what diversity and inclusivity actually are, and how they're implemented in both top-down and bottom-up initiatives.
IndieGames.com goes indie
An interesting coincidence: the long-running indie news site IndieGames.com (which helped construct indie games as a concept) just broke off from UBM, the corporation that runs GDC and the Independent Games Festival. Curious to see how the new independent iteration of the site develops.
Woke
Yes yes yes. To put it much more crudely, I am suspicious of any organization that publically showcases how "woke" they are in terms of diversity or inclusion.
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