The Independent Mode: A Functionalist Account of Independent Games and Game History

Which is more important: the business of games, the design of a game, or the way players play a game? Unfortunately, we face the problem that our answers tend to depend on our disciplinary background.

As an example, what kind of thing are independent video games? Do independent video games even exist, or is “independent” just a vague label applied to a range of unrelated games? Is independence a financial arrangement or a style? In fact, we can ask similar questions about labels commonly employed to distinguish games: casual, hypercasual, core, mobile, AAA, live games.

Taking a cue from film studies, this paper argues for seeing independent games – and other game types - as modes of game practice: as specific historical arrangements of production methods, design conventions, distribution, business, and reception practices (i.e. ways of playing). This approach has several advantages over previous work: It does not privilege any given perspective on independent games, and it allows us to think more broadly about how a game type consists of many interlocking parts, where minute design decisions serve concrete functions in the business and cultural context around them. The paper exemplifies this through an analysis of how the playing practices encouraged by the design of independent video games also support the cultural context around independent games. Finally, the paper extends this to a more general view of game history as a gradual shift of modes.