How can a video game on a small budget stand out? Through a new history of the independent game festivals from 1998 to 2020, I will show three strategies for making *authentic* games. These strategies show how to combine production, design, and marketing to make an independent game stand out in the world.

1. Handmade Pixels: Indie and the
Quest for making smaller,
newer, and more authentic
Games
Jesper Juul
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts,
School of Design
@jesperjuul www.jesperjuul.net

2. In this talk
• What does ”independence” mean?
• (What work does ‘independence’ do?)
• How can we tell the history of independent games?
• Takeaways: How do you make, and promote, small-budget games
that stand out?
• Q & A

3. Meaning in Video Games
Meaning in Rules &
Fiction
Meaning in small games Meaning in failure Meaning in experiments
and game production

12. Writing a book about independent games
• 21 developer and festival organizer interviews
• 100+ games discussed w/ color screenshots
• History of indie game festivals and their winners
1998-2018
• History of indie game visual styles
• Authenticity strategies in independent games
• Walking simulators and aesthetics
• What happens if an experimental game is not
recognized as a “game”?

15. Three Questions
1.Where did Independent Games come from?
2.How can a digital and immaterial video game be authentic?
[аутентичность]
3.Have video games finally become mature?

16. Independent, just like cinema and music?

17. “I hate chains”
-My local coffee shop owner/barista

19. Indie origin stories
“Vlambeer was founded in 2010 by
Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman,
after they dropped out of game
design university. With no resources,
space or money, they created Radical
Fishing to earn a starting capital to
rent an office and food other than
noodles.”

20. The cultural platform of independent games
Games also run on a cultural
platform of expectations.
Do players:
• Know what to do?
• Like low-budget graphics?
• Accept short games?
• Accept games that are not
challenging?
• Agree that games can have
meaning or messages?
• Like not knowing what to do?

21. Authenticity of indie
“Indie games let me be a fan who is cheering on someone authentic and deserving”.
–Dan Cook
“Speak from your heart. Honesty is extremely valuable when making [Indie game] art”.
–Edmund McMillen
“A much higher bandwidth relationship with art … that deeper and more niche personal relationship with the
work”.
–Robin Arnott
“That creation of this highly glossy, commercial product is the opposite of making something personal.”
-Jonathan Blow
“Being able to identify the individual style and growth of individual authors leads to … more personal games,
more relevant games, more games with something to say.”
-Anna Anthropy

22. Paradox of Authenticity: Signals and
assurance of Authenticity sound Inauthentic

24. VVVVVV (2010): Aspiration to be simple
1980’s game
“VVVVVV is the first great Indie game
of the year.” (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“From the Commodore 64 load screen
to the incredible 8-bit tunes, VVVVVV
feels like the holy grail of lost games.”
(IGN)

25. Manic Miner: Impressive graphics routines;
money
“The game includes some impressive
graphics routines”
(Sinclair User, 1983)

26. Braid & Super Mario Bros
“Yet perhaps Braid’s most startling feature is
that it feels, far more than any other game, like a
fully authored text—as rich with meaning and
emotion as any well-crafted short story. “
(The Atlantic, 2012)
“Nintendo's success … the culmination of a
series of carefully planned marketing and
advertising ploys… The toy industry has never
seen this kind of sophistication,'‘ (NY Times,
1988)

27. Independent games
• The general idea of “independent” music, cinema
• Filtered through year 20XX ideas of the local, authentic
• The analog
• Return to older forms
• Against mass production
• Against brands
• For direct connections to creators
• Farmers markets > supermarkets
• Anti-modernism

28. Where did independent games come from?
• Story #1: In 200x, renegade developers invented a new video game.
• Story #2: There have always been independent games.
• Story #3: There have always been small games, but only recently
something to be independent from.
• Story #4: the history of independent games is a history of the idea of
independent games

29. Are Independent Games New? Deus Ex
Machina (1984)

30. Deus Ex Machina as Independent Game
Experimental
Made by small teams on small budgets
Promoted as alternative to a mainstream

31. Three types of Independence
1. Financially independent in terms of its “industrial location”.
2. Aesthetically independent in its “formal/aesthetic strategies”.
3. Culturally independent in its “relationship to the broad social,
cultural, political or ideological landscape”.
Adapted from Geoff King: American Independent Cinema. I.B. Tauris
2009.

34. IGF 1999: Financial Independence
Small developers hoping to find a
publisher (becoming dependent)
"It seems likely that this gang of
college kids will be picked up soon as
a hot new development team by one
of the majors”.

35. 2000 Tread Marks 3d Tank battle
2001 Shattered
Galaxy
Isometric Strategy game
2002 Bad Milk Photos
rotating in 3d
Associational
multimedia
2003 Wild Earth 3d Animal safari
2004 Savage: The
Battle for
Newerth
3d MOBA war

37. IGF 2005-2012:
Aesthetic Independence
• Made by a single developer
(possibly 2 people), driven by
passion (financial independence).
• A game that in genre and scope
refers back to 1980’s game design
principles and often visual styles
(aesthetic independence).

38. Is there an Indie Visual Style?
VVVVVV And Yet it Moves Crayon Physics
1980’s games Torn paper Children’s crayons

39. Independent Style
• A representation of a representation.
• Uses contemporary technology emulating low-tech and cheap
materials.
• Signaling that a game with this style is more immediate, authentic
and honest than are big-budget titles with high-end 3-dimensional
graphics.

40. The Arts and Crafts movement
• Industrial production as loss of quality, personality,
meaningful life.
• Craftsmanship as personal, local, particular, unique,
democratic, better works.
• Unity of morals, politics, aesthetics.
Return to …
• Gothic, Medieval architecture.
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1851-1853.
• Craftsmanship and personality.
William Morris, The Revival of Handicraft, 1888.

42. IGF Grand Prize IGF Nuovo IndieCade
2008
Crayon Physics Gravitation
2009
Blueberry Garden Between Moon Stories
2010
Monaco Tuning Groping in the Dark
2011
Minecraft Nidhogg Fez

43. Mainstream indie: Indie Game The Movie

44. 2012-: Cultural Independence
Financial + aesthetic + cultural
independence: Games for a better
world

46. IGF Grand Prize IGF Nuovo IndieCade A MAZE
2012
Fez Storyteller Unmanned Proteus
2013
Cart Life Cart Life Quadrilateral Cowboy Spaceteam
2014
Papers, Please Luxuria Superbia Hack 'n' Slash Perfect Woman

47. The cultural platform of independent games
Games also run on a cultural
platform of expectations.
Do players:
• Know what to do?
• Like low-budget graphics?
• Accept short games?
• Accept games that are not
challenging?
• Agree that games can have
meaning or messages?
• Like not knowing what to do?

48. “artsy hipster crap” – Steam review

49. When local “indie” breaks
• “The word independent is
being used by large
corporations for their own
benefit. ... independent
certainly is not:
• That prioritize or adhere to a
strict market policy, placing
artistic, cultural and social
relevance in the background;
• ...
• Structured and propagating
the status quo and
establishment.”

50. Japan: Are doujin Games = Independent
Games?

51. Western “Independent Games”
1. Big-budget industry to differentiate against.
2. Absence of existing alternative game development.
3. A cultural platform: players that understand small games.
• “Hipsters”: Arts & crafts anti-modern ideas of authentic small-scale production
against inauthentic mass production.
4. Digital distribution allowing games in different sizes

52. Q: have video games become a mature art
form?
A: Art forms don’t mature or arrive.

53. Three Independent Strategies
1. Financially independent
• Promote game as personal
• ”Made from passion”
• Tell story of its creation
2. Aesthetically independent
• New themes
• New visual styles
• Small, but deep systems
• New ways of playing
3. Culturally independent
• New creators
• Political themes
• Better ways of working

54. Can we keep going back in time?

55. Handmade Pixels: Independent
Video Games and the Quest for
Authenticity
jesperjuul.net/handmade
pixels
@jesperjuul j@jesperjuul.net
www.jesperjuul.net