The following is a blog post I wrote in a foundational course about Information Communities:
There is a “mass amateurization,” coined by Clay Shirky, happening in game development, and similar to literacy and writing, it is allowing more people to understand how games work, and how to produce them. Originators of indie game developer communities, who had their own experiences of developing games, encourage newcomers to join a group in order to connect with other “coders, artists, composers” for development support (Phillips, D. https://www.rengenmarketing.com/blog/indie-game-dev-communities/). However, while explaining that a Wiki contributor’s role can cross between reader and writer, Shirky mentions that “flexibility of role is a common result of amateurization,” (p. 112). In the indie game developer community, this concept can easily be understood by any list of games made by a single developer (Scully, E. https://careerkarma.com/blog/games-made-by-one-person). One developer can provide the code, art, and music for a game.
With the “democratization of game tools,” as written by Simon Carless, anyone can create their own games at their own leisure. In terms of serious leisure, a concept by sociologist Robert Stebbins, the hobby of making games may be viewed as a serious pursuit type of leisure, where members learn what is necessary to make a game. It can also be viewed as project-based leisure because making a game is a “complex, time-bound, creative undertaking.”
Anyone new to indie game development soon learns that making a game is a complex task that requires code. As peer-reviewed research specifically on coders developing indie games (or even video games) were lacking, Freund’s research on software engineers out of the 12 examples of information behavior models seemed the most useful for my chosen community. The information seeking behavior of engineers is centered around their tasks, and that “work tasks and information tasks influence searching and selecting behavior” (Freund, 2015). They search for information through “verbal communication with colleagues, internal reports, and personal information stores,” and select what information to use based on its “appropriateness to task” and whether it “meets the needs of the project” (Hertzum, 2002, Fidel & Green, 2004). For indie game developers, a game isn’t functional until its design, audio, and visual elements work together, which creates countless situations, or work tasks, that the coder must resolve. Since the coder is the main developer of the game, the skills they would need to learn is questioning whether something is suitable for the game, such as choosing from the many game engines available (GameMaker, Unity, etc.), and whether something meets the needs of the game, for example, if an art or audio asset is in the correct format and is compatible with the system.
Time, in this case, has no bound, unless the developer has a vested interest to complete at a specific deadline. In Freund’s research, information seeking of software engineers are constrained by time and budget costs, so they choose search strategies that require the least effort (Freund, 2015). For indie game developers, there are no such constraints and they can take more time as needed for information seeking.
Solutions to implement the design of the game, visual art, and music are each their own creative processes, and parallel information seeking behaviors. The information seeking behavior of software developers is mentioned above, but Wilson’s model has frequently been used to connect information seeking with the creative process. The creative process has been cited in different studies, and appears as these 4 stages:
- Preparation
- Incubation
- Verification
- Illumination
Preparation has been described as when the “Creative person gets interested in the problem and gathers all information to address the problem” or when “the person begins thinking about creativity and gathers information or ideas” (Lee, et al, 2005, Lavranos, et al 2015). A study on visual artists found a general model of information seeking behavior where artists begin the process by requiring “information for several distinct purposes, including inspiration, specific visual image needs, technical knowledge, marketing and career guidance, and knowledge of current trends in the art world” (Heming, 2007), while a study on music information behavior suggests information seeking begins from the drive for expression (Lavranos, et al, 2015). The interest in the problem or catalyst to thinking about creativity illustrates the motivating factor to information seeking in Wilson’s model, which explains why it has been frequently mentioned as a macro-model in studies related to the creative process.
This is a lot of high level information to think about! But is there anything in this research that we can use to identify information needs of the indie game developers’ audio visual creative process?
In the study on music information behavior, research findings suggested that the availability of information sources and the way musicians seek information influences their expression. There is an array of different music information resources to choose from, and they can be digital, conventional (print), or interpersonal. The study suggests that a useful information service is one that enables users to select their preferred “information sources to support their creative intentions.” However, the study also mentions barriers to musical creativity due to a lack of information literacy, which is critical to information gathering (Lavranos, et al, 2015).
For artists, a study found that they “tend to ask for more general types through which they can browse in pursuit of visual information about a particular subject of interest, information about a technique, or simple inspiration… almost any information might … be considered ‘art information’”. Also, artists like to seek information through “serendipitous browsing” and prefer human mediation to find what they need rather than using the library system themselves (Heming, 2007).
The artistic and music experience of indie game developers may vary, but from different studies, it would seem that an abundance of source material to browse through and the information literacy to find them, such as understanding how art or music is organized, and what types of art or music information is available, are information needs for audio-visual creative processes for indie game developers.
Whether indie game developers choose to collaborate or work on their own, it was beneficial to find information seeking models or behaviors in regards to coding, or software development, visual art, and audio design to understand how to support the complexity and creative process of this type of serious leisure.
References
Carless, S. (2021, October 21). 15 years later, did indie game discovery happen like we thought? Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/blogs/15-years-later-did-indie-game-discovery-happen-like-we-thought-
Case, D. O. & Given, L. M.(2016). Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs, and behavior (4th ed.). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Freund, L. (2015). Contextualizing the Information-Seeking Behavior of Software Engineers. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(8), 1594-1605. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23278
Hartel, J., Cox, A. M., & Griffin, B. L. (2016). Information activity in serious leisure. Information Research, 21(4), 728. http://informationr.net/ir/21-4/paper728.html
Hemming, W. (2008). The information-seeking behavior of visual artists: a literature review. Journal of Documentation, 64(3), 343-362. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410810867579
Lavranos, C., Kostagiolas, P., Martzoukou, K., Papadatos, J. (2015). Music information seeking behavior as motivator for musical creativity: Conceptual analysis and literature review. Journal of Documentation, 71(5), 1070-1093. http://doi.org/10.1108/JD-10-2014-0139
Lee, S., Theng, Y., Goh, D. H. (2005). Creative information seeking Part I: a conceptual framework. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 57(5), 460-475. https://doi.org/10.1108/00012530510621897
Scully, E. (2020, August 1). Best Games Made By One Person – The Top Video Games Created By a Single Developer. Career Karma. https://careerkarma.com/blog/games-made-by-one-person
Shirky, C. (2009). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Group.
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