thesis

  • Role: Author
  • Tools: Dedoose, ethnography, interview, textual analysis, media studies, cultural studies, software studies
  • Deliverable: 100-page written thesis

As part of my graduate studies at Georgia Tech, I'm writing a thesis about independent game development in Japan. Specifically, I ask:

  • How are tools such as game engines affecting how independent games are made in Japan?
  • Are games made with middleware of western origin any less "Japanese"?
  • What the heck is Japaneseness in the context of software and games, and how does this relate to videogames as commodities in a globalized world?

If you'd like to know how I'm filling 100 pages with ~definitive answers~ to the above, find more details below.

Downwell, in which the protagonist wears a gunboot -- a case study for my thesis.(image source: downwellgame.com)

Downwell, in which the protagonist wears a gunboot -- a case study for my thesis.
(image source: downwellgame.com)

My thesis:

  • delineates the two dominant modes of independent game development in Japan – indie and dojin
  • to find out how the cultures of independent game development are being constructed in a place where indie creation is (seen as) a nascent mode of production
  • in order to help my reader understand how the prevailing notion of what constitutes a particular form of cultural production (in this case independent game creation) can affect the output of that cultural production – by examining one key actor in this network, the Unity game engine.

 I begin this research project with an exploration of indie videogames – not by prescriptively defining or delineating, but rather by tracing who have made use of the concept. From these diverse accounts of indie, I draw out one thread – the aspiration to commercial distribution – as a linchpin of the differences in the aspirational paradigms of indie and another similarly homebrewed type of game, dojin games, and thereby demonstrate why dojin games are external to newer narratives of indie game development within Japan.

I then delve into literature on the history of Japanese videogames to ground the reader in the historical, cultural, linguistic, and material particularities of the environments in which Japanese indie and dojin games arose. I then walk the reader through one of the few papers on Japanese indie games specifically, Kenji Ito’s 2007 study of amateur role-playing game designers in Japan.

Once I’ve established a thorough picture of indie and dojin game development in Japan, I analyze the Unity game engine from the software studies approach exemplified by Lev Manovich’s Software Takes Command.  I also examine the promotional and educational activities of Unity Technologies Japan, and the work that the company responsible for Unity has done to make its tool legible, accessible, and culturally relevant to Japanese developers.

Following this, I present a short case study of a major recent Japanese indie game, Downwell, and a long-running series of dojin games called the Toho Project, to see how they embody the schemas I describe in the first part of this project, and I dig into literature from sociology and cultural studies on globalization for a deeper explication of how these games function culturally and economically within national and global flows of capital, labor, and culture.