Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the creative practice of indie game developers through the journeys of those displaced, or driven to mobility by state forces. This discussion speaks to anthropological concerns regarding creativity, mobility, and identity.

Paper long abstract:

The experience of the creating a game, what it could be, and all the developer hopes it could be, predisposes all other concerns of game making. However this creativity in practice cannot persist in isolation, it is made of something and requires resources devoted to it. In this way, the creativity of indie developers is constantly, and forcefully, grinding hard against the constraints in which production occurs. In Australia, the State's engagement with this fledgling community is acutely tied to game development, and is highly consequential to the ways in which game developers collectively imagine their practice. This connection is especially poignant in how it pertains to the relationship between indie developers and the governments to which they seem thoroughly dependent. This paper explores the creative practice of indie game developers through the journeys of those displaced, or driven to mobility by state forces. These spurred developers may resemble a sort of nomad, pilgrim or refugee, and in doing so, intersect with anthropological concerns regarding creativity, mobility, and identity.