Escape From Woomera in the context of independent game development.
One of the immediately apparent ‘independent’ characteristics of the Escape From Woomera project is its conscious divergence from the typical ideological content of mainstream commercial games.
To quote from our website (http://www.escapefromwoomera.org):
“With a first person, 3D adventure game we invite gamers to assume the character of, and ‘live’ through the experiences of a modern day refugee. The effective media lock–out from Australian immigration detention centres has meant the whole truth about what goes on behind the razor–wire at Woomera, Baxter, Port Hedland, Maribyrnong and Villawood remains largely a mystery to the Australian public. We want to challenge this by offering a glimpse – more than that even: an interactive, immersive experience – of life within the most secretive and controversial places on the Australian political and geographical landscape. In this way, Escape From Woomera will be an engine for mobilising experiences and situations otherwise inaccessible to a nation of disempowered onlookers. It will provide both a portal and a toolkit for reworking and engaging with what is otherwise an entirely mediated current affair.”
With EFW, we are taking issue with mainstream game content more than mainstream game form.
The need for new directions in the formal aspects of game design has already received attention from numerous forces: whether it be experimentation by artists, intense debates by academics, railing against ‘me too’ industry conservatism by shop floor professionals and indie developers or rallying cries for creative ‘innovation’ by uber-salaried industry pundits - and let’s not forget: funded and researched by industry itself.
Rather than subverting the videogame form we have turned our attention to what is in some ways a more pressing need: that of taking up the existing tools, language and stylistic conventions of an already sophisticated expressive medium and using them to tell our side of the story. We seek the kind of creative freedom that has historically always been the hardest to win: freedom of what is said, not merely the style in which it is said. Because if developers like us don’t, we can be sure that nobody will.
There are numerous cultural critics, both reactionary and progressive, who have expressed concern about the social influence of videogames ever since they began to push towards realistic representation of contemporary social and political themes. While some people tell games to back off, we say: bring it on. The only issue we take with these games is that they’re not real enough.
Like any form of media, the videogame is an ideological tool that is wielded, consciously or unconsciously, in the interests of those who control media production. Hence the character of the majority of commercially available games is no surprise to us. Our project represents a form of independent media and cultural resistance, in part inspired by the indymedia movement which has flourished over the last few years. (http://indymedia.org)
Why our natural ‘home’ is the indy game development community
People are sometimes surprised to learn that the majority of the EFW team are experienced professional game developers, and not predominantly from the new media arts world. This project has indeed set the stage for a meeting of creative minds from disparate fields, from journalism to fine art. But EFW emerged initially from the commercial world – it is truly the Australian commercial games industry’s bastard child, its teeth cut on cartoon racing games and Playstation shooters.
We’ve been heartened by the links we’ve managed to make within the art world. But for this project to be a success we need to go beyond being a ‘novel concept’ and gain respect and influence within the game development community. We seek to influence the state of the medium and the state of the industry because through creating EFW we are entering a debate about its future. This goal is the holy grail for us.
That is why it’s really important that we design a great game and not just a piece of conceptual art. Anyone with a modicum of imagination could have come up with the EFW concept, and as everyone in the game industry knows, the real artistry is in making a concept work as a game. It is the craft of what we produce that will make or break us amongst the gamer community. Of course, integral to our challenge is making it work without compromising the integrity of our subject matter.
For these reasons, we should find our natural allies and peers within the independent game development community. We have the same enemies, the same audience and similar goals.
Why independence in game development? The problem with the mainstream industry
“What’s wrong with the game industry” is a topic that is frequently discussed, so here I will paint a picture with a short list of what I think are some ‘accepted truths’ about the nature of the game industry.
What is to be done?
Sometimes I get the impression that people expect an independent game development industry to mature and open up interesting creative niches as a matter of course. But how much bigger and cross-cultural does the gaming phenomenon has to get before people realise that this is just not happening? While gaming is now popular all over the world, even in places where technology is scarce (there are even LAN gaming clubs in Iraq and Uzbekistan), gamers are consuming media predominantly controlled by increasingly select, centralised interests.
Like any other form of social progress a change in the course of game development history has to be fought for. It would be completely unserious to sit back, wait and commentate. Cynical post-modern posturing will not make history, nor will sell-out alliances with major games publishers under the veil of ‘artist-industry’ or ‘academic-industry’ or ‘government/industry’ collaborations. We have to intervene, we have to struggle for control of the means of game production.
How, I’m not exactly sure yet, but here are some of the challenges that I think are key:
Workers’ control
As development teams become larger, we are witnessing moves towards Taylorist management structures and the use of outsourced labour, Nike style. It is a widely held view that our industry is becoming centralised, concentrated and conservative. Perhaps this scenario would be more tolerable if there were a counterweight to this – a viable alternative, art-house or independent industry that we could aspire to work in. However, as Eric Zimmerman has already said at this conference, “there are currently no margins in the game industry”. We, the frustrated, the idealists, have no place to go; hence we are compelled to create a place for ourselves.
But creating games in our spare time as hobbyists or grant-dependent artists ultimately doesn’t pay the rent.
Just as workers in other industries manage to collectively bargain and achieve some control over the way their workplaces are run, we as creative labourers are in a position to challenge the imbalance of power within our studios and regain some creative control over the games we produce. There is also an urgent need for basic working conditions like paid overtime and job security in an industry that earns (some people) billions of dollars a year.
Democratise access to tools
The modding scene and the open source movement show how tantalisingly possible democratising access to the software tools of game development could be. However, licenses stand in the way of turning a hobbyist community into a viable independent industry. This intangible means of game production is kept out of the grasp of the game developing masses by a capitalist sleight of hand known as intellectual property law.
Break the distribution oligopoly
Our game industry managers tell us there is no such thing as ‘niche’ games anymore – every title has to have ‘triple A’ potential otherwise it’s not worth making. Why? Because Electronics Boutique (and Wal-Mart and a handful of other big chains) buy stock in bulk for all their stores the world over, and there’s simply not enough shelf space to go around for mainstream titles, let alone ‘niche’ ones. A title that won’t get shelf space at Wal-Mart will often simply not shift enough units to cover increasingly large development and (even larger) marketing costs.
Fight for public funding
The Australian state currently holds two attitudes towards videogames: on the one hand games are potentially more dangerous than other media (see the Office of Film and Literature Classification guidelines) and must be more restricted here than anywhere else in the Western World; and on the other hand games are a marvelous cash cow – with the ability to extract billions of dollars from the pockets of young people and their parents so that some of that revenue may trickle down to create jobs and attract investment in the thriving centre of cheap labour that is the Australian game development industry.
That is the extent to which the state cares about the cultural consumption of young people.
Hence, when EFW went for public funding we were faced with two options. We had to either prove that EFW is a piece of new media art or a species of highly marketable toy (like, for example, an AFL (Australian football) game), otherwise noone would have taken us seriously let alone given us funding. We are very conscious of the fact that we wouldn’t have had to meet this criteria if we were proposing to make a film or television programme destined for public broadcasting. But we are unlucky enough to be the kind of second class creative professionals who express our stories, art and music through the medium of the videogame. Thankfully we found support within the new media arts community amongst those who recognise the potential of games as an artform, even though in some quarters it was a battle to prove that games could be anything more than trash culture and paternalistic edutainment.
Trash culture or youth culture? Game culture is important and is worthy of as much respect as more established forms of art and media (’old people’s’ culture (?)) . This medium is a sophisticated conduit for ideas that should engender the same public support and recognition for its cultural worth as public broadcasting media such as radio and television.
EFW caused a storm of controversy when it received $25K in development funding from the Australia Council for the Arts. Our great misfortune however is that we exist in a moment of history at which production funding for projects of our kind is virtually non-existent. Now even the little arts funding for digital media that was available a few years ago has begun to dry up. Could projects like ACMI (http://www.acmi.net.au/acmipark.jsp) ever be funded again in Victoria? Film Victoria’s Digital Media Fund has quietly had its Interactive Screen Arts programme scrapped, and been reoriented towards filmmakers and providing cashflow for established commercial game development companies and web developers. Does anyone care? What happened to creating art in the 21st century? To me it seems utterly backward looking that digital artists in Victoria are now effectively reduced to having to make something for the ABC or SBS websites or collaborate with filmmakers to obtain workable levels of funding for their projects.
In spite of well-meaning advice from friends and colleagues, I openly declare that Escape From Woomera stands proudly in the tradition of game development. Likewise, I am proud to call myself a game developer, and perhaps at some point in the future many more people will understand why.
Build the community
Selectparks Game Art Archives - http://www.selectparks.net
Developers In Exile - http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Oliver.pdf
The Scratchware Manifesto - http://www.the-underdogs.net/scratchware.php
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily shared by other members of the Escape From Woomera project team.