Artisanal Local Networks: Game Work and Culture in Independent Game Production

This chapter is particularly concerned with the synergies between independent game production and developers?> game cultures. It relies on a cultural industry approach to game work as cultural work, while engaging with the community-of-practice (CoP) framework to understand the internal dynamics of developers?> artisanal local networks. The chapter attempts to describe and reflect on the daily work practices of independent game developers, with special emphasis on a local network in Cambridge, and to provide an understanding of the microsocial relationships that structure their process of game making, both spatially and procedurally. In addition, it is set to explore the meanings and functions of these relationships, which is driven by the pleasures of work/play as suggested by N. Dyer-Witheford and G. De Peuter and C. O?>Donnell as well as shaped by the need to socially ensure access to technical, intellectual, and economic sources of game development.