INTRODUCTION: THE STATE OF ENTERTAINMENT



In recent years critical discourses and disciplines have sought to engage the computer game as a mass medium worthy of attention. Within literature studies, the computer game has been investigated as a platform for rethinking narratology, anthropology in the mapping of online communities and in semiotics, as a rich culture of signs.

Concurrently a 'new generation' of digital artists interested in exploring alternative uses for the medium has also emerged, fascinated with its scintillating possibilities. This said there are relatively few experimental games in circulation, especially when compared to exploratory practices within other media-types, like video and computer music, both of which are arguably younger mediums than the computer game.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious: games can be both very difficult and very expensive to make, requiring comparably large teams working with highly specialist tools and skills. Because of this, game development, as a practice, becomes heavily bound to the capital investments of the publisher, and therefore the publishers interests within the wider marketplace.

'Independent Game Development' then emerges as the self-determination to operate outside of this restrictive relationship, attempting to create a market context to compete with, or even survive amidst the monopolisations of larger publishers. However while the conditions for an independent game development practice currently appear better than ever, 1 the culture of the marketplace itself is still very resistant to accepting alternative approaches to the use of the medium itself.

To better understand how the medium is contained in this way, we first of all need to remember that 'game development' itself is considered an Entertainment Industry, and as such a game's a priori is that is be 'entertaining'. Naturally the condition 'to entertain' per se is not conditionally imposed upon a short film, but it can certainly be said that if a producer or developer thinks a game is not entertaining it won't be released. More importantly, the regulation of what constitutes valid 'entertainment' must first of all be questioned.

Here we find the first impediment facing the development and distribution of truly independent games, censorship.