Developer's Dilemma

The Secret World of Videogame Creators

Bibliographic Data

ID19973780
AuthorsCasey O’donnell (0000-0001-5396-6384, corresponding author), Casey O'Donnell, Trevor Pinch (0000-0001-6938-2199), W Bernard Carlson
Year2014
Pages320
Publication date2014-11-21
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueDeveloper's Dilemma (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherThe MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7551/mitpress/9035.001.0001
OpenAlexW4252961560
Open LibraryOL29550387M
ISBN9780262322836
LanguageEN
Citations received65

An examination of work, the organization of work, and the market forces that surround it, through the lens of the collaborative practice of game development. Rank-and-file game developers bring videogames from concept to product, and yet their work is almost invisible, hidden behind the famous names of publishers, executives, or console manufacturers. In this book, Casey O'Donnell examines the creative collaborative practice of typical game developers. His investigation of why game developers work the way they do sheds light on our understanding of work, the organization of work, and the market forces that shape (and are shaped by) media industries. O'Donnell shows that the ability to play with the underlying systems—technical, conceptual, and social—is at the core of creative and collaborative practice, which is central to the New Economy. When access to underlying systems is undermined, so too is creative collaborative process. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in game studios in the United States and India, O'Donnell stakes out new territory empirically, conceptually, and methodologically. Mimicking the structure of videogames, the book is divided into worlds, within which are levels; and each world ends with a boss fight, a “rant” about lessons learned and tools mastered. O'Donnell describes the process of videogame development from pre-production through production, considering such aspects as experimental systems, “socially mandatory” overtime, and the perpetual startup machine that exhausts young, initially enthusiastic workers. He links work practice to broader systems of publishing, manufacturing, and distribution; introduces the concept of a privileged “actor-intra-internetwork”; and describes patent and copyright enforcement by industry and the state

Dilemma · Epistemology · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Media, Communication, and Education · Open Source Software Innovations · Philosophy · Authorship · Computer games · Computer games, programming · Computer software · Computer software developers · Computer software, development · Design · Development · Programming · Video games · Video games, design

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