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The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist: Why We Should Think Beyond Commercial Game Production
The precarious reality of videogame production beyond the corporate blockbuster studios of North America.
The videogame industry, we're invariably told, is a multibillion-dollar, high-tech business conducted by large corporations in certain North American, European, and East Asian cities. But most videogames today, in fact, are made by small clusters of people working on shoestring budgets, relying on existing, freely available software platforms, and hoping, often in vain, to rise to stardom—in short, people working like artists. Aiming squarely at this disconnect between perception and reality, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist presents a much more accurate and nuanced picture of how the vast majority of videogame-makers work—a picture that reveals the diverse and precarious communities, identities, and approaches that make videogame production a significant cultural practice.
Drawing on insights provided by over 400 game developers across Australia, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Brendan Keogh develops a new framework for understanding videogame production as a cultural field in all its complexity. Part-time hobbyists, aspirational students, client-facing contractors, struggling independents, artist collectives, and tightly knit local scenes—all have a place within this model. But proponents of non-commercial game making don't exist in isolation; Keogh shows how they and their commercial counterparts are deeply interconnected and codependent in the field of videogame production.
A cultural intervention, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist challenges core assumptions about videogame production—ideas about creativity, professionalism, labor, diversity, education, globalization, and community. Its in-depth, complex portrayal suggests new ways of seeing, and engaging in, the videogame industry that really does exist.
The videogame industry, we're invariably told, is a multibillion-dollar, high-tech business conducted by large corporations in certain North American, European, and East Asian cities. But most videogames today, in fact, are made by small clusters of people working on shoestring budgets, relying on existing, freely available software platforms, and hoping, often in vain, to rise to stardom—in short, people working like artists. Aiming squarely at this disconnect between perception and reality, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist presents a much more accurate and nuanced picture of how the vast majority of videogame-makers work—a picture that reveals the diverse and precarious communities, identities, and approaches that make videogame production a significant cultural practice.
Drawing on insights provided by over 400 game developers across Australia, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Brendan Keogh develops a new framework for understanding videogame production as a cultural field in all its complexity. Part-time hobbyists, aspirational students, client-facing contractors, struggling independents, artist collectives, and tightly knit local scenes—all have a place within this model. But proponents of non-commercial game making don't exist in isolation; Keogh shows how they and their commercial counterparts are deeply interconnected and codependent in the field of videogame production.
A cultural intervention, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist challenges core assumptions about videogame production—ideas about creativity, professionalism, labor, diversity, education, globalization, and community. Its in-depth, complex portrayal suggests new ways of seeing, and engaging in, the videogame industry that really does exist.
257 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 18, 2023
15 people are currently reading
355 people want to read
About the author
Brendan Keogh
11 books6 followersBrendan Keogh, Research Fellow in the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology, is the author of Killing Is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 7, 2024
its fine its just dry and australian
November 20, 2025
It really doesn’t
September 17, 2023
If you enjoy the following excerpt, please read the much longer complete article at my website and support independent internet!
Does Not Exist is a fascinating text that shines an oblique light—through class examination (who gets to call themselves a game developer?) and industrial extraction (when is “independent” simply a stylistic label, like “action-adventure”?)—on the wider structural history that surrounds the culture of videogames. Even if one doesn’t particularly care about the plight of fringe indie developers as their counter-cultural messaging is co-opted and folded back into the machine of neoliberal commodification to add legitimacy to a be-suited monolith of international conglomerated businessmen, it is important to recognize that that standard cultural spiral does apply, like books, music, poetry—you know, art—to the videogame scene. By virtue of following the same extractive tract of all other cultural forms of expression, the argument of whether videogames are art—more like functional software, or more like expressive creation?—seems to have been answered. Certainly, videogames have functional elements embedded within them, but one could also say the same about the paint used for Starry Night; it might well have been applied to weatherproof a fencepost.
Over and over the book makes its main argument clearly, and well:
Does Not Exist is a fascinating text that shines an oblique light—through class examination (who gets to call themselves a game developer?) and industrial extraction (when is “independent” simply a stylistic label, like “action-adventure”?)—on the wider structural history that surrounds the culture of videogames. Even if one doesn’t particularly care about the plight of fringe indie developers as their counter-cultural messaging is co-opted and folded back into the machine of neoliberal commodification to add legitimacy to a be-suited monolith of international conglomerated businessmen, it is important to recognize that that standard cultural spiral does apply, like books, music, poetry—you know, art—to the videogame scene. By virtue of following the same extractive tract of all other cultural forms of expression, the argument of whether videogames are art—more like functional software, or more like expressive creation?—seems to have been answered. Certainly, videogames have functional elements embedded within them, but one could also say the same about the paint used for Starry Night; it might well have been applied to weatherproof a fencepost.
Over and over the book makes its main argument clearly, and well:
One of the key takeaways from this book, I hope, will be that alternative and noncommercial modes of videogame production are not the fringe of the videogame field but its foundation.In doing so, it must prove any number of ancillary points, intentionally or not, which it also does with aplomb. A reader with any interest in videogames will get so much more from Does Not Exist than can be expected... [continue reading at dinaburgwrites.com]
January 4, 2024
A very academic book - if you're not an academic, your mileage may vary for usefulness of reading this work. As an industry professional (in every sense of the term), I found it useful for gaining a broader perspective on video game production beyond those who (like me) are employed in North America for large studios, but I don't think I'm the primary audience of this work based on style, prior texts cited without in-depth explanation, and other markers of academic writing that are less useful to the layperson or industry audience.
It is very focused on English speaking game makers in Australia - acknowledged by the author - so that's another area where your mileage may vary in terms of what perspectives you are looking to learn about.
I found it very interesting how some of the interviewed subjects found the term "developer" exclusive - if they weren't more directly involved in code or engine work, for example.
Some of what I enjoyed most from this book was the in-depth coverage of the economic forces that shifted Australia's game dev work from licensed IP via outsourced contracts much more heavily towards original IP and more informal or part-time work. I found this especially interesting as someone who has collaborated in the past with Australian coworkers and even visited Melbourne on a work trip a few years ago, as it gave me more context about that experience.
There are a lot of reasons that in the US it is much more common for game makers to fit the more stereotypical game dev full-time professional at a big studio, and the author mentions a few of them, including the way US healthcare insurance is based on employer benefits. I appreciated the coverage of how the increasing interest globally for game worker unionization is not a cure-all for the issues faced by game makers, particularly those who work outside of large studios; universal healthcare combined with universal basic income, for example, would reduce the economic precarity of game making or the pressure to always take on client work over original work for many of the game devs interviewed by the author.
It is very focused on English speaking game makers in Australia - acknowledged by the author - so that's another area where your mileage may vary in terms of what perspectives you are looking to learn about.
I found it very interesting how some of the interviewed subjects found the term "developer" exclusive - if they weren't more directly involved in code or engine work, for example.
Some of what I enjoyed most from this book was the in-depth coverage of the economic forces that shifted Australia's game dev work from licensed IP via outsourced contracts much more heavily towards original IP and more informal or part-time work. I found this especially interesting as someone who has collaborated in the past with Australian coworkers and even visited Melbourne on a work trip a few years ago, as it gave me more context about that experience.
There are a lot of reasons that in the US it is much more common for game makers to fit the more stereotypical game dev full-time professional at a big studio, and the author mentions a few of them, including the way US healthcare insurance is based on employer benefits. I appreciated the coverage of how the increasing interest globally for game worker unionization is not a cure-all for the issues faced by game makers, particularly those who work outside of large studios; universal healthcare combined with universal basic income, for example, would reduce the economic precarity of game making or the pressure to always take on client work over original work for many of the game devs interviewed by the author.
April 24, 2024
An excellent effort to "Broaden and demystify the contexts and driver of video game production". It explores the friction between economic and cultural forces at play in the production of video games, whether a AAA title made by hundred's of people or a twine game made by one person in their spare time.
While it's a relatively dense academic work with a lot of framing that I don't have the background to fully internalize, I nevertheless found it a pretty accessible synthesis of many fascinating ideas. Using the relatively small case of Australia as a sample study, it challenges the preconceptions of viewing the field of game development as purely technological process, it's value measured only in economic success.
As game development has become increasingly formalized, their cultural values have been increasingly co-opted into the economic engine. Larger studios have created pipelines funneling players into creating content as free labour or tertiary courses tailored as technical training for jobs that no longer exist.
But we wouldn't have a AAA games industry if it wasn't for the foundation of individuals and small teams exploring new ideas and embracing the medium as a cultural, iterative process, rather than just a final product to be consumed.
While it's a relatively dense academic work with a lot of framing that I don't have the background to fully internalize, I nevertheless found it a pretty accessible synthesis of many fascinating ideas. Using the relatively small case of Australia as a sample study, it challenges the preconceptions of viewing the field of game development as purely technological process, it's value measured only in economic success.
As game development has become increasingly formalized, their cultural values have been increasingly co-opted into the economic engine. Larger studios have created pipelines funneling players into creating content as free labour or tertiary courses tailored as technical training for jobs that no longer exist.
But we wouldn't have a AAA games industry if it wasn't for the foundation of individuals and small teams exploring new ideas and embracing the medium as a cultural, iterative process, rather than just a final product to be consumed.
May 26, 2025
It’s academic in nature, and thorough as a consequence. While parts of the communist theory might be difficult to parse for people less well read (this reader for sure), the arguments made for the existence of the field as an underlying foundational bedrock for the industry are strong. I found the chapter on the academy’s relation to the videogame field to be the strongest, likely due to my own relation to graduate teaching because it so clearly illustrated how the many parts of the field compete in this one area for legitimacy. This battle for autonomic and heteronomic power is convincingly captured, if dryly.
If nothing else, this is the book that will finally radicalize me against Steam and platformization.
No points for aggressive in/formalization though.
If nothing else, this is the book that will finally radicalize me against Steam and platformization.
No points for aggressive in/formalization though.
June 27, 2024
Interesting core concepts but dry as a bone.
August 30, 2024
Un libro que ofrece perspectivas muy variadas y necesarias de la producción de videojuegos.
Eso sí, académico, y por ello bastante denso y repetitivo.
Eso sí, académico, y por ello bastante denso y repetitivo.
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March 1, 2025This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 4, 2023
Uno de los libros más importantes que he leído. Ya no veo otro camino más que la radicalización de las posturas alternativas dentro del campo de los videojuegos.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews