Abstract:
Commercial game makers at all scales of production have increasingly come to incorporate livestreaming into every stage of the game development cycle. Mainstream hits like Fortnite and League of Legends owe their ongoing success in no small part to their massive uptake by streamers, and triple-A releases from major publishers can reliably expect significant attention on streaming platforms. But what about smaller, lower budget games? For independent game developers, the costs and benefits of streaming are less clear. Based on interviews with small commercial indie developers in Toronto and Montréal, this article critically examines different discourses around streaming and commercial indie games, focusing on developer perceptions of the benefits and risks of streaming and its impacts on indie game-making practices, including production, promotion, and community-building. Contrary to persistent popular myths about streaming as the key to \'discoverability\', commercial indie game development remains a precarious form of cultural work, and indie games collectively attract only a tiny fraction of the overall audience on streaming platforms. There is a high level of uncertainty about the factors that led to a given game\'s success, leaving many indie developers ambivalent about leveraging influencer attention and even as they commit significant time and energy trying to doing so.
摘要:
各种生产规模的商业游戏制造商越来越多地将直播纳入游戏开发周期的每个阶段。像Fortnite和英雄联盟这样的主流热门歌曲在很大程度上归功于他们对彩带的大规模吸收,而主要出版商的AAA版本可以可靠地期待流媒体平台上的重大关注。但是更小的,预算更低的游戏?对于独立游戏开发商来说,流媒体的成本和收益不太清楚。根据对多伦多和蒙特利尔小型商业独立开发商的采访,这篇文章批判性地研究了围绕流媒体和商业独立游戏的不同论述,关注开发者对流媒体的好处和风险及其对独立游戏制作实践的影响的看法,包括生产,促销,和社区建设。与关于流媒体作为“可发现性”的关键的持续流行神话相反,商业独立游戏开发仍然是一种不稳定的文化工作形式,独立游戏在流媒体平台上只吸引了一小部分观众。对于导致给定游戏成功的因素,存在高度的不确定性,让许多独立开发者对利用影响者的注意力感到矛盾,即使他们投入了大量的时间和精力试图这样做。