Dawson IMA
3040 Sherbrooke St. W. H3Z 1A4 Westmount, QC, Canada

Dylan Chong's "The Runner," final project for IMA's "The Art of Game Design."

GAMERella 2020 has ended, but the games live on! You can play them all on our itch.io, under submissions! Congratulations to everyone who participated in the jam this year! Sincere thanks to all the mentors and supporting organizations

I am glad to announce the publication of the collection of essays Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Techniques and Politics. The edited collection map...s the current trajectories of independent game development, at a time when game makers engage with videogame production in a myriad of different ways, ranging from full-time employment to brief and casual investments of time and resources. The book focuses on four key thematic areas (cultures, networks, techniques and politics), which open up questions surrounding gender inclusivity, creative freedom, funding and publishing strategies, labour, precarity, and social practices taking place in the new contexts of production of the videogame industry. The collection includes a section of geographically specific case studies, with contributions from Latin America, Finland, Australia, United States and the United Kingdom. A final afterword by Bart Simon from Concordia University makes the point on what ‘indie game studies’ have achieved so far, and points at future challenges. It has been a great pleasure and honour to be responsible for the curation of this collection. It has given me the opportunity to work with some of the most brilliant authors who have been researching videogame production over the past 10-15 years. I would like to thank the authors for their invaluable contribution, and Routledge for their support throughout the publication. I hope that the book will be useful for scholars, researchers and students interested in independent videogames and game production studies. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about the publication. For more information: https://www.routledge.com/Independent-Video//9780367336202 Table of Contents 1. After Independence Paolo Ruffino (University of Liverpool, UK) Part I: Cultures 2. Decoding and Recoding Game Jams and Independent Game-making Spaces for Diversity and Inclusion Aphra Kerr (Maynooth University, Ireland) 3. Queering Indie: How LGBTQ Experiences Challenge Dominant Narratives of Independent Games Bo Ruberg (University of California Irvine, USA) 4. Virtually Indie: On the Characteristics of Independent Game Development for Virtual Reality Headsets Pawel Grabarczyk (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark) Part II: Networks 5. Network or Die? What Social Networking Analysis Can Tell Us About Indie Game Development Pierson Browne and Jennifer Whitson (University of Waterloo, Canada) 6. Strange Bedfellows: Indie Games and Academia Celia Pearce (Northeastern University, USA) Part III: Techniques 7. The Conditions of Videogame Production: The Nature and Stakes of Creative Freedom in Stiegler’s Philosophy of Technicity Patrick Crogan (University of the West of England, UK) 8. Boutique Indie: Annapurna Interactive and Contemporary Independent Game Development Felan Parker (University of Toronto, Canada) 9. Game Production Studies: Studio Studies Theory, Method and Practice Casey O'Donnell (Michigan State University, USA) Part IV: Politics 10. Game Workers Unite: Unionization Among Independent Developers Jamie Woodcock (The Open University, UK) 11. Playing with Risk: Political-Economy, Independent Games, and the Precarity of Development in Crowded Commercial Markets Nadav Lipkin (La Roche University, USA) Part V: Local Indie Game Studies 12. Playful Peripheries: The Consolidation of Independent Game Production in Latin America Orlando Guevara-Villalobos (University of Costa Rica) 13. The Melbourne Indie Game Scenes: Value Regimes in Localized Game Development Brendan Keogh (Queensland University of Technology, Australia) 14. Modes of Independence in the Finnish Game Development Scene Olli Sotamaa (Tampere University, Finland) 15. The Rebels Across the Street: IndiE3 and the Strategic Geography of Indie Game Promotion John Vanderhoef (California State University, Dominguez Hills, USA) 16. Freedom from the Industry Standard: Student Working Imaginaries and Independence in Games Higher Education Alison Harvey (York University, Canada) 17. Afterword: The Cultural Conditions of Being Indie Bart Simon (Concordia University, Canada)

Join us on Friday November 20 at 12 noon on Zoom for a workshop on Cultural Journalism led by Alexei Perry Cox, poet, scholar, artist and critic. https://space....dawsoncollege.qc.ca//cultural_journalism_wor Please contact Ursula at [email protected] if you would like to participate. Photo by Tony Elieh See more

The keynote speaker for TAG Research Center's GAMERella online game jam is none other than Dr. Kishonna L. Gray! Dr. Gray is a driving force for equality in th...e the games community. Her interdisciplinary research covers identity, performance and online environments, embodied deviance, cultural production, video games, and Black Cyberfeminism. Her most recent book is Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming (LSU Press 2020). She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Registration for this year's GAMERella is now open! Gamers will gather online through discord from November 14-15: https://tag.hexagram.ca/gamere/keynotes/dr-kishonna-l-gray/