How time flows making games: An ethnographic analysis of experiences of temporality in an indie videogame studio

In research on videogame production, much attention has been given, justifiably, to 'crunch', whereby employees in large studios work extremely long hours for months at a time prior to a game's launch, at the request of management. There has to date been limited research about how duration and urgency are experienced at other periods, and also in the economically and culturally significant 'independent' (or indie) sectors and companies. This article draws on a Deleuzian framework initially developed to analyse experience of temporality in academic research, and applies it to data generated by an ethnography of a UK-based indie game studio, which examined how games are produced as part of a more routine working life. The framework enables a re-examination of how 'passionate' work in the cultural industries is lived day-to-day, and aims to contribute to debates about the politics of time in the games sector, offering analytic resources which expand the vocabulary for expressing desired experiences of time in game work.

Automated summary

This article applies a framework developed for analyzing the experience of temporality in academic research to examine the production of games as part of a more routine working life in an indie game studio in the UK. The framework allows for a re-examination of how passionate work in the cultural industries is lived day-to-day, contributing to debates about the politics of time in the games sector and expanding the vocabulary for expressing desired experiences of time in game work.