Paradoxical Indie Games: A Critical Study of Game Violence in Multitudinous Indie Games

Abstract

While game violence is a topic extensively studied in academics, both for its psychological effect on players and prevalence in game culture, it is mostly associated with the mainstream forms of shooting and fighting games, the armed men on the covers of billboards in retailers. Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter ascribe these games to ‘Empire’, a capitalistic logic ruling the world, and restraining games to a military-industrial complex. Contrary to Empire is the multitude, a diverse and liberal force seeking liberation from Empire’s control, and in the game industry Dyer-Witheford and De Peuter see autonomously produced games as the force of multitude. As these games are generally produced by independent developers, they are indie games of the multitude. However, this paper nuances this two-way distinction with regards to game violence, since even indie games show they can employ violence just as well as mainstream games, although often in a different shape. This paper explains this shape as implicit violence, a symbolic form of violence that is more about its perceived value for game design than an offensively realistic representation. Contrarily, realistic, excessive forms are in this paper defined as explicit violence, common in mainstream games. While indie games of multitude employ a subtle, milder form of game violence, it is confirmative to the industry’s capitalist logic and therefore anti-compositional of the multitudinous messages these games try to convey. These games are therefore considered paradoxical, and have not capitalized on their potential as multitudinous games completely free from the constraints of Empire. This paper therefore conducts a critical discourse analysis of three case studies to make insightful how these games are paradoxical. The illustrated examples are violence as a metaphor, violent environment and the everyday non-player character combatant, three possible applications of implicit violence. Since discourse on these cases shows a limited consideration for this game violence, it is argued that violence is naturalized in traditional design practices, rather than a characteristic natural to games. This realization is vital for the change the multitude desires.