‘The Good Hubbing Guide’ offers recommendations for independent game makers

The Good Hubbing Guide
 

Small and independent game producers have become increasingly significant and viable in recent years. The Good Hubbing Guide offers the collective wisdom of the Creative Territories network about how to support this promising expansion of the pool of creative work nourishing experimentation and innovation in the industry as a whole. Utrecht University, with its research focus area Game Research, is one of the partners in Creative Territories.

The Good Hubbing Guide represents the Creative Territories network’s major findings and recommendations about independent game maker colocation. Three games hubs (the Bristol Games Hub, the Arch Creatives in Leamington Spa, and the Dutch Game Garden) participated in the network along with researchers and members of the wider community.

The network mapped the many relationships indie game makers have not only with peer communities, industry and creative economy bodies, but with locals – local people, groups, schools, local government. Games are part of an increasingly global media business and culture, but Creative Territories found that it was important to keep an eye on these more immediate and face to face relationships to help startup and smaller game enterprises survive the boom and bust cycles. It also helps embed game making as part of everyday cultural and social life and enriches the potential of games to become a more diverse and culturally valued and significant expressive medium.

About Creative Territories

The number of small game companies has grown post-recession. Led by Patrick Crogan (University West of England - UK), the project ‘Creative Territories: Exploring Innovation in Indie Game Production Contexts and Connections’ has brought together leading international scholars, indie games developers and creative industry stakeholders to examine this transformation of the young but highly significant video games industry to identify how it makes possible new kinds of cultural production, collaboration and creativity.

The research aims to formulate and ‘map forward’ the key processes and connections that represent commercially viable, creatively sustainable and culturally valuable pathways for the development of this sector so that it lives beyond its early ‘bubble’ and makes a significant difference in video game production as both economically and culturally valuable form.