Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Indie Video Game Industry

"A masterful dive into the indie video game world, Gidley’s book combines engaging stories with practical lessons. By exploring crux events and innovation spaces, it delivers actionable insights for experienced developers and students alike. Essential reading for understanding the challenges and triumphs of creative entrepreneurship in games."

- Douglas Hare , Co-founder & CEO of Outplay Entertainment

“Gidley adequately illustrates that even institutions designed to support startups in the field of independent game development can fail to deliver necessary lifelines. His observations at a UK games hub/accelerator create many precisely outlined lessons to guide young studios and prepare them for the challenges in this volatile industry."

- Jan Halwe , Business Development Manager, ByteRockers' Games

The indie video game industry attracts an enormous amount of enthusiasm and curiosity, blending cutting edge tech, a creative industries environment and a certain rebellious energy. It is idealised as a world where creative and technical ability is given free reign and can yield enormous financial and reputational rewards. But what is it really like to enter and work in this space? And how do the universal aspects of organisation, including teamwork, leadership and competition, manifest in this unique environment?

By embedding himself in just such a hub, the author was able to explore the experiences and interactions of ten indie game companies, four mentors, various funders, and two interns over a one-year period. The narrative is structured around six critical events: the introduction of newcomers, change in organizational rules, departure of a dominant social actor, self-inflicted crisis, introduction of a powerful manager, and external crisis. A process view shows how these events can hinder or accelerate creative production. Going beyond success stories or failure statistics, this book analyses the organizational and entrepreneurial strength of this approach, which combines aspects of the incubator and accelerator models for start-up development. At its heart though, this book attempts to give a fleshed out and analytical picture of what it is really like to work in the indie video game industry and offers practical lessons for indie-game developers.

Devon Gidley  is a software developer who earned his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast, UK, studying the video game industry. Previously, he has worked as a project manager and business analyst in the creative industries and new product development. He is an enthusiastic gamer and believer in the positive impact of a robust indie video game community.