Japanese independent game development

Abstract

This thesis examines independent game development in Japan, studied through tool-use and through the rhetorics and practices of the two main modes of independent game development in Japan: doujin and indie. I aim to illustrate how a particular technology (game engines) and a particular praxis-based ethos (indie) get deployed in a culturally and locally specific context, and the impact that each of them has, in turn, once integrated into that local context.