Isomorphism in the indie games industry

Abstract: Game development has come a long way from its origins back in the 1970s and 1980s, where small development teams worked over a production cycle of months to produce games. As the processing and graphical capabilities of computers and consoles increased, games became multi-million-dollar projects, developed by large teams over a period of many months, sometimes stretching into years. This led to rationalization in the games industry, especially among large studios and developers, resulting in isomorphism and an increasing similarity of games developed by them. In the late 2000s, the indie games industry took off on the back of digital distribution, allowing small teams to develop experimental and innovative game mechanics and put them out without the support of publishers. However, in the last few years, we have seen an increasingly crowded indie games market, introducing many of the risks to the indie industry that were typically associated with large developers. The purpose of this research was to study their impact, and to investigate whether they have led to isomorphism in the indie games industry. The research was conducted via in-depth interviews with five indie developers, followed by thematic analysis of the data collected through these interviews. Analysis of the data revealed the presence of isomorphic forces that impact the design and production of indie games, as well as the presence of “counter-isomorphic” forces, which act as a counterweight to isomorphism.