Between triple-A, indie, casual, and DIY: Sites of tension in the videogames cultural industries

The contemporary videogame industry is popularly imagined as a homogenous site where large, international studios pour millions of publishers’ dollars into technologically advanced blockbuster experiences. The sheer amount of money these Hollywood-like games return to their investors through sales is held up in countless scholarly and journalistic articles as both arguments for the cultural legitimacy of the medium and its complicity in neoliberal capitalism. Of this straightforward imagining, the videogames most visible in broader culture are, inevitably, those with the highest budgets and the most advertising — such as the juggernaut franchises of Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto — and those online games with significant online communities such as massively-multiplayer online (MMO) games like World of Warcraft or competitive e-sports like League of Legends (see Taylor 2006; Taylor 2012 respectively)..