Who Is a Videogame Developer? The Politics of Videogame Maker Identities

This paper by Brendan Keogh examines who counts as a videogame developer and argues that the term is contested and politically loaded. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with game makers in Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands, the study builds on Adrienne Shaw's work on gamer identity and uses Bourdieu's concept of the field to show how the label "developer" helps sustain a videogame field that centres commercial production while marginalising hobbyist, artistic, and other noncommercial practices. The core thesis is that the term carries technological and software-industry connotations inherited from the medium's origins, and that this framing shapes how the industry, policymakers, and scholars imagine and count game makers.

The interview data reveal considerable variation in how participants understood the two central questions: whether they considered themselves developers and whether they considered themselves part of a videogame industry. Some identified as developers without seeing themselves as part of an industry, while others reversed this pattern. Participants in formal studios noted that producers, community managers, and similar roles contribute substantially to output without manipulating code or assets, complicating the meaning of "development." The study also finds that many Australian makers who did not identify as developers had not participated in industry surveys, and it highlights concern that the roles and spaces least associated with the term are those most likely to be occupied by gender-diverse makers.

The paper's scope is primarily qualitative and cross-national, focusing on three countries and on the vocabulary makers use to describe their own work. Its methodology extends a survey-based approach used in earlier identity research into an interview-based examination of craft, labour, and self-identification. The author proposes alternative terms, including "maker," "gameworker" as used by the Game Workers Unite movement, and "artist-game maker" as used in British Council research, arguing that revising the language used to describe game makers is necessary for capturing the full range of activities across the videogame field.