Handmade Pixels: Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity

by Jesper Juul

An investigation of independent video games--creative, personal, strange, and experimental--and their claims to handcrafted authenticity in a purely digital medium.

Video games are often dismissed as mere entertainment products created by faceless corporations. The last twenty years, however, have seen the rise of independent, or "indie," video games: a wave of small, cheaply developed, experimental, and personal video games that react against mainstream video game development and culture. In Handmade Pixels, Jesper Juul examine the paradoxical claims of developers, players, and festivals that portray independent games as unique and hand-crafted objects in a globally distributed digital medium.

Juul explains that independent video games are presented not as mass market products, but as cultural works created by people, and are promoted as authentic alternatives to mainstream games. Writing as a game player, scholar, developer, and educator, Juul tells the story of how independent games--creative, personal, strange, and experimental--became a historical movement that borrowed the term "independent" from film and music while finding its own kind of independence.

Juul describes how the visual style of independent games signals their authenticity--often by referring to older video games or analog visual styles. He shows how developers use strategies for creating games with financial, aesthetic, and cultural independence; discusses the aesthetic innovations of "walking simulator" games; and explains the controversies over what is and what isn't a game. Juul offers examples from independent games ranging from Dys4ia to Firewatch; the text is richly illustrated with many color images.

Genres: Games, Video Games, Nonfiction, Game Design, Ebooks

328 pages, Hardcover

Published October 8, 2019

About the author

Jesper Juul is video game theorist and Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy. He has taught at MIT, New York University, and ITU Copenhagen. An occasional game developer and organizer of the first Nordic Game Jam, he is the author of five books about the meaning, joy, and pain of video games.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

“But are independent games truly independent? No, according to Martin and Deuze, who say that independent games are ‘something quite different from what literature on independent, alternative, oppositional, radical, or otherwise nonmainstream media tends to advocate.” (Juul 242)

Do you agree? Or not...

“Handmade Pixels” is not only a history of independent games, but also an investigation of what should, or should not, be considered an independent game. In fact, the book is also a deep dive into the definition of the word “game” itself, something Jesper Juul has been attempting to tackle for quite some time.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of games, both indie and otherwise. This is an artifact that will ignite your nostalgia for games, old and new, and delight your inner thirst to know everything there is to know about play and games.

[Colin Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

Juli makes an interesting and important argument about what indie games are - and who/how decides what counts as an indie game. The analysis is sound and well supported with lots of examples of different kinds of indie games. The framework of different kinds of authenticity claims - and how this discourse compares to other indie cultural forms - is really useful. There’s a bit of repetition across the middle chapters as Juul approaches essentially the same argument from only slightly different angles, but this does all serve to bolster his case.

[Aengus Schulte · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredible look at what makes up independent games. Juul excels at asking the questions that are most integral to the field: in what ways can a game be independent? What counts as a game? What does not? Everything is clearly explained with frequent references to examples, interviews with some notable independent artists, and Juul's own experiences. This is absolutely essential to anybody interested in field independent games.

[Chris Aylott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoughtful survey about the independent games movement that perhaps says as much about the split between academia and production as it does about independent games themselves. Juul is a thoughtful and enthusiastic observer, and I enjoyed looking at games through his eyes. But it's hard not to see him and some of the less self-aware voices in academia as being so obsessed with defining "independent games" that it gets in the way of, you know, making games?

Not that the broader "games industry" is necessarily doing any better. I happened to be reading this around the same time as I was listening to the Giant Bombcast podcast crew discuss their game of the year candidates for 2019. They were obviously surprised and blown away by "Outer Wilds", a game that I had just seen listed in the book as a grand prize winner at the Independent Games Festival back in 2015. There are massive gaps in communication between game production, game journalism, and game criticism -- and while Juul does a fine job of feeling the skin of the elephant, I'm starting to despair of anybody successfully stepping back far enough to build an understanding of the whole animal.

[Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro fantástico que indaga en la historia de la consolidación de la idea del videojuego independiente, sus connotaciones culturales, en el mercado, y en la identidad de las personas que los buscan desarrollar. Definitivamente me resuena mucho, siendo que me identifico ante todo como un creador independiente. De lo más interesante que me pareció que plantea, es la noción de que el videojuego independiente es inherentemente nostálgico, tanto por un pasado del videojuego, así como por pasados inexistentes (aplicando técnicas visuales de otros medios, por ejemplo).

Solo me quedo con dos inquietudes: la primera es la curiosidad de cómo sería el análisis de Juul de lo que hemos vivido en los últimos 5 años, donde la pandemia definitivamente planteó un cambio fuerte en ciertas cuestiones de videojuegos independientes. La segunda es que todo este ejercicio lo hace desde una posición Estadounidense / Europea, donde los videojuegos tienen acceso a otras posibilidades y facilitaciones, y donde es más fácil hablar de una comunidad de videojuegos experimentales. Acá en región 4 es un contexto muy distinto.

Sumamente recomendado.
Definitivamente se lo pondré a mis alumnos.

[Anna Faelens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read parts of this in preparation for my master’s dissertation and it’s very clearly written! It would also genuinely be interesting to read without writing a paper on independent games. Glad to have found this book in the library!