ABSTRACT
This essay considers the implications of Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy of technology for a critical account of the nature and potential of creative freedom in video game development. The inquiry is situated in the context of the emergence of independent game production as a significant component of the games industry internationally. While this is routinely approached through perspectives influenced by creative industries and creative economy discourses, I argue that the potential of the ‘democratization’ of game development and distribution by the rise of the indies is made viable only when the role of individual creativity in social and collective transformation is grasped in less economistic and more cultural and critical terms. Stiegler’s philosophical activism around human ‘technicity’ provides a conceptual framework for exploring this potential.
