Curatorial Assignment on Ethnographic Reality: The Binding of Isaac - Raise of Game Jam

This is the Curatorial Assignment on Important Games for Theories of Media & Technology, DM-GY 6043-B.

Source

Binding of Issac on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/113200/The_Binding_of_Isaac/

http://www.yuxii.com/

Discussion

The Binding of Issac was born in a week-long game jam that McMillen had with Florian Himsl. The initial release was not made until 2011 but sold millions of copies, which is far beyond the author's exception.

The idea of Indie Game stated in 1970s [1]. By that time games for PSs often coded by 1-2 programmers and distributed in stores or mail. Later subsided due to the 3D technology booming. But a resurgence of Indie development was witnessed in early 2000s driven by both Internet distribution and handy development tools such as flash, which is also the base tool for Binding of Issac.

A Indie game is usually contributed by individuals or small teams. But a game jam is more strict, generally for a time period of several days to a week. Clearly more and more popular games are released by indie developers even in game jams, which is indie developers with very limited time.

The Binding of Issac is produced in a week long game jam by 2 person, prototype of Don't Starve [2] is made with in 48 hours. As a form of media, the cost of creating games drops drastically recent years. Parallel to traditional media and twitter, several game engines such as Unity3D, Game Maker Studio have empowered non-professional community the ability of game making, soon the ubiquitous making would be a major concern.

References

1. Wikipedia contributors, "Indie game," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indie_game&oldid=862019128(accessed November 14, 2018).

2. Wikipedia contributors, "Don't Starve," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Don%27t_Starve&oldid=867073813 (accessed November 14, 2018).