Jogos indie brasileiros e suas dimensões políticas na perspectiva da tecnocultura audiovisual

Abstract

In this thesis we discuss indie and independent digital games produced in Brazil in their political dimensions, from the perspective of audiovisual technoculture. Reflecting on what it means to be indie or independent, we seek enduring qualities that are updated in these game objects, proposing to understand them from markers of indiecity. We start from a Benjaminian epistemological assumption to understand these objects from the perspective of technique. In addition to Benjamin's concepts, our theoretical-methodological framework relies on Bergson's concepts of duration and memory, as well as media archaeology from Parikka and Huhtamo. The main objective of the research is to distinguish markers of what we call indiecity of these games in their political dimension, as media objects implicated in an audiovisual technoculture whose durations feed an imaginary about independence. We also aim, specifically: to consider indie games in becoming as implicated in a technocultural imaginary that manifests itself in various ways and in dialectical images produced throughout their history, in a social context, as an audiovisual cultural artifact; to problematize issues related to independence in the media, based on the relationships among these productions, the game industry, and the imaginaries about independence, and how these concepts are updated in Brazilian indie games; to propose a methodology for thinking about game production from a relationship of production, consumption, and subversion. Thus, we establish a methodology that starts from the excavation of these game objects to then produce dialectical images in constellations of objects distant in time and space. These constellations revolve around the history of games, their constitution as cultural, social, and technoludopolitical artifacts. This perspective proposes to consider the game from issues of race and gender. We analyze various games produced in Brazil, especially the independent games Bem Feito and Telethugs. Finally, we seek to define the concepts of indie and independent, proposing markers of indiecity based on enduring qualities over time. These qualities concern the appropriation of technological apparatus in instances of production and publication, the use of aesthetic means to rewrite the history of games, and forms of refraction or reproduction of hegemonic discourses