Media industries 

Abstract: Videogame researchers have long considered the role videogames play in different cultural, social, and political contexts around the world. However, when it comes to researching videogame production, literature on the nominally global videogame industry has primarily focused on the dominant sites of North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. In this article, we argue that entrenched conceptualizations of the global videogame industry risk applying Westerncentric models of success and growth that fail to account for how videogame industries emerge from the interplay of global distribution and local conditions. We contribute to a growing body of scholarship that strives to localize videogame production cultures through an analysis of how Iranian videogame developers navigate local cultural, economic, and regulatory contexts alongside global markets, platforms, and genres. By outlining the formative ambivalence with which Iranian developers engage both with and against the “global” videogame industry, we demonstrate the importance of accounting for different local (and translocal) videogame production cultures mediated by global enterprise.

Abstract: Prior to the pandemic of 2020, what was being described as ‘the Netflix effect’ had brought a significant boost to the UK’s film and television industries. However, a significant increase in the amount of commissioning of ‘high end’ television production had been accompanied by widely reported concerns that these new opportunities were in danger of being lost due to an insufficient supply of new talent. It was argued that only a major investment in entry-level recruitment for an expected 30,000 new jobs would avert a “talent pipeline” crisis. In this article we question the accuracy of these assertions by reviewing the key evidence on which they were based. We examine how concerns about skills gaps and shortages came to be framed as a problem of pipeline supply, rather than as a problem of leakage, thereby avoiding more challenging and systemic retention issues related to employment practices within these industries. The article highlights the dangers inherent in policy research where there is a gravitational pull for evidence-based policy to be overridden by policy-based evidence.

Abstract: This article surveys the field of American independent film theatrical distribution in the years following the so-called “great studio pullback of ’08” and until the end of the second decade of the 21st Century. Within the space of less than three years (2008–2010), three of the “Big Six” conglomerated Hollywood majors shuttered five of their specialty film divisions, which had been members of a small cadre of companies that dominated the independent film sector from the mid-1990s to that time. The dominance of these companies had relied heavily on their adoption of a filmmaking model that was identified as “indiewood” and entailed the finance, production and distribution of a fairly distinct category of films with particular characteristics. The closure of these companies made it clear that the independent film sector was changing, and the article surveys specifically the field of theatrical distribution from 2008 to 2019 with a view to understanding how this change occurred. In seeking to identify the nature of the impact of the closure of these companies on the domestic theatrical distribution landscape, the article addresses such questions as whether the closure of these studio subsidiaries signalled the end of indiewood; whether a new type of specialty film replaced indiewood as the dominant paradigm in American independent film theatrical distribution; if other companies have taken the place of the shuttered studio specialty film divisions; and how important the theatrical market still is in the age of streaming. In addressing these questions, the article provides a comprehensive account of a sector in transition. It also highlights broader changes in the structure of the American film industry, paying particular attention to a set of companies it identifies as “late indies” and the role they played in transforming an American film industry at the same time as streaming companies have been exerting enormous pressures on the theatrical film market.

Abstract: Contemporary media industry and production studies takes a nuanced view of the relative independence and autonomy available to media producers. In this article, I apply this frame to the Australian independent screen production firm Kennedy Miller Mitchell. But rather than examining the firm through its commercial partnerships, I analyze its independence in respect of its historical relationship with Australian government agencies. I contend that it possesses negotiated dependencies with these government bodies, a term describing the nuances of a complex reciprocal relationship. While the firm’s activities have been shaped and constrained by government policy, I argue also that the firm has maintained agency through negotiations with the state. My analysis of Kennedy Miller Mitchell’s negotiated dependencies qualifies our understanding of this reputedly iconoclastic firm and treats the company as a significant case study of the limits of independence and autonomy in an industry underwritten by government intervention.