Creative Territories is pleased to announce the publication here of The Good Hubbing Guide. You can also read the Guide online (click to enlarge):

The Good Hubbing Guide represents the Creative Territories network’s major findings and recommendations about independent game maker colocation. 3 games hubs participated in the network along with researchers and members of the wider community: the Bristol Games Hub, the Arch Creatives in Leamington Spa, and the Dutch Game Garden.

In what network member and Indiecade co-founder Celia Pearce calls a “watershed moment” for the industry worldwide, small and independent game producers have become increasingly significant and viable in recent years. The Good Hubbing Guide offers the collective wisdom of the network about how to support this promising expansion of the pool of creative work nourishing experimentation and innovation in the industry as a whole.

We mapped the many relationships indie game makers have not only with peer communities, industry and creative economy bodies, but with locals – local people, groups, schools, local government. Our findings concern how game maker collectives can work to strengthen the relationships between game makers inside and outside the hub (‘In-house’), and between game making and the wider social and cultural life of their particular context (‘Front-of-house’).

Games are part of an increasingly global media business and culture, but we found that it was important to keep an eye on these more immediate and face to face relationships to help startup and smaller game enterprises survive the boom and bust cycles. It also helps embed game making as part of everyday cultural and social life and enriches the potential of games to become a more diverse and culturally valued and significant expressive medium.

Thanks to the AHRC for funding this project, to the University of the West of England’s Digital Cultures Research Centre for ‘bringing it home’, to co-Investigator Helen Kennedy (Brighton University) and project partners Utrecht University and the Bristol Games Hub.

Please get in touch with any comments or further questions once you’ve had a look at the Good Hubbing Guide.

Patrick Crogan

Principal Investigator