Those with even the slightest background of digital gaming have probably heard of, if not played, massive game franchises like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed. Popular games created by mainstream publishers like Ubisoft and EA lure gamers into goal-oriented worlds, which players find desirable to engage and identify with. This tried and tested formula has been earning publishers increasing profits every year. Games now have the same budget that blockbuster movies have, and generate the same sales.

But how does this affect the independent game developer, who might not want to abide by this conventional formula? Not so well, sadly.

Independent game developers embark on a journey that can be as creatively rewarding as it can be disheartening. More often than not, for their project to be artistically successful, there is much they have to sacrifice. They often have to juggle their creative endeavours with separate jobs to pay the bills. Consequently, few indie game developers from anywhere in the world manage to make it to the finish line, publish, and make good money.

Dr Pippin Barr, lecturer at the newly opened Institute of Digital Games at the University of Malta, has succeeded as an independent game developer, despite the odds. Barr’s most well known work to date is the Sierra-style game rendition of Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present, released a year after the performance showed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010. This performance featured Abramovic sitting in front of one participant at a time, looking into their eyes. The participants could decide to engage in eye contact for as long as they would like to, even if it’s for a whole day. All the others queuing to take their turn had to wait.

The idea for a game adaptation of this performance came to Dr Barr as he was planning his lectures at the Centre for Computer Game Research at the IT University of Copenhagen. Fascinated by how far artists can go to invoke emotions through laborious means in their works, Dr Barr saw real depth in Abramovic’s performance.

“The Artist is Present just struck me as a very funny thing to make a game out of because it embodied something that games are so awful at: a human connection.

“And yet it also involves all this rigorous preparation and all these rules, which games are really good at representing.”

As far as gameplay goes, The Artist is Present is fairly straightforward. The look is fully pixellated yet captures the ambience at the museum. The first screen of the game places the player in front of the museum’s doors and you’re only allowed inside if you’re playing the game during the actual museum opening hours in New York. Until then, you have to wait till around 4:30pm.

The possibilities for what might be allowed in games is extremely broad

If that’s not frustrating enough, you still have to wait behind a long queue of strangers to sit in front of the artist – same as in the real-life experience. To make matters worse, the game demands constant attention when queuing. If you decide to pop out for a quick lunch break, as Abramovic ironically did herself while playing the game based on her own performance, you might lose your turn to sit in front of the artist. When you do get there though, you can virtually sit in front of the artist for as long as you like, just as you would have done in the original performance.

Dr Barr’s games are self-reflexive.

“They are driven to expand the boundaries of games and to show players and ourselves that the possibilities for what might be allowed in games is extremely broad,” he says.

Dr Barr relishes the very idea of calling into question life’s so-called certainties – his games do so, powerfully enough to strike a chord in both himself and the player. In Dr Barr’s terms, players get the game when there is a form of deep emotional resonance within them.

After The Artist is Present, Dr Barr and Abramovic set forth on a new quest: the making of the Digital Marina Abramovic Institute. Released last October, it has proven to be a great challenge for those who can’t help but switch windows to check up on their Facebook notifications – not only are the instructions in a scrolling marquee, but you have to keep pressing the shift button on your keyboard to prove you’re awake and aware of what is happening in the game. It is the same constant awareness that is expected to emerge out of the physical experience of the real-life institute.

Dr Barr’s inquisitive character is continuously reflected in the unordinary nature of his games. Besides The Artist is Present and DMAI, another recent 2013 project involves the tongue-in-cheek creation of an iPhone and iPad game that serves to uproot the naturally ‘perfect interaction’ often marketed by Apple devices. In an adaptation of the good old Nokia 3310 Snake, reinvented as Snek, Dr Barr blatantly reversed the effect of the interface by making it very physically awkward for people to play, especially in public.

All this sounds very intriguing, but it does not change the fact that independent game developers still struggle to find the time, money and exposure that mainstream publishers have at their disposal. Yet thanks to the internet and greater opportunities for self-publishing, indie games are leaving a significant mark, enough to create a limited, yet relevant interest in audiences who appreciate a different approach to the art of gaming.

Follow Pippin Barr on Twitter @pippinbarr or on his website www.pippinbarr.com.

Read more on Think magazine: http://issuu.com/thinkuni/docs/think_issue07