Itch.io and the One-Dollar-Game

How Distribution Platforms Affect the Ontology of (Games as) a Medium

The article at hand investigates the formal and media ontological implications of digital distribution by analyzing how the independent game publishing platform Itch.io facilitated and shaped ‘the one-dollar game’ as a product category and emergent form of cultural expression. Distribution has been an important but mostly overlooked aspect of the “media identity” [1] of (digital) games from the beginning. In the early days, playing and (re-)writing games were […]