Aurora Punks is a collective for game developers.

Aurora Punks unveils DIY collective for indie game studios

Aurora Punks founder Robert Bäckström wanted to find a way to help small indie studios creative innovative games while trying to navigate the complexities of working with big publishers. So he turned to his experience as a punk rocker to create a video game collective.

Bäckström had the experience of being both a successful game developer and a former punk rocker and music publisher. He had a label, Skrammel Records, and it was all about helping scrappy punk bands survive. The rockers had a do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos about helping other bands in the hardcore scene where he grew up. They helped each other arrange shows, produce records, and deal with promotion and other tasks with limited resources, he said in an interview with GamesBeat.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.