Artistic conventions are agreements made between artists and/or an industry, or processes used to make, view, and critique art work. Sprague discussed photography conventions for the Yoruba tribe in West Africa, noting how photographs are mainly a formal affair in their culture. The Yoruba primarily used photographs for remembrance of important lifetime events for future generations, rather than as an artistic expression or for entertainment value.
In the early days of video games, there were not many universal conventions in the industry. Many of the conventions of older video games stemmed from the physical limitations of the hardware available at the time. Game music was mainly composed of simple chip tunes based upon what could be eked out of the physical circuits. Graphics progressed from 8-bit, to 16-bit, to 32 and 64-bit as newer technology became available and more importantly, cheaper. Once micro-processors became cheap enough, technology really took off and various video game conventions beyond the restraints of the hardware eventually became codified in various ways.
Nintendo was largely responsible for a number of conventions in the industry, such as game content ratings and game testing. Nintendo has iron-clad policies on what content is permissible in games created for their systems, as well as quality standards for the final product being bug free. Prior to Nintendo, game testing was virtually non-existent. Nintendo was also one of the leaders in establishing the ESRB. Fearing the negative press about violent content in video games would mean a government body controlling the industry, Nintendo and other corporations pushed for a voluntary, industry controlled system to regulate video game content.
Today video game voice actors have their own various conventions, much like movie actors. They are often members of SAG-AFTRA, a division of the Screen Actors Guild that negotiates pay levels and working conditions for the industry. In addition to voice actors, software developers often have industry wide conventions they choose to follow, known as best practices. In software development some examples of conventions include naming practices for objects and variables, and the use of commenting or documentation to clearly identify code so that other people can read it more easily. There are also syntax guidelines for how to indent and space code to make it more readable.