The master’s digital tools: Cognitive capitalism and non-normative gaming practices

In Games of Empire. Global Capitalisms and Video Games (2009), Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter mobilize the concept of cognitive capitalism as central to the intimate intermeshing of the medium and the late capitalist business practices. Using this concept, the article extends their discussion to a range of non-normative gaming practices and initiatives that have often been presented as subversive or alternative in relation to the dominant gaming regimes. Using the theory of cognitive capitalism, as outlined by Carlo Vercellone and Yann Moulier Boutang, as well as elements of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter’s argument, the article links these practices to gauge the degree to which they are complicit in the global capitalist practices and contends that while many non-normative gaming practices cannot be subsumed by the same mechanisms of cognitive capitalism that operate in relation to game designers’ ideas, they ultimately contribute to an increase in value of industry-controlled locked IP and have firmly established positions in the circulation of content.