Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2016

This article asks the question, how should the computer game as a new cultural form be assessed from a Marxist perspective? Marxism is a developed theoretical discourse operative in several domains that are potentially relevant to computer games. The first part of our discussion focuses on Marx’s discussion of technology in relation to art and presents his historical dialectic of alienation and disalienation. This dialectic highlights the ambivalence of technology: it is both the condition of possibility of a society of plenty in which humanity is freed from drudgery and yet, with each step forward, it is associated with the imposition of new demands and novel forms of oppression. Viewed in this way, computer games are an important manifestation of digital technology, deeply implicated in new forms of capitalism. In the second section we use Marx’s ideas on art to explore the aesthetics of the new medium. The aesthetic occupies a special place in Marxist thought because it defines a space of reflection in which we can find a momentary escape from the fray of conflictual social relations and from which the future may shine a light. Viewed as a form of art, computer games are also ambivalent. On one side, they have been associated with a revival of play and a new culture of levity and creativity, which has spread as far as contemporary workplaces and even transformed the design of industrial, or productive, technology. At the same time, we argue that there has been no corresponding social transformation – people are not more free as a result of ‘gamification’. Rather, it seems that computer games present a deepening entanglement of aesthetic values (play, freedom, imagination) with technologies of control (interface, system, rules). In conclusion, we suggest that digital games bring the dream of art to life but that the result is not freedom but rather a perversion of play as its facility for opening up imagined spaces is used to restrict access to the space of freedom.

The video games industry in the United Kingdom is profitable and growing at a time when the broader economy is still failing to recover. This has attracted the interests of politicians, committing large investments and tax breaks. Although the headline figures are impressive, the overall structure of the industry is less clear. Within this there are many new organizations, often shaped by start-up culture. Less is known about how work is being organized or the experiences of workers. The approach taken here draws on Marxist theory and an examination of the labour process. It focuses on how capitalism effects the production of video games, including the use of crunch time, the prevalence of sexism, and the widespread use of non-disclosure agreements. The conclusion suggests further enquiries are needed to understand how the struggle between labour and capital is shaping this industry.

This article introduces the juxtaposed notions of liberal and neo-liberal gameplay in order to show that, while forms of contemporary game culture are heavily influenced by neo-liberalism, they often appear under a liberal disguise. The argument is grounded in Claus Pias’ idea of games as always a product of their time in terms of economic, political and cultural history. The article shows that romantic play theories (e.g. Schiller, Huizinga and Caillois) are circling around the notion of play as ‘free’, which emerged in parallel with the philosophy of liberalism and respective socio-economic developments such as the industrialization and the rise of the nation state. It shows further that contemporary discourse in computer game studies addresses computer game/play as if it still was the romantic form of play rooted in the paradigm of liberalism. The article holds that an account that acknowledges the neo-liberalist underpinnings of computer games is more suited to addressing contemporary computer games, among which are phenomena such as free to play games, which repeat the structures of a neo-liberal society. In those games the players invest time and effort in developing their skills, although their future value is mainly speculative – just like this is the case for citizens of neo-liberal societies.

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.

With reference to Walter Benjamin’s work on nineteenth-century Paris, and Debord’s work on the spectacle, this article argues that the depiction of ruined cities in video games – as virtual ruins of the present – simultaneously reproduces the empty novelty of the commodity (the phantasmagoria of progress-oriented civilization), and offers a vision of failed progress through counter-spectacle. One means of understanding Benjamin’s dreamworld of modernity is through ruins and rubble – not only as material remnants, but in other visual or artistic forms that might reveal the illusion of progress as a fallacy, particularly in contrast to an urban-focused commodity capitalism. With an emphasis on Fallout 3, Hellgate: London and The Last of Us, and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series this article argues that, if cities can be read as dreamworlds, and films, art and ruination as the means for awakening, then urban destruction in the virtual sphere can provide a counter to the collective dream of eternal progress.

AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF THOUGHTFUL IMAGINATION

GAMEWORLDS: VIRTUAL MEDIA AND CHILDREN’S EVERYDAY PLAY, SETH GIDDINGS (2014) New York: Bloomsbury, 184 pp., ISBN: 9781623566326, h/bk, $110.00 (USD)

THE RISE OF 360 VIRTUAL REALITY ‘DO-IT-YOURSELF’ MACHINIMA: EVERY WHICH WAY GAMEPLAY