Precarious Game

Ergin Bulut

Description

A Precarious Game is an ethnographic examination of video game production. The developers that Ergin Bulut researched for almost three years in a medium-sized studio in the U.S. loved making video games that millions play. Only some, however, can enjoy this dream job, which can be precarious and alienating for many others. That is, the passion of a predominantly white-male labor force relies on material inequalities involving the sacrificial labor of their families, unacknowledged work of precarious testers, and thousands of racialized and gendered workers in the Global South. A Precarious Game explores the politics of doing what one loves. In the context of work, passion and love imply freedom, participation, and choice, but in fact they accelerate self-exploitation and can impose emotional toxicity on other workers by forcing them to work endless hours. Bulut argues that such ludic discourses in the game industry disguise the racialized and gendered inequalities on which a profitable transnational industry thrives. Within capitalism, work is not just an economic matter, and the political nature of employment and love can still be undemocratic even when based on mutual consent. As Bulut demonstrates, rather than considering work simply as a matter of economics based on trade-offs in the workplace, we should consider the question of work and love as one of democracy rooted in politics.

Sujets

• Video game
• Industrial relations
• Informatique

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501746543
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

A PRECARIOUS GAME

A PRECARIOUS GAME The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry

Ergin Bulut

ILR PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2020 by Cornell University Press

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Bulut, Ergin, author. Title: A precarious game : the illusion of dream jobs in the video game industry /  Ergin Bulut. Description: Ithaca : ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2020. |  Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019020927 (print) | LCCN 2019980590 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501746529 (cloth) | ISBN 9781501746536 (paperback) |  ISBN 9781501746543 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501746550 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Video games industry—Employees—Job satisfaction—Middle  West. | Video game designers—Job satisfaction—Middle West. | Video games  industry—Social aspects—Middle West. | Ethnology—Middle West. Classification: LCC HD9993.E452 B86 2020 (print) | LCC HD9993.E452 (ebook) |  DDC 331.7/6179480977—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019020927 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980590

To Gülüzar and Metin Bulut

Contents

Preface Acknowledgments

Introduction: For Whom the Love Works in Video Game Production?

1.  The Unequal Ludopolitical Regime of Game Production: Who Can Play, Who Has to Work? 2.  The End of the Garage Studio as a Technomasculine Space: Financial Security, Streamlined Creativity, and Signs of Friction 3.  Gaming the City: How a Game Studio Revitalized a Downtown Space in the Silicon Prairie 4.  The Production of Communicative Developers in the Affective Game Studio 5.  Reproducing Technomasculinity: Spouses’ Classed Femininities and Domestic Labor 6.  Game Testers as Precarious SecondClass Citizens: Degradation of Fun, Instrumentalization of Play 7.  Production Error: Layoffs Hit the Core Creatives

Conclusion: Reimagining Labor and Love in and beyond Game Production

Notes References Index

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Preface

At the beginning of each academic semester, I ask undergraduates majoring in media studies what their postgraduation plans are. Regardless of the industry they would like to get into, they want to do something fun or something they love. They desire creative jobs. Not interested in joining the whitecollar work force, my students are keen on being employed in workplaces where informality rules. The video game industry is an ideal venue where job descriptions come very close to the aspirations of my students. Producing video games is definitely fun and glamorous. In fact, video game industry jobs are described as among the best jobs that U.S. workplaces offer. With its transnational connections and a truly networked labor force, the industry does offer lively workspaces. It is also positioned as an industry that thrives despite the adverse effects of the economic downturn. This book suggests that things are a bit more complicated. By delving into the everyday experiences of video game developers in a studio that I call Desire, I reveal how the glamorous working lives of game developers are equally precari ous and unpredictable, depending on many other factors that they cannot always control. In fact, the whole industry is structured around various forms of in equalities and surrounded with illusions about what it means to do what one loves. Even when Desire’s developers work really hard, love what they do, and produce profitable games, their economic and social wellbeing do not always thrive equally well, rendering them anxious about their futures. Not all of Desire’s workers are employed on equal terms, either. There are the more privileged core creatives, such as programmers, artists, and designers, and therearethemarginalizedvideogametesters,whoselaborisundervaluedcom pared to the rest of the workforce. Game workers’ partners’ reproductive labor is also rendered invisible, even though they are vital to the success of a whole industry. There are cultural inequalities where a predominantly whitemale in dustry’s definitions of “fun” give us questionable game content with respect to gender and race. That is, work itself is extremely racialized and gendered. So, then, it seems that inequality is not a bug but a major feature of this industry. Doing what you love as a game worker can be a mixed blessing, because failure and production errors are endemic to this highly innovative industry, even though it is represented and imagined as a meritocratic utopia.

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