Self-Making and Game Making in the Future of Work

Game Production Studies ◽

10.5117/9789463725439_ch02 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Aleena Chia

Keyword(s):

Video Game ◽

Industrial Capitalism ◽

Paid Work ◽

Cultural Industry ◽

Game Development ◽

Future Of Work ◽

Technological Unemployment ◽

The Future ◽

Video Game Development ◽

Conceptual Shift

Paid work has been a keystone of morality, normativity, sociality, and identity in capitalist societies. However, as the future of work is ushered in by technological unemployment, flexibilization, and precarity, researchers have to contend with what has been called the post-work society. The cultural industry of video game development provides a vantage into this future of work because it has been dominated since its inception by a vast field of informal creators and intermediaries, some of whom are paid for their activities while the vast majority are not. This chapter argues that gaming hobbies are exemplars of a conceptual shift in productive leisure not just as a mediating category in industrial capitalism but a mediating stage towards post-work.

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The perils of project-based work: Attempting resistance to extreme work practices in video game development

Organization ◽

10.1177/1350508415572509 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 22 (4) ◽

pp. 570-587 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Amanda Peticca-Harris ◽

Johanna Weststar ◽

Steve McKenna

Keyword(s):

Working Conditions ◽

Video Game ◽

Work Conditions ◽

Control Mechanisms ◽

Work Practices ◽

Game Development ◽

Video Game Development ◽

Dominant Ideologies ◽

Reader Comments ◽

Game Developers

This article examines two blogs written by the spouses of game developers about extreme and exploitative working conditions in the video game industry and the associated reader comments. The wives of these video game developers and members of the game community decry these working conditions and challenge dominant ideologies about making games. This article contributes to the work intensification literature by challenging the belief that long hours are necessary and inevitable to make successful games, discussing the negative toll of extreme work on workers and their families, and by highlighting that the project-based structure of game development both creates extreme work conditions and inhibits resistance. It considers how extreme work practices are legitimized through neo-normative control mechanisms made possible through project-based work structures and the perceived imperative of a race or ‘crunch’ to meet project deadlines. The findings show that neo-normative control mechanisms create an insularity within project teams and can make it difficult for workers to resist their own extreme working conditions, and at times to even understand them as extreme.

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“All bets are off”: Flexible engagement with music-listening technologies by autistic adults

Psychology of Music ◽

10.1177/0305735620971037 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 030573562097103

Author(s):

Michael Matsuno ◽

Deon Auzenne ◽

Leanne Chukoskie

Keyword(s):

Video Game ◽

New Music ◽

Music Listening ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Personal Taste ◽

Convenience Sample ◽

Game Development ◽

Video Game Development ◽

Autistic Adults

This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to explore daily experiences with music among a convenience sample of 12 autistic adults interning at a video game development lab. Our analysis indicates that music technologies enabled autistic individuals to explore new music and to engage reflexively with personal taste and self-curation. We also show that participants used music to accompany a range of cognitive and emotional tasks. These findings are consistent with broader sociological literature on music-listening habits of typically developing adults and indicate that autistic adults use music to meet their personal needs. Our cohort also described expressly creative and proactive engagement with music, suggesting that habits with music may differ among unique sub-populations of autistic individuals.

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Stepping back to move forward: Centering capital in discussions of technology and the future of work

Communication and the Public ◽

10.1177/2057047320959854 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (3-4) ◽

pp. 129-133

Author(s):

Benjamin Shestakofsky

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

New Technologies ◽

Technological Development ◽

Structural Features ◽

Robotic Systems ◽

Future Of Work ◽

Technological Unemployment ◽

The Future ◽

Constructivist Approaches ◽

The Relationship

Some researchers have warned that advances in artificial intelligence will increasingly allow employers to substitute human workers with software and robotic systems, heralding an impending wave of technological unemployment. By attending to the particular contexts in which new technologies are developed and implemented, others have revealed that there is nothing inevitable about the future of work, and that there is instead the potential for a diversity of models for organizing the relationship between work and artificial intelligence. Although these social constructivist approaches allow researchers to identify sources of contingency in technological outcomes, they are less useful in explaining how aims and outcomes can converge across diverse settings. In this essay, I make the case that researchers of work and technology should endeavor to link the outcomes of artificial intelligence systems not only to their immediate environments but also to less visible—but nevertheless deeply influential—structural features of societies. I demonstrate the utility of this approach by elaborating on how finance capital structures technology choices in the workplace. I argue that investigating how the structure of ownership influences a firm’s technology choices can open our eyes to alternative models and politics of technological development, improving our understanding of how to make innovation work for everyone instead of allowing the benefits generated by technological change to be hoarded by a select few.

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