Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle

by Jamie Woodcock

Overview

More people are playing video games than ever before, and yet much of the work of their production remains obscured to us.

Deploying a Marxist approach, Jamie Woodcock delves into the hidden abode of the gaming industry, unravelling the vast networks of artists, software developers, and factory and logistics workers whose material and immaterial labor flows into the products we consume on a gargantuan scale. Beyond this, the book analyzes the increasingly important role the gaming industry plays in contemporary capitalism, and the broader transformations of work and economy that it embodies. Woodcock also presents game-play itself not as a “deviant activity,” as it is often understood, but as a commentary of estrangement from contemporary forms of work. In so doing, it offers a fresh and much needed analysis of a sector which has for too long been neglected by scholars and labor activists alike.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608468676
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	06/18/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Jamie Woodcock is a sociologist of work, focusing on digital labour, the gig economy, and resistance. He is currently a fellow at the London School of Economics, and is the author of the award-winning Working the Phones (2016). He is on the editorial board of the Historical Materialism and an editor of Notes from Below, an online journal of workers’ inquiry.

 

Table of Contents

Author's Note vi

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

Part I Making Videogames

A History of Videogames and Play 11

The Videogames Industry 35

The Work of Videogames 61

Organizing in the Videogames Industry 91

Part II Playing Videogames

Analyzing Culture 105

First-Person Shooters 113

Role-Playing, Simulations, and Strategy 125

Political Videogames 135

Online Play 149

Conclusion: Why Videogames Matter 159

Notes 165

Index 187

Editorial Reviews

"Jamie Woodcock has written a book as fun and engrossing as any game. Not only does he bring a sharp Marxist analysis to the videogames industry—in turn, he uses games to further our understanding of Marx. Whether you game or not, an indispensable book." —Sarah Jaffe, author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt

"In his delightful Marx at the Arcade, Jamie Woodcock launches an urgently-needed workers’ inquiry into video and computer games—investigating both the work that goes into producing such games and the play in which so many of us seek relief from constant work. Lucid, scholarly, energetic and itself playful, Marx at the Arcade sets a new frontier for radical political understanding of the digital game." —Nick Dyer-Witheford

"Marx at the Arcade is an important, brilliant and timely read that reveals the oft-ignored lives of overworked and exploited game workers, as well as the rise of the global Game Workers Unite movement that is fighting for change. Placing games within the context of a wider cultural and political struggle, Woodcock makes a compelling case for combating the toxic and reactionary elements of games culture, and pushing games towards a more positive, radical role in the world." —Karn Bianco, Games Workers Unite

"Combining the unalloyed enthusiasm of the gamer with the critical gaze of the historical materialist, Jamie Woodcock's book cracks open the console to reveal the struggles over value, labour and the meaning of play that haunt the world of videogames. Even readers who last played a videogame in an arcade will gain much from this lucid and combative exploration of the industry that organizes the "free time" of countless millions."—Alberto Toscano, Reader in Critical Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea

“In this highly readable, up-to-the-minute counter-guide to videogame work and play, Jamie Woodcock skillfully breaks play out of the “magic circle,” not only revealing capitalism’s shaping influence on digital game culture but also restoring a political perspective on games as a site of struggle. Whether revisiting game history, analyzing individual games, unpacking the distinctiveness of the game commodity, or reporting on the increasingly contested working conditions of game developers, Woodcock richly illustrates the use value of Marxian concepts to the critical study of game media.” —Greig de Peuter, co-author of Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games

From the Publisher