5(2) 2019: Laborious Play and Playful Work I

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Feeling for an Audience. The Gendered Emotional Labor of Video Game Live Streaming
Ruberg, Bonnie; Cullen, Amanda L. L. (2019) , S. 85-102
The practice of live streaming video games is becoming increasingly popular worldwide (Taylor 2018). Live streaming represents more than entertainment; it is expanding the practice of turning play into work. Though it is commonly misconstrued as “just playing video games,” live streaming requires a great deal of behind-the-scenes labor, especially for women, who often face additional challenges as profes- sionals within video game culture (AnyKey 2015). In this article, we shed light on one important aspect of the gendered work of video game live streaming: emotional labor. To do so, we present observations and insights drawn from our analysis of instructional videos created by women live streamers and posted to YouTube. These videos focus on “tips and tricks” for how aspiring streamers can become successful on Twitch. Building from these videos, we articulate the various forms that emotional labor takes for video game live streamers and the gen- dered implications of this labor. Within these videos, we identify key recurring topics, such as how streamers work to cultivate feelings in viewers, perform feelings, manage their own feelings, and use feelings to build personal brands and communities for their streams. Drawing from existing work on video games and labor, we move this scholarly conversation in important new directions by highlighting the role of emotional labor as a key facet of video game live streaming and insist- ing on the importance of attending to how the intersection of play and work is tied to identity.
Convergence of Rhetoric, Labour, and Play in the Construction of Inactive Discourses on Twitch
Catá, Alexandra S. (2019) , S. 133-148
Twitch is a complex space that involves both laborious play and “playbour” through the commodification of streamers time and the gamification of streamer interaction through emotes and bits. As a result, this creates a rhetorical space where celebrity, race, and gender are tension points that reflect disproportionate power structures on Twitch. Coupled with the fact that Twitch also functions as the main broadcast platform for esports tournaments, understanding how streamers rhetorically position themselves and interact with audiences as content creators, streamers, celebrities, and, for some, esports ath- letes it is important as video games increasingly become a mainstream form of entertainment. In addition to examining streamers, we also need to understand how average audiences, both casual, non-compet- itive gamers, and mainstream audiences will consume and react to streamer discussions and discourse and how that impacts attitudes in the community, particularly in relation to toxicity towards minori- ties. My paper uses Tyler “Ninja” Belvin’s statement “I don’t play with female gamers” (Frank 2018) as a rhetorical case study for examining rhetorical power, celebrity, and privilege on Twitch. I ultimately argue that Twitch is a site of laborious play and “playbour” that perpetually remains socially inactive in supporting and accepting minorities on the platform. To support this argument, I use Carolyn Miller’s “Genre as Social Action” (1984) to situate the rhetorics around this situation using her features (context, recursive patterns, discourse, mediation, and exigence) to analyse two interviews with Ninja, labour and com- modification structures on Twitch, and Twitch chat. Through these, I identify the rhetorical implications of Ninja’s statements, how it affects the Twitch gaming community, and reveal a complex power structure that ultimately fails to acknowledge the streamers’ rhetori- cal power and influence while continuing to perpetuate toxic gaming attitudes towards minorities.
“Good Icing can’t Change an Average Cake”. Gameful Experience, Work Relationships and the Automation of Behavioural Management
Gómez, Sebastián (2019) , S. 61-82
Research on the impact of gameful experiences on the automation of labour and value creation is in need of a critical reformulation. The results presented in this study developed from a critical reading of the current literature on gamification and its internal struggles. I ques- tion what the gamification of work is, this time including knowledge collected by decades of academic research in the field of digital cultures and society, converging in a diverse yet attuned corpus of neomateri- alist, post-anthropocentric, anti-Humanist, and intersectional theo- ries of politics, algorithmic cultures and social justice (see Braidotti/ Hlavajova 2017). Findings suggest the experimental development of gamification technologies materializes from an interest in governance through the automation of behavioural management, resulting in the forced correction of non-normative bodies through self-optimization. Beyond colonial, anthropocentric binaries, gamification’s genealogy is not found in the overcoming of the Eurocentric distinction between work and games, but in the algorithmic architecture of techno-capitalism.
Play as Work. On the Sportification of Computer Games
Pargman, Daniel; Svensson, Daniel (2019) , S. 15-40
Contemporary images of desirable work (for example at gaming companies or at one of the tech giants) foregrounds creativity and incorporates and idealises elements of play. Simultaneously, becoming one of the best in some particular leisure activity can require many long hours of hard, demanding work. Between on the one hand work and on the other hand leisure and play, we enter the domain of games and sports. Most classical sports originally developed from physical practices of moving the human body and these practices were, through standardization, organization and rationalization, turned into sports. Many sport researchers, (sport) historians and (sport) sociologists have pointed out that sports have gone through a process of “sportification”. Cross-country skiing is an example of an activity that has gone through a historical process of sportification, over time becoming progressively more managed and regulated. Computer games are today following a similar trajectory and have gone from being a leisure activity to becoming a competitive activity, “esports”, with professional players, international competitions, and live streams that are watched by tens of millions of viewers.
Working on and at Play. Perception and Visibility in Games
Scully-Blaker, Rainforest (2019) , S. 41-60
As media objects, video games are imbued with values held by their makers. This is done intentionally by serious games practitioners but also occurs independently of design goals. One of the more problematic manifestations of ‘values at play’ is playbour, a putting-to-work of play that recalls Agamben’s mourning the loss of ‘menuchah’, an inoperativity that is more than a means to prepare one for more work. But is there a way to rescue leisure from its subservience to labour? Or, if not, is there a way to make the work done through play operate against the logics of late capitalism? To make sense of the conversations around player, game, power, and labour, I articulate two concepts: visibility, or the degree to which a system can account for the actions of those operating within it, and perception, a measure of an actor’s understanding of the methods through which a system understands their movements. Through several gameplay examples, I use these concepts to lay the foundation for suggesting that play is a force for critique, for laying bare a game’s operational logics so that they may be subject to our scrutiny. To conclude, the concepts of glitch and queer failure are introduced to argue for a working on and at play that interrogates not only video game machines, but the larger machines of ideology that drive them.
Introduction. The Boundaries of Play
Abend, Pablo; Fizek, Sonia; Fuchs, Mathias; Wenz, Karin (2019) , S. 5-12
Owning It. Made in Chelsea and the Post-Work World
Winslow, J. D. A. (2019) , S. 149-158
This paper analyses the constructed reality TV show Made in Chelsea as a vision of a post-work world. Specifically I situate the programme as providing a more realistic vision of a post-work economy than that set out by left futurists advocating for fully automated luxury communism. Through an analysis of the depiction of work and play within the show it becomes apparent that any apparent boundaries between the two are rapidly collapsing, with both subsumed under the auspices of performa- tive authenticity. I argue that increasing automation will more likely lead to fully automated luxury communicative capitalism, unless left futurists acknowledge the affective aspects of social media use.
Esports and Live Streaming. Between Grind, Critical Work and Leisure
Wenz, Karin; Taylor, T. L. (2019) , S. 161-168
Gaming Musical Instruments. Music has to be Hard Work!
Torge Claussen, Jan (2019) , S. 121-130
This article addresses the relationship between labour and learning a popular musical instrument like the guitar in the specific context of a video game. Most gamification theories promise that using a video game makes it easy to learn (Kapp 2012; Deterding et al. 2011). Even if this holds true, I argue that this kind of playfulness causes some backlash, which I observed during an experiment in which students played the music video game Rocksmith 2014. Learning and playing the guitar through the medium of a video game comes with diverse experiences as well as expectations that are closely related to the dichotomies between play and work, often discussed in game studies based on the famous texts by Johann Huizinga (2004) and Roger Caillois (1960). Learning any traditional music instru- ment requires much effort in several skill areas, for example, dexterity, hearing, sight-reading, and performance. In other words, it seems to be hard work and not at all playful like a video game. In this article, the various aspects of playful work and labourious play, found in both music education and guitar games, will be discussed against the backdrop of empirical findings including data from online interviews, research diaries and video recordings.
Playful Work and Laborious Play in Super Mario Maker
Johnson, Mark R. (2019) , S. 103-120
Super Mario Maker (2015) and its sequel Super Mario Maker 2 (2019) have enabled a near-unprecedented amount of user-created level design, with well over seven million stages created to date by players from around the world. Within this vast library of levels, those built according to “troll” or “kaizo” level design rationales – which expect impressive feats of physical ability, puzzle-solving, psychologi- cal deduction, and emotional calm from their players – have become especially infamous and lasting. Drawing on literature around “pro- ductive play”, high-difficulty “masocore” game design, and gaming as a craft, this paper examines the playful work required to build and upload levels of this sort, and the laborious play that committed Super Mario Maker Players engage in when actually attempting to play them. In the first case, I study how designers create these sorts of levels, the meticulous attention to detail and the hypothesising about player mental states this requires, and how new norms have been created by these designers which reframe Super Mario Maker play. In the second case, I look at the players of these challenges, the sorts of enjoyment or satisfaction they get from these gruelling levels, the skills required to triumph over them, and the thin line between “good” and “bad” kaizo and troll levels. The analysis particularly focuses on the generation of dialogues between designers and players, and the deep emotional and intellectual appeal of such exchanges. The paper concludes by sum- marising how Super Mario Maker shows us the motivations to both produce and consume extremely challenging gaming content, and the playful work and laborious play required to construct and enable these experiences.

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