In the video game sector, who gets to play games and who has to do the work?

Creating a video game is no doubt as fun and fascinating as playing one. It is a dream job. With its transnational connections and truly networked workforce, this industry offers an energetic work environment. It is also positioned as a vibrant industry despite the negative effects of the economic downturn.

In his book, A Precarious Game, Ergin Bulut argues that there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. He claims that the entire industry is in fact founded on various forms of inequality and is beset with illusions about what it means to do what one loves. The author bases this on his three-year fieldwork experience with video game developers at a game studio in the United States.

A Precarious Game is a profound and provocative call to be up to some mischief against a fun future!

“If the only future we are allowed to dream promises us nothing more that institutionalized, precarious, and exploitative love and entertainment forms, then let us be the killjoys and let us resist against the emotional toxicity that rules the gaming industry and workplaces in general. We should oppose this future because it is supposedly the one and only future, and it will again be shaped by an inequitable fun-politics regime and will not produce anything but a myriad of inequalities. The game-makers, the gamers, and us citizens deserve better.”