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Cargando... Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Strugglepor Jamie Woodcock
![]() Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Gaming the Coders Marx and Engels had nothing to say about videogames. Jamie Woodcock tries to connect them in Marx at the Arcade. The links are tenuous, but Woodcock’s knowledge of the industry is intense. The first videogame launched in 1940, and ever since, bored engineers have been tinkering with computers to make them playable. Today, at the other extreme, videogames are universally available. Woodcock quotes Forbes magazine as finding 69% of Pokémon Go players playing it at work. New games can be on the screens of 200 million people. In the UK, 51% of entertainment spending is on videogames, almost three times what is spent on music. It is a new institution in global culture. The book divides into three: the history, the industry and the games. Of the three, the industry section is by far the most interesting. The gaming industry is living irony. In the early days of videogaming, hackers ruled. Game developers came from a “Refusal to work. They were all about leisure, hedonism, irresponsibility against clock-punching, discipline and productivity,” Woodcock says. It was all about sharing, recognition, and joy at creation. Today, capitalism rules. No one works in gaming without signing an NDA – a nondisclosure agreement – before the job interview can take place. News from the workforce is therefore sparse. But what we do know it is a total throwback to sweatshops and no rights. There are now thousands of companies developing games, and they all seem to have the same playbook. They hire developers at apparently decent salaries, but then make them work 90 hour weeks with no extra pay, effectively cutting their pay to less than half. There is zero loyalty or job security. When the “crunch” period is done and the game has launched, the developers are simply fired. They come back when a new game is under development. Thanks to Gamergate, we also know the industry is filled with racism and sexism. Women are disdained, and paid 15% less. Everyone works in a microscopic area, so that no one can take pride or credit in the game, and may not even know what the final product will look like. It’s an assembly line where the model of car is none of your business. You just perform your little task, endlessly. Layers of management put the pieces together but have no creative say. Job satisfaction is nil. Motivation is nil. Frustration is total. During crunch, developers must work from 9am to 10:30pm, with just enough time to sleep some. And this is seven days a week. When they clock out, their work is handed off to another bureau in a different time zone, so the job can continue, with no one taking ownership of anything. The result is exhaustion, little follow through and lots of errors. These are conditions labor fought tooth and nail to break up 120 years ago, and enlightened high tech has simply reimposed them, for the greater profit of silicon billionaires. About the only delight in the book is that the workers are waking up and organizing. While the major unions ignore them, niche unions are teaching them the ropes, showing them they are not alone, that they have the power to stop this madness, and that they need to be actively promoting change for their own self preservation and the good of everyone. All this is total news to millennials. That history has to repeat itself so soon is discouraging. That solutions at least, are also repeating is reassuring. The race to the bottom may finally be ending. The real game in gaming is labor. Marx would understand. David Wineberg sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"In Marx at the Arcade, acclaimed researcher Jamie Woodcock delves into the hidden abode of the gaming industry. In an account that will appeal to hardcore gamers, digital skeptics, and the joystick-curious, Woodcock unravels the vast networks of artists, software developers, and factory and logistics workers whose seen and unseen labor flows into the products we consume on a gargantuan scale. Along the way, he analyzes the increasingly important role the gaming industry plays in contemporary capitalism and the broader transformations of work and the economy that it embodies"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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"To start at the very beginning, the National Museum of Play in New York claims that the very first videogame was a custom-built computer in 1940, the Nimatron." Since then, things have changed, including how videogames has become a major industry.
Another interesting point about the birth of videogames, is this:
Since then, things have changed, including how videogames has become a major industry. For example, videogames currently make up the majority (51.3 percent) of entertainment spending in the UK. Woodcock ends his historic recant with "Fortnite", in 2017. In other words, this book is current.
This place in the book, to me, is where it becomes interesting:
The capitalistic structure that is favored by most videogame studios, along with knowing that streaming is today fairly essential for non-console based gaming, makes for a highly competitive and volatile world:
Woodcock writes a little on how the military-industrial complex makes haste to help videogame studios:
Not far from the US military developing the hand grenade to feel like a baseball so that young men can easily start throwing them, right?
The next bit says a lot of how capitalism meets military secrecy:
That fades away in comparison with the following:
So, marketing weapons to children is commonplace in big parts of the videogames industry. If we think that's ludicrous, think about this instead:
Moving from how videogames are funded by people who like to sell killing machines, Woodcock writes of the extensive use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Naturally, software-development companies don't want their code to be revealed, nor their products talked about. However, NDAs seldom exist to consider the individuals behind their work role, and hence, NDAs hamper how badly videogame workers are treated.
Marx would undoubtedly have had something to say about worker rights, especially to voice their opinion about their work conditions.
Woodcock writes about sexism in the videogames industry, which is rife:
Woodcock goes into the monetary differences between female and male videogame workers. He also goes over issues of sexual abuse, of which women—regardless of profession, really—are subjected en masse.
Temporary workers are also gone into, and how "unskilled labour" is outsourced to workers who live in countries so that the employer can make as much money as possible.
The more industrialised a capitalist company becomes, the more it is likely to pigeon-hole its workers:
The concept of "crunch time" is explained; this is commonplace abuse in the software-development industry. Crunch time is long working hours, often unpaid, that end up changing people to their core. Stressful work, not only performed over long periods of time, but often expected by some companies, leads to depression, long sick leaves, and suicide. Web search for "Letter from an EA spouce", and you will see one oft-quoted example.
The best part, as Woodcock explains, is that "crunch time" is never a good idea:
Woodcock does bring one of Marx's maxims into play: the importance to allow workers to come together to have their voices heard. If their workplace cannot be partly owned by themselves, i.e. in another way than the capitalistic (which is, by definition, fascist in the hierarchical sense), workers must unionise:
He goes into detail by using a French videogame studio as example:
Woodcock provides both arguments for and details of what Marx would make of the videogames industry, in persuasive terms. However, he keeps a cool head, and envelops his theories in modern-day examples that anybody can understand, interested in videogames or not (I'm not).
This is something that should be read by all persons who have anything to do with the videogames industry, industries overall, but perhaps mainly by persons who think nothing is wrong in the videogames world.
I'd love to have read a bit more on diversity in the videogames society, but other than that, this is a very current, workplace-applicable, and likeable book. It's also easy to read, unlike a lot of politically argumentative books. (