A Precarious Game

Ergin Bulut is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Visual Arts at Koc University. He is currently a visitor researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a faculty fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at Annenberg School for Communication. He is co-editor of Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor, and you can follow him on X @ergincloud.

Introduction: For Whom the Love Works in Video Game Production? 1. The Unequal Ludopolitical Regime of Game Production: Who Can Play, Who Has to Work? 2. The End of the Garage Studio as a Technomasculine Space: Financial Security, Streamlined Creativity, and Signs of Friction 3. Gaming the City: How a Game Studio Revitalized a Downtown Space in the Silicon Prairie 4. The Production of Communicative Developers in the Affective Game Studio 5. Reproducing Technomasculinity: Spouses' Classed Femininities and Domestic Labor 6. Game Testers as Precarious Second-Class Citizens: Degradation of Fun, Instrumentalization of Play 7. Production Error: Layoffs Hit the Core Creatives Conclusion: Reimagining Labor and Love in and beyond Game Production

Building on "critical political economy, feminist theory, and autonomist Marxism" (p. 11), this book is a much-needed contribution to critical game studies by breaking the glamorous spell over the contemporary forms of immaterial and creative media labor. Theoretical discussions are clear enough to engage with and vividly illustrated in ethnographic research. The language makes the book a fluent read not only for academics but for anyone interested in current modes of capitalism and videogame production. (Critical Studies in Media Communication) Bulut transports readers inside of video game production to gain a better perspective on the gestalt of the video game industry. This book is a thought-provoking example of media ethnography and would captivate anyone interested in a critical approach to employment relations in any industry where technology and creativity intersect. (ILR Review) By providing a nuanced analysis of this creative workforce, A Precarious Game challenges us to rethink the broader implications of the precarization of the professional management class. It thus makes insightful contributions to the debates on video games, digital labor, and the future of work. (WORK AND OCCUPATIONS)