Are videogames a new site of political struggle?

November 5, 2024 –
From Socialist Worker (UK)

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Players of The Sims have organised protests (pic: maxismatchccworld on Tumblr)

Videogame company revenues surpass those of the film and music industries combined.

This has spurred Lithuanian Marxist and games industry insider Marijam Did to write her new book, Everything to Play For: How Videogames are Changing the World.

Did describes the book as a love letter to gaming, but that doesn’t mean it is without criticism.

She combines that love with “contempt for its exploitative tendencies and practices at the cutting edge of capitalist reproduction.”

Many of the devices and computer parts needed for playing and developing videogames are extracted and manufactured in conditions close to “slave labour” in the Global South. Then, games are developed in studios rife with poor salaries, layoffs and sexual harassment.

Everything to Play For acts as a comprehensive guide to the entire industry. It covers the history of the medium, the way games are made and played, and the communities surrounding them.

But first and foremost, it represents the author’s desire for the left to have a nuanced understanding of a complex medium that influences billions of people.

Videogames, Did argues, represent a unique cultural space for political agitation and organisation. More alarmingly, she says the far right has been much quicker at noticing the political potential of games.

The most well-known result of this was the infamous #gamergate. It saw thousands of gamers rallying behind far right influencers in an online hate campaign against multiple women in the industry.

The massively popular online game Roblox is played primarily by children and young teenagers.

The NBC news channel discovered that there were over 100 Nazi groups operating in the virtual space, attempting to recruit members of the impressionable player base.

But there is hope for progressive voices in these spaces. “Massively Multiplayer Online” games often see their players experimenting with different forms of self-management.

Player-run guilds are set up for distribution of items within the game, all done without any input from the developers of the game themselves.

The virtual space has seen a peasant revolt in Ultima Online, a Black Lives Matter demonstration in The Sims and a Palestine march in Roblox—all organised entirely by players.

Rather than a space completely cut off from the outside world, the virtual world is a place where political ideas are formed.

But for games to reach their full potential as enchanting, immersive artistic experiences, we need a revolutionary transformation of society. Everything to Play For makes for an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to engage in a nuanced, materialist understanding of videogames.