The work prefigured the rise of game-worker organising, although its post-workerist conceptualisation of resistance might be considered as too pessimistic. This text, soon to be reappraised in a forthcoming special issue of Games & Culture, traces the roots of videogame production to the military and hackers, riffing-off Hardt and Negri’s Empire 4 to develop a critical account of the medium and its role within capitalism. Many of these questions were taken up in Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter’s Games of Empire, 3 an autonomist-Marxist inspired critical analysis of videogame production and play. 2 Videogames have become a mainstream cultural activity, and the site of recent struggles over ideology, capital, and working conditions. It has also emerged as a new battleground for worker-organising, with branches of Game Workers Unite springing up across the world, trying to build unions. Anyone who is in any doubt about the importance of videogames to understanding contemporary capitalism should be reminded of the sheer scale of the industry, 1 with GTA V having sold 115 million copies. In part, it can be easy to miss the widespread engagement with videogames in the home – as those who do not play them then have very limited exposure. What is particularly interesting about the book is its argument for how videogames involve ‘working through’ the antagonisms within these virtual cities, drawing attention to the importance of the interactivity within these representations.ĭue to the specific history of the medium, particularly the focus of marketing attention upon the idealised figure of the teenage boy as consumer, many continue to dismiss videogames as a niche pursuit. Bailes elaborates on the neoliberal demand to ‘enjoy responsibly’ (returned to throughout the book) and how this relates to the roles of play within contemporary capitalism. It is from this starting point that the book attempts to unpack these virtual cities, the opportunities and constraints they present for the player. Bailes justifies the psychoanalytic focus by arguing that there is ‘something especially significant in the way that many videogames function as power fantasies, which grant their characters, and through them their players, a sense of agency and control that they generally cannot experience in everyday life’ (p. Its focus is upon a critical psychoanalytical account of Saints Row IV, GTA V, No More Heroes, and Persona 5, each involving the player navigating through virtual cities.
Ideology and the Virtual City by Jon Bailes is part of the recent wave of critical works examining videogames. Jon Bailes, (2019) Ideology and the Virtual City: Videogames, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism, Winchester: Zer0 Books. Senior Lecturer in Management, Faculty of Business and Law, The Open University, – videogames – psychoanalysis – cultural studies A Review of Ideology and the Virtual City: Videogames, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism by Jon Bailes
0 kommentar(er)
