A PRECARIOUS GAME A PRECARIOUS GAME The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry Ergin Bulut ILR PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress. cornell . edu. First published 2020 by Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Bulut, Ergin, author. Title: A precarious game : the illusion of dream jobs in the video game industry / Ergin Bulut. Description: Ithaca : ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019020927 (print) | LCCN 2019980590 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501746529 (cloth) | ISBN 9781501746536 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501746543 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501746550 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Video games industry—Employees—Job satisfaction—Middle West. | Video game designers—Job satisfaction—Middle West. | Video games industry—Social aspects—Middle West. | Ethnology—Middle West. Classification: LCC HD9993.E452 B86 2020 (print) | LCC HD9993.E452 (ebook) | DDC 331.7/6179480977—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019020927 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980590 To Gülüzar and Metin Bulut Contents Preface ix Acknowl edgments xi Introduction: For Whom the Love Works in Video Game Production? 1 1. The Unequal Ludopo liti cal Regime of Game Production: Who Can Play, Who Has to Work? 30 2. The End of the Garage Studio as a Technomasculine Space: Financial Security, Streamlined Creativity, and Signs of Friction 54 3. Gaming the City: How a Game Studio Revitalized a Downtown Space in the Silicon Prairie 73 4. The Production of Communicative Developers in the Affective Game Studio 89 5. Reproducing Technomasculinity: Spouses’ Classed Femininities and Domestic Labor 105 6. Game Testers as Precarious Second- Class Citizens: Degradation of Fun, Instrumentalization of Play 122 7. Production Error: Layoffs Hit the Core Creatives 141 Conclusion: Reimagining Labor and Love in and beyond Game Production 159 Notes 175 References 181 Index 197 Preface At the beginning of each academic semester, I ask undergraduates majoring in media studies what their postgraduation plans are. Regardless of the industry they would like to get into, they want to do something fun or something they love. They desire creative jobs. Not interested in joining the white- collar work- force, my students are keen on being employed in workplaces where informality rules. The video game industry is an ideal venue where job descriptions come very close to the aspirations of my students. Producing video games is definitely fun and glamorous. In fact, video game industry jobs are described as among the best jobs that U.S. workplaces offer. With its transnational connections and a truly networked labor force, the industry does offer lively workspaces. It is also positioned as an industry that thrives despite the adverse effects of the economic downturn. This book suggests that things are a bit more complicated. By delving into the everyday experiences of video game developers in a studio that I call Desire, I reveal how the glamorous working lives of game developers are equally precari- ous and unpredictable, depending on many other factors that they cannot always control. In fact, the whole industry is structured around vari ous forms of in- equalities and surrounded with illusions about what it means to do what one loves. Even when Desire’s developers work really hard, love what they do, and produce profitable games, their economic and social well- being do not always thrive equally well, rendering them anxious about their futures. Not all of Desire’s workers are employed on equal terms, either. There are the more privileged core creatives, such as programmers, artists, and designers, and there are the marginalized video game testers, whose labor is undervalued com- pared to the rest of the workforce. Game workers’ partners’ reproductive labor is also rendered invisible, even though they are vital to the success of a whole industry. There are cultural inequalities where a predominantly white- male in- dustry’s definitions of “fun” give us questionable game content with respect to gender and race. That is, work itself is extremely racialized and gendered. So, then, it seems that in equality is not a bug but a major feature of this industry. Doing what you love as a game worker can be a mixed blessing, because failure and production errors are endemic to this highly innovative industry, even though it is represented and imagined as a meritocratic utopia. ix x PREFACE The fusion of work and play, desire and work, and performing a labor of love have become a hegemonic narrative across the globe. The video game industry stands out like a natural center of this fusion in the form of a dream job. This book interrogates the politics of this dream through the lens of in equality. It poses one main question: Who can play and who has to work in this industry? Grasping the personal, social, and emotional cost of racialized and gendered labor practices through the lives of Desire’s creative workers, the pre sent work critiques liberal conceptions of creativity and discourses around quality of life in this unpredictable industry. It politicizes love at work and invites readers to con- sider universal basic income, unionization, and a radical postwork imagination. By pointing to the illusions of game development as a dream job, it emphasizes the immediate necessity to make radical demands about how we can possibly disautomatize ourselves, deconstruct our naturalized commitment to work, and liberate play from its one- dimensionality. I hope this book is a thoughtful and provocative call for becoming killjoys against a supposedly ludic future, which in fact is very much limited to instru- mentalized and unequal relations of social domination. Acknowl edgments Intellectual life has never been easy in Turkey, but I wouldn’t have imagined the level of the uncertainty it has reached since I returned home in 2014. To that end, I would like to thank friends, colleagues, and institutions that supported me as I wrote this book. First I want to thank numerous game developers and their partners who shared their stories with me amid their hectic lives. I hope this book contributes to the formation of a more equal video game industry. I also want to thank anonymous reviewers for their feedback, which has significantly helped me to reframe the book. Let me also thank Fran Benson and the editorial team for be- lieving in and helping with this proj ect. Şükran Özkan, Leman Çınar, Meltem Çullu, Susan Robertson, Ayşe Buğra, and Özden Cankaya have been lifelong mentors and sources of inspiration. I am grateful. Fırat Kaplan, Evren Dinçer, Emre Ergüven, Seçil Yılmaz, Yasin Kara, Aslı Filiz, Nurçin İleri, and Bora Erdağı deserve special thanks for being wonderful friends and intellectual interlocutors since the 2000s. My friends for life, you all rock! Mustafa’s and Duygu’s existence in my life has been nothing other than im mense joy. They rock! Our WhatsApp group How I Met Your Mother has been my daily feed of po liti cal news, Brazilian music, and laughter. I am grateful to Garett and May for being my family in the United States. I thank Serdar, Ayşegül, Giray, Aslı, Gökhan, Emre, Eren, Deniz, and Ozan for im mensely en- riching my life back in the United States. I fondly remember my memories at the University of Illinois and want to thank my friends and colleagues for listening to the stories in this book so many times. Thank you, Bryce Henson, Karla Palma, Nina Li, Darren Stevenson, Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah Roberts, Matt Crain, Mandy Tröger, Nick Rudd, Ali- cia Kozma, Martina Baldwin, and Arnau Multu. Robert Mejia has been a won- derful colleague to work with and learn from. Let me also thank Srirupa Roy, Thomas Allmer, Ben Birkinbine, Nina Hunte- mann, Aphra Kerr, Zsuzsa Gille, Kylie Jarett, Dal Yong Jin, Dan Schiller, Lisa Nakamura, John Nerone, Fazal Rizvi, Michael Peters, Aswin Punathambekar, Zeynep Devrim Gürsel, Suncem Koçer, Casey O’Donnell, Michelle Rodino- Colocino, Jack Bratich, Mutlu Binark, James Hay, Bilge Yeşil, Nick Dyer- Witheford, Victor Pickard, Anita Say Chan, Jack Qiu, Winifred Poster, Luke xi xii ACKNOWL EDGMENTS Stark, Rolien Hoyng, Murat Es, Alison Hearn, and Enda Brophy for their sup- port, friendship, and conversations in vari ous academic venues. Many thanks to Jayson Harsin for his support and solidarity. Nicole Cohen and especially Greig de Peuter deserve special thanks for providing comments and feedback at vari- ous occasions on the earlier forms of the manuscript. Vicki Mayer’s work has been a formative influence in this proj ect. I am especially thankful for her en- couragement in the earlier phases of my career. With her immense intellectual inspiration and po liti cal energy, Paula Chakravartty has been a formidable men- tor and I am grateful. Since I became a faculty member at Koç University, Bilge Ulutürk’s invisible support at the Suna Kıraç Library has been priceless. I want to thank my colleagues at Koç University, especially Dikmen Bezmez, Çağla Turgul, Didem Pekün, İpek Çelik Rappas, Çetin Çelik, Gizem Erdem, and Lemi Baruh. Dean Aylin Küntay’s leadership and support is much appreciated. My conversations with Can Nacar and Burak Gürel have helped me shape various parts of the manuscript. Erdem Yörük’s motivation has pushed me along the way. Alexis Rappas deserves special thanks for numerous conversations in our hallway. Thanks to Megan MacDonald, who kindly read and gave feedback on portions of the manuscript.