Postscript: Gaming While Empire Burns

Abstract

Responding to a journal issue revisiting Games of Empire, this article begins by surveying the state of digital play amid a conjuncture of pandemic lockdown, anti-racism protest, and looming recession. We go on to address criticism of our book’s outlook on “games of multitude” in the face of the reactionary side of gaming culture expressed by Gamergate. We next outline elements of a research itinerary, were we to update our book’s project, including climate crisis, platform proliferation, organizing and organizations, and video gaming’s violent intersections. We conclude by reasserting the need to attend to emancipatory currents within—and against—game cultures. While gaming’s complicity in energy overconsumption and cultures of domination raises serious questions about its contribution to any postcapitalist future, the struggles that might bring us to this point will be waged by combatants whose subjectivities have been formed within the digital complexes of which gaming is now an integral part.

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“…This form of creative workplace resistance tied in with the early hacker cultures that provided the basis for the videogames industry. 11 There have also been strikes in parts of the videogames industry in the past. For…”