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Playbor and the Gamification of Work: Empowerment, Exploitation, and Fun as Labor Dynamics

Sun, May 27, 8:00 to 9:15, Hilton Old Town, Floor: M, Dvorak I

Abstract

The discursive separation of labor and play as distinct arenas that lead to pain and pleasure respectively has spurred the attempt to instrumentalize play and games by companies with the promise of making work fun. Such approaches are problematic because the claims of playful empowerment are often veiled in the opaque appropriation of game design and digital game mechanics. This is particularly important for game scholars, as the appropriation of game aesthetics for purposes of work not only allows for patterns of exploitation and control but because it potentially redefines the inclusion of game mechanics in labor-oriented technologies as technologies of contradiction. This paper theorizes the interplay between the contradicting logics guiding play and labor when placed in a for-profit advances immersive media system. By studying the way in which games and playful thinking are being incorporated into labor processes, I argue that organizations incur in a paradoxical reconfiguration of labor where working practices are disguised as game-like activities. This contradiction lies in the friction between the promise of empowerment and free will of play, and the tactics of control and for-profit determinism of capitalist ventures.

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