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Keynote given at Banff New Media Institute Interactive Screen 8/24/08 screening 3 media projects focused on the politics of labor and production of play in the global digital game industry.
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Its All Fun and GamesUntil Somebody
Loses An EyeBanff New Media Institute, Interactive Screen 2008 KeynoteStephanie RothenbergAssistant Professor Visual Studies, SUNY [email protected]
1How do computer video games
Culturally “produce” play?
2How do Digital Games (and basically
consumer technologies) shape value
systems and reinforce behaviors?
3How have digital games shifted
the boundaries between
leisure and labor?
4What are the social and ecological
consequences of this
multibillion dollar industry?
Pic of automobile
Pic of TV
Pic of gamers
Pic of gamers
2007 Console, software and accessories sales:
$17.94 B (jumped 44%)
Units sold:
8.5M Nintendo DS handhelds
6.29M Nintendo Wii’s4.62M Microsoft XBox 360’s3.97M Sony PlayStation 2’s2.56M PS3’s4.82M copies of Microsoft's Halo 3
$ 820M ATVI Guitar hero(set a record for annual single franchise sales)
Pic of corp culture
chronocyclograph
Frank & Lillian Gilbreth
therbligs
Therbligsbasic units of motion and activity performed to the millisecond
(grasp, hold, transport loaded)
Photographer Mike Mandell
http://www.pan-o-matic.com/blog/?page_id=2
School of Perpetual Training is an ironic instructional training program that
exposes the underbelly and not so glamorous side of the computer video gameindustry. Most people associate jobs in the computer video game industry withinformation-based labor such as 3D graphics and coding game programs. Yet themajority of the industry relies on the sweat and stamina of migrant and low-incomelaborers working for electronics contract manufacturers in developing countries.
By following a series of training exercises, participants learn about the precariousemployment and unjust labor conditions of workers in the areas of overseas digitalgame manufacturing and distribution. A virtual “personal trainer” created in SecondLife leads participants through a series of training exercises that use motion detectionand require full range of body motion to play. Rather than using a mouse or joystick,the motion detection demands the participants “labor” to complete the trainingexercises, emphasizing the extreme physical nature and motion economics of thesejobs. The individual training exercises recontextualize popular classic arcade games –Dig Dug, Tapper, Space Invaders and Tetris – in order to “train” participants for jobs inmineral mining, printed circuit board assembly, box build and global shipping. At theend of the training program, participants can gauge their “global market value” to findout how much their “worth” in contrast to white-collar workers in the industry.
Gilles Deleuze - Society of Control
“The factory constituted individuals as a single body to the doubleadvantage of the boss who surveyed each element within the massand the unions who mobilized a mass resistance; but thecorporation constantly presents the brashest rivalry as a healthyform of emulation, an excellent motivational force that opposesindividuals against one another and runs through each, dividing eachwithin. The modulating principle of "salary according to merit" hasnot failed to tempt national education itself. Indeed, just as thecorporation replaces the factory, perpetual training tends toreplace the school, and continuous control to replace theexamination. Which is the surest way of delivering the school overto the corporation.
In the disciplinary societies one was always starting again (fromschool to the barracks, from the barracks to the factory), while inthe societies of control one is never finished with anything--thecorporation, the educational system, the armed services beingmetastable states coexisting in one and the same modulation, like auniversal system of deformation.”
IMAGE FROM FILM “MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES”
Watch video “School of Perpetual Training”
http://www.pan-o-matic.com/blog/?page_id=2
Invisible Threads
http://www.pan-o-matic.com/blog/?page_id=72
http://www.doublehappinessjeans.com
10 Simple Steps to Your Own Virtual Sweatshop/Invisible Threads
The informercial video and correlating installation entitled“Invisible Threads” explore the growing intersection betweenlabor, emerging virtual economies and real life commoditiesthrough the creation of a designer jeans sweatshop in the online,3-dimensional world of Second Life. Replicating a real lifemanufacturing facility that includes hiring Second Life “workers”,the project leverages the simulation capabilities of Second Life’ssynthetic space in conjunction with its social networking toolsto provide an insider’s view into current modes of global production.As real world customers watch their jeans move down the assemblyline, the real lives behind the avatar “workers” stationed at large,industrial machines begin to emerge. This interplay between realityand virtual embodiment not only sheds light on the current politicsof outsourced labor but foreshadows what has already becomethe future of capitalist production.
Exhibited at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Total Residents 14,829,733
Residents Logged-In During Last 30 Days 846,296
Residents Logged-In During Last 7 Days 463,064
Second Life Reuters
US Dollars spent in Second Life over last 24 hours
$1,717,291
Watch video “10 Simple Steps to Your OwnVirtual Sweatshop”
http://blip.tv/file/779038
Usernomics 1.0
usability + ergonomics
http://www.pan-o-matic.com/blog/?page_id=69
Usernomics 1.0
Usernomics 1.0 is a hacktivist workshop employing models of waste reclamation,recycling and reuse. This user-friendly workshop begins with discussion about theconsequences (social, ecological) of the computer industry, and a discussion abouthow to reuse, recycle discarded keyboards, household goods and toys. Participantsengage in hacking (taking apart and repurposing) the keyboards and reprogram themto make one-of-a-kind external computer controllers.
The workshop provides participants with basic information about how to solder wiresto the main circuitry and how to use them as extensions to create the externalcontrollers. Pushing mouse and keyboard aside, these unique creations require usersto engage with the computer in unusual physical ways. For example, the “up” arrowkey could be activated by bouncing a ball through a hoop. At the conclusion of theworkshop is a performance-competition with participants working collaboratively tooperate the controllers in order to move onscreen avatars in a computer video game.In the game The Great Race For Ewaste a migrant worker competes against a Worldof Warcraft character to collect the most ewaste from a huge pile of old electronics.
Specific workshop context will vary depending on location and participants.
Ewaste information and image source:Silicon Valley Toxics Coaltion (www.svtc.org), Basel ActionNetwork (www.ban.org) and Greenpeace
Ewaste The effluent of the affluent
Watch video “Usernomics 1.0”
http://www.pan-o-matic.com/blog/?page_id=69
