The proposed sixth installment of the international Playing the Field conference series focuses on the multifaceted relationship between video games and labour. Such a topic is particularly relevant today given the aggravating contradictions inherent to neoliberal capitalism on a global scale, as well as a tendency in video game cultural studies towards relegating the economic dimension of video games to discussions of class identity representations. To counterbalance the hyperfocus on representation in game studies (which has indeed yielded valuable insights into the political dimension of games and gaming), we encourage a dialectic materialist approach to games that transcends cultural identity and adequately considers the economic material conditions of game rhetoric, reception and production.
Being an outgrowth of Cold War technoculture, video games stand out as a commodity that reflects, reinforces, but can also criticise the postfordist material conditions of labour that blur the distinction between production and consumption. While gameplay is conventionally seen as an empowerment of the consumer, it is worth asking if there is a tradeoff for the ergodic digital agency that players enjoy. And if this is indeed the case, what is the economic nature of this trade-off? To provide insight into the complex nexus of gameplay, labour, and the economy, we encourage a broad perspective that looks into the economic dimension of video games from multiple angles and focuses on a variety of topics. These topics are included, among others:
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- Gameplay as immaterial labour
- The political economy of in-game systems
- Representations of historical periods in the evolution of capitalism
- Class-based identities
- Labour and intersectionality (race and ethnicity, gender, disability, madness, sexuality, etc.)
- Coloniality of labour in video games
- Economic counterplay
- Digital divisions of labour
- Practices of avatar customisation
- Environmental/Ecocritical considerations of labour
- Economic discourses in indie and experimental games
- Affect and labour
- Monetisation in gaming
- Video games and AI
- Biopolitics and labour
- Video games and social media
- Gameplay in the (semi-)peripheries of the modern world-system
- Video games in the global digital media ecology
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We invite scholars to contribute 20-minute presentations. Abstracts of 300-400 words (bibliography excluded), 5 keywords, and a short bio (100 words) should be submitted to playingthefieldvi@gmail.com no later than 10 September 2025. Committee decisions will be sent out by 15 November 2025.
There will be no participation fee.
A selection of papers will be published in a collective volume to be submitted for publication at Routledge.
Contact Information
Organising committee:
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- Andrei Nae, University of Bucharest (head of the organising committee)
- Alessandra Ciufu, University of Bucharest
- Andreea Moise, University of Bucharest
- Daria Nedelea, University of Bucharest
Contact Email: playingthefieldvi@gmail.com
URL: https://bit.ly/playingthefieldvi
