[Commlist] New book: A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry

We would like to announce a new publication from Cornell University 
Press, which we hope will be of interest.

*A Precarious Game***

The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry

*Ergin Bulut***

https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781501746536/a-precarious-game/

*__*

*Receive a 20% discount online:*

*CSLS2020**__*

/A Precarious Game/is an ethnographic examination of video game 
production. The developers that Ergin Bulut researched for almost three 
years in a medium-sized studio in the U.S. loved making video games that 
millions play. Only some, however, can enjoy this dream job, which can 
be precarious and alienating for many others. That is, the passion of a 
predominantly white-male labor force relies on material inequalities 
involving the sacrificial labor of their families, unacknowledged work 
of precarious testers, and thousands of racialized and gendered workers 
in the Global South.

/A Precarious Game/explores the politics of doing what one loves. In the 
context of work, passion and love imply freedom, participation, and 
choice, but in fact they accelerate self-exploitation and can impose 
emotional toxicity on other workers by forcing them to work endless 
hours. Bulut argues that such ludic discourses in the game industry 
disguise the racialized and gendered inequalities on which a profitable 
transnational industry thrives.

Within capitalism, work is not just an economic matter, and the 
political nature of employment and love can still be undemocratic even 
when based on mutual consent. As Bulut demonstrates, rather than 
considering work simply as a matter of economics based on trade-offs in 
the workplace, we should consider the question of work and love as one 
of democracy rooted in politics.

*Ergin Bulut*is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and 
Visual Arts at Koç University. He is currently a visitor researcher at 
the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a faculty fellow at the 
Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at Annenberg School 
for Communication. He is co-editor of /Cognitive Capitalism, Education 
and Digital Labor/, and you can follow him on Twitter @ergincloud.

With all best wishes,

Combined Academic Publishers

*Cornell University Press**| March 2020 | 222pp | 9781501746536 | PB | 
£18.99**

*Price subject to change.

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------