Work and Play in the Digital Age: Video Games and Social Media

Undergraduate / Graduate

Digital media has changed what work looks like across all sectors while simultaneously facilitating more play than ever before. The particularities of mediation are key to the current blurring of work and play: in our play time, video games and social media are feeling more and more like work, as gamification and content creation increasingly become the primary modes of interaction. And work feels more like a game as bosses are replaced by algorithms and all anyone wants to do is 'game the system.' Surveillance ecosystems abound, capturing our data and quantifying our actions, rendering us all working players in a socially mediated video game of life. Making video games for a living or becoming a social media star are jobs that, while fun and highly sought after, are paradigmatic of the contemporary work environment: precarious, aspirational, passion driven, and full of work and play. What happens to us when we're working and playing, at the same time, all the time? How can the frameworks of mass gameplay and ubiquitous sociality help us theorize the contemporary moment?