Games are often a fun perk of a tech company job, and employees can “play to win” in the competition to succeed. But in studying “Behemoth” (a pseudonym for a top American tech company), Tongyu Wu discovered that gaming work culture was far more insidious.
Play to Submission shows how Behemoth’s games undermined and manipulated workers. They lost their work-life balance and the constant competition made labor organizing difficult. Nonetheless, many workers embraced management’s games as a chance to show off their “gamer” identities and create a workplace culture with privileged insiders and exiled outsiders, with female and migrant workers usually in the latter group. Moreover, Wu indicates this may be the future of work for high- and low-skilled and, creative workers in an environment where capitalists have heightened demands for technology and creativity.
Drawing from 13 months of ethnographic work, Wu presents a persistent reality in which the company reaps the reward of surplus productivity, leaving employees themselves in a highly competitive and sometimes precarious work position.
By:
Tongu Wu Imprint: Temple University Press,U.S. Country of Publication: United States Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 454g ISBN:9781439922972 ISBN 10: 1439922977 Pages: 238 Publication Date:28 June 2024 Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Active
Tongyu Wu is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Zhejiang University in China.