Co-creative Culture and labour - "I Play Farmville, and You Should Too!!!!"

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around what Dyer-Witherford and de Peuter says in “Immaterial Labor”:

“Immaterial labor is less about the production of things and more about the production of subjectivity, or better, about the way the production of subjectivity and things are in contemporary capitalism deeply intertwined”.

Perhaps one of the ways of unwrapping that is the line “If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.”. 

I started playing Farmville again. I started as part of the Digital Game Theory course back in spring. I then grew tired of the repetitiveness and I had at the same time reached the long term goal I had made – reach max level in my bakery (I produce very nice high level strawberry cakes!).  However, some people in the Game Culture class had me hooked again. I guess I do want to play Farmville with someone other than Linda D and Fredo, who by the way had broken up with me when I returned… He was never a good neighbour anyways. 

Farmville is also very good at putting me to work in ways I barely notice. First of all, it really wants access to everything me, preferably to be allowed to post on Facebook as me and it even succeeded once. It constantly tries to bribe me with extra goodies – “triple parts” - if I would just invite more of my Facebook friends to join. I have been clever though, I have created a separate list for Farmville friends, so that my Farmville shares do not become ever present and spammy messages to everyone I know on Facebook. 

I’ve tried not becoming the ultimate spokesperson and advertisement pillar for Farmville. It’s a constant temptation to give in. I am promised great treasures and upgrades if I recruit more friends.

I have not paid Farmville (Zynga) a dime though, but that’s not the logic of it, as long as the game is ever expanding – someone eventually will. And I have been secretly and silently employed to hire new people into this scheme and make sure to remind the ones already playing of all the nice things they can have. 

Farmville is also a highly commercialized game space. Planting "Dreyer's Fruit Bars crops" in this case. How can we understand this within the intersection of games and labour? Promotional play? (Magic Circle went *poof*)

Here’s the thing though, I am aware of it, and I pay attention to it so I can intersect. I’d argue that Farmville in terms of player labour is not as covert as it could be and the number of fake Facebook accounts specifically made to play Facebook games, I believe, is an attempt to divide the two, the game-network and the general network and avoid becoming this rambling street corner advertisement astroturf Farmville maniac. 

With the many examples of how games that put you to work, I also believe it can go the other way. Games can also teach and train us to become better workers. 

Think about how MMOG raiding produces accountable, competitive and highly achieving individuals. You need to be flexible and available, broad but specialized, always up to date and well educated on the class and spec you play and what encounter you’re about to face. Raid groups are further often hierarchical with raid and guild leaders, divided work tasks (tank, dps, and healer). If you signed to up to work on boss fights for the night and you are not able to make it, you are expected to inform raid leaders. You need to be able to work with others and take criticism – and of course constantly improve. You need good communication skills, a team-oriented attitude and the spirit of a fighter – you never give up until the job is done! And indeed the work ethic expected of you in for example WoW can become very demanding when you raid and prepare for raids at the equivalent to a part time job – in your spare time! I used to do this, three times a week for four hours each time when I raided the most.

 

It certainly fits within the Immaterial Labour definition as in labour that creates “immaterial products”:

“Knowledge, information, communication, a relationship or an emotional response”.

It was very regimented and your performance was constantly under surveillance and evaluation. Perhaps this is also why these laborious games has a tendency to "burn people out". This expression is at least something I've heard several times within WoW circles, especially amongst guild leaders who beyond the listing above, have extra duties on top and perhaps carry one of the biggest work loads, also in terms of organizational work and servicing guild members in their requests that is not directly play, but rather preparation for play.