The New Spirit of Capitalism in the Game Industry

Introduction

In the past decade, the game industry’s processes, platforms, and production models shifted dramatically. Access to free and low-cost tools significantly diminished the time, resources, and labor required for game development (Kerr 2017; Whitson 2012). Inexpensive digital distribution on platforms such as Steam and Google Play now allows small teams to bypass traditional gatekeepers, from console manufacturers to publishers and brick-and-mortar retail distributors. Simultaneously, to the initial surprise of many console industry insiders, mobile and casual games experienced rapid and continued growth. Together, these shifts promote new economic models premised upon platform capitalism, attention economies, and games-as-a-service, of which free-to-play (F2P) mobile games are exemplary. As part of these industrial transformations, small-scale game development teams have proliferated, fueled by utopian claims that “anyone can make games” (Anthropy 2012) and that development has effectively been “democratized.”

Challenging such claims, this article examines how new production models in the game industry introduce new forms of exclusion and gatekeeping. As developers move to mobile and online platforms, my research asks: does developing for such platforms lead to more creative, autonomous, and economically sustainable work? And if so, how, and for whom? In particular, I set out to assess the extent to which emerging production models resolve developers’ earlier critiques of the dominant AAA console industry, which allows us to situate game development within a larger set of workplace transformations across “creative industries.” Based on ethnographic research with a small game development team, I argue that the movement of game development from large-scale AAA production toward small-team development work exemplifies key aspects of what Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2007) theorize as the “New Spirit of Capitalism” (NSC). Small-scale game development seems to promise access to autonomous and creative work, which is perceived to be lacking in the hits-driven, risk-averse AAA industry. The ability to develop games in small teams is, however, commonly underpinned by metrics and analytics, with teams engaging in what I refer to as “data-driven design.” My research reveals that data-driven design, rather than creatively liberating mobile and indie developers or expanding access to game development, can restrict creative autonomy, exacerbate the burden of risk on developers, and reinforce existing market and gender inequities.

This article links the micro-level experiences of one studio’s data practices to macro-level social theory. Efforts to theorize contemporary work and economic dynamics deploy various buzzwords, such as post-Fordism, post-industrialization, network society, liquid modernity, information society, and new economy (Gill and Pratt 2008). Each of these categories intersect with the condition of precarity, where workers are expected to trade job security in exchange for more autonomous, creative labor (Whitson et al. 2018). Offering a framework to conceptualize this trade-off, Boltanski and Chiapello (2007, 22–24) argue that forms of capitalism and critiques of its practice coevolve alongside dominant justificatory regimes, or “Cités,” which define the “good life” and how to achieve it. They identify three “spirits” of capitalist workplace organization: first, the family-owned businesses described in Weber’s (1930) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; second, the Fordist factories of the twentieth century; and third, the decentralized, lean, and agile networked companies of the current period. While the second spirit prioritizes job security, efficiency, and hierarchical advancement through meritocracy (a set of values which Boltanski and Chiapello associate with the “Industrial Cité”), firms in the third spirit, the NSC, valorize flexibility, adaptability, and less-defined occupational roles (values which they associated with the “Project-ive Cité”), qualities that are exemplified in small, autonomous teams, even if the teams are based within larger firms.

Conceptualizing recent shifts in the game industry in relation to these “spirits” helps us to contextualize developers’ critiques of the AAA sector, unpack the allure of small-team development, and explain developers’ commitment to new labor systems, even where these systems might be marked by precariousness. According to Boltanski and Chiapello, a new Spirit emerges as capitalism adapts to workers’ critiques of a previously dominant Spirit. This process gives rise to new forms of workplace organization and profit generation, which are endorsed by a new underlying value system. Each shift in Spirit justifies itself by claiming to offer new freedoms to workers and to be fairer or more just than what preceded it. For example, the shift to the bureaucratic, scientifically managed factories of the second Spirit responded to the inefficiencies and injustices of mom-and-pop shops (e.g., nepotism and mismanagement), while rationalized mass production made capital accumulation more efficient.

Boltanski and Chiapello’s second Spirit and the “Industrial Cité” resonate with console game development. Large firms leverage specialized skillsets and contribute assets to game production pipelines that require years and millions of dollars to complete. However, the size and output of console-focused game firms fuel developers’ critiques that large studios and publishers are hits-driven, risk-averse, and heavily reliant on sequels and licensed annual sports franchises (Kerr 2017), factors which ultimately limit developers’ individual creative autonomy. This critique positions small-team mobile development as “greener pastures.” In contrast to console development, which has largely failed to become more agile and creative (Hodgson and Briand 2013), the ideal work unit of the NSC is portrayed as a “lean,” self-organized team that is flexible, creative, organized by projects, features few hierarchical levels, externalizes costs to subcontractors (e.g., outsourcing, third-party service providers, and contract work), and focuses on providing services rather than producing industrial or retail goods.

The NSC and Projective Cité align with the contemporary mobile and indie game industries as they experiment with new revenue models and digital platforms to release games made by smaller teams, on lower budgets, and in shorter timespans. The Industrial Cité represents what many developers are struggling to leave behind: an over-dependency on formulaic console games that require expensive hardware, multimillion-dollar budgets, massive teams and years of development. For Boltanski and Chiapello, critique plays a dual role: in direct response to critique, capitalism endogenizes, adapts, and strengthens its operations. In doing so, it reshapes itself into less-objectionable forms, thus increasing resistance to similar critiques in the future. Importantly, a critique of unstable livelihoods is more difficult to express when the value systems that justify capitalism change—when, for example, Projective Cité values of autonomy and self-determination are privileged and displace Industrial Cité values such as career stability and job security. Critique’s previous foundations and discursive tactics are unsettled in new, unfamiliar moral ground. For example, if developers collectively value the flexibility to set their own hours and regularly move to new, challenging workplaces, then a critique centered on a lack of job security will fall flat. Creative autonomy and the ability to work on “passion” projects in small teams of artists, designers, and programmers are deemed a reasonable trade-off for long-term jobs and predictable wages (McRobbie 2016; Whitson et al. 2018).

Boltanski and Chiapello track changing discourses in management texts in the twentieth century to identify capitalism’s shifting values and Spirits. In contrast, I conducted an ethnography of game development teams in an incubator for game studios to learn what labor under the NSC looks like and whether promises of creativity and more equitable access to game development careers are realized. From 2012 to 2014, I followed nine “incubating” teams, taking part in their daily lives, including observing email and online communications; participating in team selection, meetings, training sessions, and socials; and interviewing team members. This article focuses on one studio, referred to using the pseudonym Aquarius, but their experiences were largely representative of the other studios I followed.

Discourses and Realities of Data-driven Design

For Aquarius, data-driven design promised to reduce the risk of a small development team “going it alone.” The “democratization” of game design enabled by free and easy-to-use development tools and digital distribution platforms removes traditional barriers to entry and gatekeepers, such as publishers and console manufacturers, leading to a creative flourishing of games and small development teams. But this optimistic narrative comes with new challenges for developers: how do you get your game in front of audiences that are saturated with choice and accustomed to endless free content? How do you find a community of loyal players and thus sustain a career making games? Data-driven design promises answers to these questions, telling developers what players want and how to design for them, thereby reducing the market risk of cultural production. Most developers now integrate elements of data-driven design in order to increase player retention, revenue, and the reach of their games. ¹ However, as I demonstrate in this section, a deeper examination of data-driven development practice reveals how financial, temporal, and human resources required for successful data integration act as new gatekeepers, ultimately reinforcing power structures and gendered demographics that have traditionally characterized the game industry.

Revenue from mobile games is not generated from an initial purchase but rather in-game advertising and micro-transactions—tiny and repeated purchases such as spending a few dollars to acquire virtual goods, access new levels, or bypass tedious, repetitive play (Nieborg 2017). Many F2P games are predicated upon an economy of scale, namely attracting millions of players, only a small percentage of whom (e.g., two to five percent) “convert” to paying players (Kerr 2017, 175–76). These games heavily rely on data to improve the game design; to track and enhance advertising revenue; to collect data that may be commodified and sold (Nieborg 2015); and to identify, target, and cater to a small percentage of players, pejoratively referred to as “whales,” who spend above-average amounts in games. While some successful F2P developers eschew this practice (Holmes et al. 2017), widespread mobile design convention emphasizes learning more about “whales,” and about those who, with the right design incentives, might become “whales.” Data-driven design ostensibly allows developers to leverage player networks, tracking player behavior longitudinally and in near-real time to create psychological profiles from playing and purchase habits, friends lists, chat logs, and non-game activities, generating insights which developers use to predict future spending, tailor-marketing messages, and influence future behavior.

As a condition of acceptance into the incubator where I conducted my research, the first cohort of teams had to make F2P mobile games, which require extensive use of third-party data analytics software and services. Aquarius worked with approximately ten analytics providers across three categories:

Rather than enabling small agile teams, Aquarius’ experience working with data-driven design suggests that the human, temporal, and financial resources necessary to implement analytics favor large firms with deep financial pockets and extensive technological expertise, replicating many of the adverse conditions associated with AAA development.

Critiquing Data-driven Design

Data-driven design can be seen as an adaptation within the NSC that promises to reduce the risk of new cultural production models. However, I contend that data-driven design exacerbates rather than alleviates developers’ risk, and that small-team development is far from democratized because risk is unequally distributed. Such critiques may fail to spur change, however, as Projective values in the NSC suppress and temper social critique of precarity and inequality via promises of individual liberation and authenticity. To strengthen critique by rooting it in NSC’s own value system, this section concludes with evidence that in practice data-driven design is often at odds with Projective values, namely by decreasing rather than increasing creative autonomy.

Conclusion

The “democratization” of game design tools means that, yes, “everyone” can now make and publish games, but very few developers can sustain long-term careers at it. For small teams, data-driven design does not measurably improve working conditions, nor do its revenue streams increase financial stability or creative work. Following Aquarius and other studios empirically allows us to compare the rhetoric of data-driven design to its day-to-day application, to poke holes in claims about big data, and to show developers that the “good life” of the NSC is not necessarily achievable using analytics tools and production models: small-team mobile development work is risky, riddled with inequalities, and arguably no more creative than AAA.

Rather than democratize development, analytics create new resource barriers and literacies that restrict who is able to collect, analyze, and make data actionable, limiting which studios enter the mobile sector. Financial opportunities in the game industry continue to be socially distributed according to one’s position in human networks of funders and industry contacts. But even for the privileged few, development work remains precarious. The only parties that reliably profit are the third-party analytics providers and distribution platforms that benefit from thousands of aspiring developers who provide endless free content and labor.

Due to its historical linkages to play, passion, and hobbyist work, the emerging work practices and technologies detailed here have largely avoided academic critique and ethical scrutiny. These concerns reflect broader cultural and economic shifts, labor practices, politics, and organizing in creative industries more generally. However, I argue that the games industry is not simply an example of late capitalism par excellence but rather a forerunner—a canary in the coal mine of creative work. Gameswork sits at the intersection of technologization and entrepreneurship, becoming a proving ground for early data practices, individualized modes of work, and justificatory discourses for precarity that filter through to other realms, including creative industries and beyond.

I argue that new literacies of exclusion and the curated representation of big data outcomes as success theater are not restricted to games but are representative of broader shifts in labor that are increasingly shaped by Projective values and entrepreneurial techno-logics. As David Beer (2018) notes, third-party analytics companies act as influential yet understudied intermediaries, establishing social imaginaries of what big data can do—if not now, then in the future. Most analytics scholarship in media studies is rhetorically-focused: analyzing marketing material, media accounts, and self-published industry reports to track and mine big data imaginaries. But it is only by moving beyond discursive methods that we expose the empty promises of data-driven salvation, providing developers with resources to critique and reject production models that are no more creative, and more precarious, than what preceded them.

It is here that this article seeks to make an intervention. Moving beyond the methodologies of Boltanski and Chiapello (2007), I argue that socio-technical groundwork, not discourse, is central to advancing critiques of capital that are not so easily cycled into the current valorization of autonomous, creative work. Collective desire to pursue creative work continually justifies precarity, inequalities, and risk, promoting individualization and weakening social critique. One step for researchers interested in promoting more sustainable and equitable cultural production is to continually challenge the commonly accepted link between individualization and creativity. Creativity is not the domain of lone auteurs and teams who “bootstrap” themselves into success but is generated through a reliance on largely unacknowledged social supports. Empirically demonstrating how the strengthening and equalization of social supports contributes to, rather than stifles, long-term creative careers assists in reviving social critiques that have been hollowed-out by the NSC. To prevent game developers from accepting rhetoric-fueled aspirations, we must further arm them with evidence that new production models, such as data-driven mobile development, are neither less risky nor more creative. We must evidence alternatives, rooted in the collective social good, that both acknowledge and provide the “good life” developers seek. Doing so requires frames of analysis that focus on teams rather than individuals, and on collectivities rather than games, including community support structures, cultural intermediaries, unions, and collaborative workspaces that buttress rather than exploit developers’ desire for creative work (see, for example, de Peuter et al. 2017; Whitson et al. 2018).