The Culture of Gamework

• Main Author: Kerr, Aphra
• Other Authors: Deuze, Mark
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Sage 2011
• Subjects: Sociology; Dyer; Kerr; Terranova
• Online Access: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/2901/; https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/2901/1/Kerr_culture_of_gamework_2010.pdf

While the digital games industry has become increasingly marketised and professionalized in its forty years of commercial existence, at the same time it has maintained some of its DIY roots and is somewhat ahead of other media industries in its attempts to facilitate and appropriate amateur productions. The increasingly globalised nature of digital game development gives rise to challenges and tensions related to managing development projects across transnational networks of companies, managing inputs of amateur producers and managing communities of players. The digital game industry is used today in media and communication studies both as an example of "co-creative culture" (Jenkins, 2006; Raessens, 2005) and of "precarious labour" (Kline, Dyer-Witheford, & De Peuter, 2003; Kücklich, 2005; Postigo, 2003 and 2007; Terranova, 2004). These concepts are not necessarily exclusive and both can be usefully employed to understand work in game production networks in particular (Kerr, 2006a) and media work more generally (Deuze, 2007).