A Playful Multitude? Mobilising and Counter-Mobilising Immaterial Game Labour

Using the conceptual grid of "immaterial labour" in the age of Empire, this article is a preliminary portrait of work in the video and computer game development industry, a sector of creative, cognitive labour that exemplifies the allure but also the peril of new media work. Drawing on interviews we conducted with game developers in Canada , we examine the conditions of labour in game studios, this cultural industry's "work as play" ethos, the pleasures and potentialities of game production, the blemishes that mar this attractive vista, and the new infractions these tensions provoke. Confirming that Empire sets in motion potentialities it cannot fully control, we also observe an emergent counter-mobilisation of game labour, whose manifestations range from digital piracy to dissident games produced in the context of activism. These experiments of a playful multitude flow into the wider currents of tactical media, hacktivism, open-source software, and distributed computing that are generating tumults throughout the circuits of Empire.