http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/technology/03game.html

http://kotaku.com/5587413/rumor-rockstar-lays-off-40-from-red-dead-redemption-team

Thanks for the mention. In fact, my article does discuss gaming. Particularly some of the environmental and social impacts of games, and the potential for a serious game to help solve the dilemma that is the subject of the article.

I’m interested in how environmental studies and gaming intersect, and would love to chat. My twitter handle is @dcarli

Thanks for mentioning the gold farmers Lisa. I cut that bit out for the short post, but your recent work in this area has absolutely contributed to my thinking about immaterial/virtual labor in the games industry. And keep eating those cherry tomatoes! The more you harvest, the more will grow.

But there’s less work on “virtual labor” or labor at a distance when we look at devices themselves. And it’s cool that you’re doing this. Jack Qiu’s book on cellphone manufacture in China really makes it clear the human cost of these devices–many many fingers are lost in these factories. It’s more glamorous to imagine digital media as producing different kind of virtuality and disembodiment–but working overtime all the time is not a disembodied way to live, and certainly not a way to raise a family.

As for boycotting these devices for that reason, there are lots of reasons to say no to different aspects of digital media culture. Quit Facebook day is part of this movement.

by the way, your cherry tomato is doing extremely well. I ate some yesterday.

Clearly, everywhere we look and hear has similar issues. We don’t need to retreat to media paralysis, but we do need to better understand and foreground the relationships between media, labor, and the environment. Production studies has helped inject some much-needed critical life into this understanding, though much more still needs to be done.

I hadn’t felt guilty about that choice until this post, and I’m certain that wasn’t your intent, regardless. But, still, you raise some interesting points here — as a player and a fan, and one aware of the allegedly problematic workplace environment at Rockstar San Diego, I suspect there are media that I’ll shell out money for, regardless of ethical issues with their development. A Rockstar-designed, open world, Western-themed game is something I know I want to experience, and I have to admit, I’d be probably be buying this game no matter what…

Another recent case to look at might be the controversy over Shadow Complex, released for XBLA last year. A superbly-designed Castlevania/Metroid style side-scroller, it was based on source material written by Orson Scott Card, whose outspoken opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage are repellant to many (myself included). There was a brief boycott of the game that turned into some very productive and interesting fan discussions about the game’s development — at what point a boycott of the game harmed people who had nothing to do with Card and his politics, how much compensation Card was receiving for the licensing of his world and thus how significant the boycott would actually be, and whether or not Peter David (the game’s author) was, in fact, attempting to subvert element’s of Card’s world (and implicit politics) through this game. Scratch the surface, and there were many other factors to consider.

A very different case than that of RDR, but perhaps instructive in helping us get a handle on the complexity of the ethical dilemmas with these kinds of media products. I boycotted Shadow Complex for a while, but ended up buying it in the end, as well; my interest in the game ended up trumping any ethical issues I had with Card, disgusting politics aside. My purchasing of the game wouldn’t significantly help Card, and was, rather, a form of support for the devs at Chair, who had designed an excellent game.

I don’t mean this in a haphazard or dismissive way, but these are *well-designed* games, and ethical issues with their development aside, I needed to experience them. Your post raises a great issue for me, personally: Will I only choose to boycott terrible games?