Comments on: The Plight of the Rockstar Wife

By: Erin Copple Smith

Erin Copple Smith — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:14:24 +0000

I had a similar thought, Kyra. Putting aside the gendered nature of the accusations (which, obviously, is extremely important to address)–the fact that the labor involved is considered “privileged” and even fetishized, in some way, makes the displacement of the complaining make a bit more sense. You can see how fans, not understanding the (I assume) tedious work of video game creation, would develop some sort of “Hey, man, if you don’t want to work 80+ hours per week, I’m happy to do it!” backlash.

I, of course, know next to nothing about any of this, but it’s fascinating. How have fans reacted, Sean, beyond the “Dumb wives. Capitalism!” stuff you mentioned above?

By: Sean Duncan

Sean Duncan — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:18:57 +0000

Great point about about the displacement onto the “wives” (though, to be fair, the EA case was pretty overtly cast as “spouse” initially, but everyone knew the demographics of EA game developers, and assumed a female spouse).

So, I suspect there’s a pretty easy answer here — games have been and are currently developed primarily by men, presumably mainly heterosexual men. Men who are fearful of losing their jobs and/or are too busy trying to keep above water to post complaints about their jobs. The spouses are simply the ones making the blog posts… or at least the ones that get noticed. But, that’s an empirical question; I honestly have no idea if there’s a whole hidden culture of online game developer gripes out there.

By: Kyra Glass

Kyra Glass — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:15:04 +0000

Your point about irony, however humorously intended, goes entirely to the point of how “labor” is conceived of in creative and intellectual fields, as does the yet unremarked upon fact that complaints are framed as the providence of the wives of the employees rather than the employees themselves. The gender issues here aside, amongst gamers (or at least the gamers I know) such jobs are so fetishized that the “labor” involved can be minimized and framed as a privilege. If you watch ads for game design or production educational programs for example they focus entirely on the “fun” of working on video games systematically minimizing the often tedious realities of programming. I’m curious why these discourses about labor conditions are displaced onto the wives (the EA spouse scandal, Rockstar Wives) and the way it mirrors other discourses in gaming (WOW widows).

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:58:22 +0000

While at first I'm inclined to point out the irony of this being posted and commented upon by folk who are likely working similar hours ;-) ,if I move beyond that, there's still an issue here of how we as academics (if indeed, that is the "we," and perhaps I shouldn't assume it is) analyze labor conditions through the lens of our own internalized norms. Maybe reading Marc Bousquet might move us all a little closer to answering such questions?

By: Sean Duncan

Sean Duncan — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:35:54 +0000

Yeah, I've been appalled by some of the reactions by gamers, which I'd originally considered making the focus of this post. In partciular, here's one comment thread that I found interesting:

Good complain housewives! So Rockstar will move the studio and your husbands will be left jobless. Capitalism people, it is what it is. Don't be surprised if in the future you start seeing more Rockstar Shanghai or Rockstar New Delhi.

As a games and learning guy, I'm interested in these kinds of exchanges for two reasons -- (1) the way that the original poster seems to have internalized a naive competitive notion of capitalism that I see gamers trot out quite often; and (2) the ways that subsequent posters critique and challenge the OP's simplistic statement. IMHO, these events are important in the games industry not just for what they tell us about games and game development, but for shining a light on how fans/players make sense of that industry...

By: Myles McNutt

Myles McNutt — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:29:58 +0000

I hadn't heard this news (haven't been following the game, and the story missed my radar otherwise), but I immediately went to find the reaction to the news on NeoGAF (which, for those unaware, is simultaneously the site of very literate and very illiterate video game discussion), and the response was what I expected: while some expressed pity for the developers, most were concerned with how this affected the quality of the game, and some read right past the working conditions to attack the Wives for claiming the game isn't good (which they took as a subjective analysis of the game as opposed to an objective observation about why the hours had been instituted). One thing I find interesting is how some gamers are more connected than ever with the people who make games: when Harmonix recently went through a round of layoffs, fans found out first when employees started tweeting on the subject. Now, Harmonix is apparently a great working environment, and the people doing the firing were praising the laid-off employees on their own twitter accounts, so that isn't a glimpse into difficult working conditions, but Twitter does have the potential to serve as a conduit for these kinds of observations in situations similar to Rockstar SD.

By: Annie Petersen

Annie Petersen — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:16:08 +0000

Not much to add other than to point readers to Nina Huntemann’s piece on the Rockstar Wives (and their precedents) over at Flow, published on Friday — http://flowtv.org/?p=4730 (Also to point out that part of what makes both Antenna and Flow so necessary in our field is their ability to publish on this type of phenomenon while it’s happening, as opposed to a year after it’s finished).