dropouthangoutspaceout:

20yardsoflinen:

Agreed, Dan and Saelan. And I’m still partial to Marx revisiting the whole ‘capitalism creates its own gravediggers’ argument but with the intelligence and creativity of individuals incompatible with the foundations of production. 

Also, and I feel like I’m going to demonstrate my ignorance of game studies here, but what does “in a sense the history of capitalism is the history of gamification – in that it is always finding new ways to articulate itself so that it keeps us alive and relatively capable of labouring” mean? 

Yeah I’m extending the logics of gamification back ahistorically, insofar that gamification relies on a whole tool kit (game design tropes) of making mundane, labour intensive, exploitative practices seem “fun”. All of these things existed prior to gamification but as they increasingly showed diminishing returns, needed “creative” solutions to continue extracting value at a sustainable volume. The problem winds its way through the massive public works of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and the “funsultants” of the 1990s. So if we think about it, we could say that any attempt or concession to make the workplace a “little” less alienating, daunting, mundane and dangerous is where gamification comes from.