Abstract
Higher education qualifications and the training of talent have become increasingly important in game industry and policy discourse in the United Kingdom. This heightened rhetoric and dedicated pots of funding referencing the significance of the games talent pipeline may represent the opportunity to cultivate greater inclusion in the workforce, which continues to be largely homogenous in terms of gender and race. Drawing on qualitative research with stakeholders in five case study institutions, this article highlights the ways in which the production of gamesworker subjectivity by institutions, instructors, and students hinders this possibility. Transparency about the exploitative working conditions and exclusionary norms of the game industry instead becomes the grounds for aggressive and conservative performances of labor bravado, foreclosing collective action, moral arguments about addressing inequalities, and creativity. The article closes by addressing the tension between team-based collaboration and competitive individualism as a site of potential intervention.
Highlights
Over the last decade, there has been increasing focus on the necessity of higher education (HE) training to secure careers in game development
Governmental data on gender-based pay disparities, highlighting pronounced differences between wages paid to men and women in the UK game industry, is explained by Wilson as a matter of supply based on educational gaps (Taylor 2018)
Privileging formalized training could present a challenge to independent, alternative, experimental, and community initiatives supporting inclusivity measures by locating the sole site of acceptable skills development within Higher Education Institutions (HEI), a move that in the UK represents at minimum a significant financial barrier
Summary
There has been increasing focus on the necessity of higher education (HE) training to secure careers in game development. I focus on how these visions shape gamesworker subjectivities, fostering a masculinized labor bravado that normalizes exploitation and precarity in work while conflicting with creativity and the cultivation of greater diversity and inclusivity in games.
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