The End of Capitalism: Disengaging From the Economic Imaginary of Incremental Games

Abstract

The article investigates how players of the incremental game AdVenture Capitalist write about the end of the game and the end of capitalism with it. The game visually and mechanically represents the economic imaginary of frictionless capitalism, characterized by endless and self-sufficient growth. AdVenture Capitalist has no end and does not require the player’s interaction. The analysis shows that players’ responses to their marginalization from an endless simulation are pataphysical: They privilege the particular over the general, the imaginary over the real, the exceptional over the ordinary, and the contradictory over the axiomatic. In so doing, players occasionally raise imaginary solutions to the end of capitalism. Examining the written traces of players’ disengagement from the simulation, the article intervenes in broader debates regarding the effects of games. It concludes that exceptional cases of overinterpretation reveal a complex transformative approach toward video games and the political and economic ideology represented therein.