Playing the Field VI: Video Games and Labour (Playing the Field Conferences)
Bucharest, Romania
Organization: University of Bucharest
Event: Playing the Field Conferences
Playing the Field VI: Video Games and Labour
University of Bucharest, Romania
19-21 March 2026
(in-person)
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Helen W Kennedy (University of Sheffield)
Emil Lundedal Hammar (University of Tromsø)
Maria Mandea
The proposed sixth installment of the international Playing the Field conference series focuses on the multifaceted relationship between video games and labour. Such a topic is particularly relevant today given the aggravating contradictions inherent to neoliberal capitalism on a global scale, as well as a tendency in video game cultural studies towards relegating the economic dimension of video games to discussions of class identity representations. To counterbalance the hyperfocus on representation in game studies (which has indeed yielded valuable insights into the political dimension of games and gaming), we encourage a dialectic materialist approach to games that transcends cultural identity and adequately considers the economic material conditions of game rhetoric, reception and production.
Being an outgrowth of Cold War technoculture, video games stand out as a commodity that reflects, reinforces, but can also criticise the postfordist material conditions of labour that blur the distinction between production and consumption. While gameplay is conventionally seen as an empowerment of the consumer, it is worth asking if there is a tradeoff for the ergodic digital agency that players enjoy. And if this is indeed the case, what is the economic nature of this trade-off? To provide insight into the complex nexus of gameplay, labour, and the economy, we encourage a broad perspective that looks into the economic dimension of video games from multiple angles and focuses on a variety of topics. These topics include among others:
- Gameplay as immaterial labour
The political economy of in-game systems
Representations of historical periods in the evolution of capitalism
Class-based identities
Labour and intersectionality (race and ethnicity, gender, disability, madness, sexuality, etc.)
Coloniality of labour in video games
Economic counterplay
Digital divisions of labour
Practices of avatar customisation
Environmental/Ecocritical considerations of labour
Economic discourses in indie and experimental games
Affect and labour
Monetisation in gaming
Video games and AI
Biopolitics and labour
Video games and social media
Gameplay in the (semi-)peripheries of the modern world-system
Video games in the global digital media ecology
We invite scholars to contribute 20-minute presentations. Abstracts of 300-400 words (bibliography excluded), 5 keywords, and a short bio (100 words) should be submitted to playingthefieldvi@gmail.com no later than 10 September 2025. Committee decisions will be sent out by 15 November 2025.
There will be no participation fee.
A selection of papers will be published in a collective volume to be submitted for publication at Routledge.
The official call can be found at: http://playingthefield.eu/
Organising committee:
Andrei Nae, University of Bucharest (head of the organising committee)
Alessandra Ciufu, University of Bucharest
Andreea Moise, University of Bucharest
Daria Nedelea, University of Bucharest
Playing the Field Committee