This study investigates the work of content creators in relation to developers and fans, focusing on digital platforms in a case study of the video game Path of Exile which functions in the game as a service (GaaS) model. The analysis was based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of aspiring content creators and on the assessment of data extracted from distribution, streaming, and social digital platforms. The institutionalized labor of content creators, which is subjugated to the live service model curated by the developers, could be characterized by the notions of transactional play, aspirational boredom, and gaming the markets. These three elements stand for the commodification of play time, substituting actual play with broadcasted footage, and actively shaping the in-game economy, respectively. The study acknowledges the rising importance of content creators as contributors to the financial well-being of a game employing the GaaS model, while raising awareness of the cultural, economic, ethical and health issues associated with it.

This article explores how video games that valorize techno-masculine imaginaries of superhuman domination also present humans as depending on computational and non-human agencies to succeed. Through close readings of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward 2007) and Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red 2020), I illustrate the close connection between machine vision and militarized visions of domination and agency. The analyses show how beyond-human vision enhances player characters and players, complicating the human-machine relationship in the process. Video games can build on and feed into anthropocentric and masculinist narratives. This article demonstrates how even when the technology appears to support these fantasies of human control, there are moments when it takes over or otherwise disrupts the god-like interventions of the human. By analyzing failures, glitches, and the consistent machine participation in the assemblage, I unpack explicit cases of machine agency as part of a broader assemblage, revealing a more complex power dynamics than those that are initially presented to the player. In doing so, this article demonstrates how the superhuman machine vision was never exclusively human to begin with. Understanding vision and agency as shared with machines both enables and complicates fantasies of dominance in video games.

What may be considered as the greatest emergency in the contemporary world is the lack of a sense of emergency; the prevailing feeling that everything is fine, that, despite ongoing crises, we live in the only acceptable system, and it is impossible to imagine any alternative to it. Mainstream digital games, by offering repetitive, standardised, and predictable forms of gameplay, by focusing on technological advancement, and by exploiting workers in large corporations, became a part of that emergency. According to Santiago Zabala, what is needed to recover the sense of emergency and to break through contemporary complacency, is an “aesthetic force,” a disruptive artistic shock. What is proposed in this article is the possibility of considering the avant-garde as an aesthetical force in the field of videogames; a force that shocks the player and demands something more than a simple contemplation. As presented by game scholars, avant- -garde videogames (through formal experimentation and political intervention) open the medium, and propose games that object to standardised, mindless repetition. Avant-garde games proclaim new ways of playing, accept diversity that opposes the stereotypical image of a player as a white, heterosexual male, and propose new kinds of engagement with the outside world. They tend to “remove the automatism of the perception” by disrupting players’ engagement and through disclosure of the system. To achieve that, avant-garde videogames break through the category of flow, problematize notions of videogame hermeneutic and interrupt the feeling of immersion.

Many scholars have looked at how players engage with games of Empire in ways that both reproduce and subvert capitalist-colonial narratives of resource accumulation, war, and conquest. This article examines the 2016 release of No Man’s Sky, and how the colonial conquest and resource gathering that are central to the gameplay quickly unravelled as players spent time with the game. Firstly, this article will explore how the release of No Man’s Sky initially replicated the myth of terra nullius, as well as an understanding of the environment as resources-in-waiting. This is contrasted with the fact that No Man’s Sky did not replicate the traditional triple-A structure of action, which leads the player to a playthrough that focuses on ‘bearing witness’ to the environment, rather than harvesting its resources to strengthen the player-character and progress through the game. However, major updates to No Man’s Sky fundamentally changed the player’s relationship to the game-world, further obscuring many of the moments of speculation that the initial release provided. This analysis demonstrates how games of Empire can create affective experiences that can inadvertently challenge the very narratives that they are enmeshed in. These moments are fleeting but provide a valuable insight into the role that games play in the crises of the Anthropocene.

In the article, from a feminist perspective, we look at two visions of “Solidarity,” that was co-created by women, shown in documentary films – Solidarity According to Women, 2014, dir. Marta Dzido, Piotr Śliwowski and Women of Freedom, 2019, dir. Wiesław Paluch, Mirosław Basaj. For this purpose, we refer, i.a., to the concept of situated knowledge (Donna Haraway, 2009), its reinterpretation in the context of the category of care (María Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017) or to the category of affective solidarity (Clare Hemmings, 2012). We describe the narrative strategy of Women of Freedom as a story about heroism without heroines, while the one we read in Solidarity According to Women we call heroising of heroines. During the analyzes, we explore different visions of female roles and identities, we also address the topic of sisterhood, both between women involved in the movement and in the relationship between the researcher and the subject of the research. Finally, becoming aware of our own affective dissonance, we consider how critical and sisterly interpretative practices are possible.

This paper examines the ecocritical message espoused by characters in Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake and uses affect theory to better understand fan response to these beliefs. From there, I note the publishing company, Square-Enix, recently declared interest in pursuing NFT technology as a potential revenue stream despite the environmental concerns this technology brings, which resembles the villainous organization Shinra in these games. Fan response Square-Enix’s NFT projects indicates how fans may identify with and absorb the ideologies of characters in video games, even when that ideology sets the fans in opposition with the companies behind the original game(s).