Marx at the Arcade

This pathbreaking book offers a radical analysis of how people play, produce, and profit from video games, and the major role the industry plays in contemporary capitalism.

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Praise for Working the Phones:

“A sharp reminder of the difficulties faced by call-center workers.” —The Financial Times

“Jamie Woodcock shows us what call-centers can tell us about bleakness and resistance in the modern workplace.” —VICE

“Jamie Woodcock’s brilliant insider account of life in a British call-center reveals the dirty realities of digital capitalism . . . a book that is sure to become a classic.” —Peter Fleming, author of The Mythology of Work

“Woodcock knows not only his theory but his subject inside out. There’s casualization, cruelty, and regimentation, but also subversion, and his focus on employee resistance offers a flicker of hope.” —Times Higher Education

In Marx at the Arcade, acclaimed researcher Jamie Woodcock delves into the hidden abode of the gaming industry. In an account that will appeal to hardcore gamers, digital skeptics, and the joystick-curious, Woodcock unravels the vast networks of artists, software developers, and factory and logistics workers whose seen and unseen labor flows into the products we consume on a gargantuan scale. Along the way, he analyzes the increasingly important role the gaming industry plays in contemporary capitalism and the broader transformations of work and the economy that it embodies.

Jamie Woodcock is a sociologist of work, focusing on digital labor, the gig economy, and resistance. He is currently a fellow at the London School of Economics and is the author of the award-winning Working the Phones (2016). He is on the editorial board of Historical Materialism and an editor of Notes from Below, an online journal of workers’ inquiry.