Purchase the COMMUNIST REVIEW AUTUMN 2023 Edition

 October 2023

“THE CLASS STRUGGLE is all around us,” says Scott Alsworth in our cover-feature article.  It is happening on picket lines and factory floors, in our hospitals and schools.  But it is also, as he says, a battle of ideas, where culture plays an important role.  The dominant, ruling class culture promotes the illusion of capital’s permanence and power, and revolutionary artists have to choose whether to conform or to accept pariahdom and a lingering spiritual death.

The video games industry is not a classical creative enterprise, but it is, as Scott shows, the biggest in Britain, adding more to the economy than film, TV, music, publishing, design, fashion and architecture combined.  And it is still growing, at a staggering rate.  Already, 92% of adults aged 16 and over are estimated to be playing video games.  But the creative artists in the industry face gruelling working conditions, together with bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment.  It is a situation crying out for union organisation, and attempts are already being made to build that, through the Game Workers branch of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB).

The industry’s development within the existing social relations means that it provides a prime opportunity for promoting ruling class values, and indeed many video games sanitise and glorify modern warfare, normalising violence while promoting nationalistic notions of who our enemies are.  But, right from the start, there have been counter-currents among video gamers, seeking to present alternative perspectives.  One of those games discussed by Scott, This War of Mine, provides the illustration on our front cover.  And, he says, the way towards tackling capitalist cultural hegemony is open.  The fightback, as real Marxist artists, will require not only the establishment, as a workers’ collective, of at least one video-game studio, but support from the IWGB and Communist Parties internationally.

From gaming to gambling there are only two additional letters, but the worlds could not be more different.  That wasn’t always the case, as both terms derive from the Anglo-Saxon gamen, meaning play or pastime, and indeed dice games were very popular among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.  And betting played a big role in dice games then, as it does today.  Games of chance, of all sorts, remain part of popular culture, and in the past there were people who made a living from it.  As Damon Runyan writes in Guys and Dolls:

“Many citizens [who follow games of chance for a living] prefer betting on propositions to anything you can think of, because they figure a proposition gives them a chance to outsmart somebody, and in fact I know of citizens who will sit up all night making up propositions to offer other citizens the next day.”

Nowadays, however, as our second article here shows, it is the big betting companies who set up the propositions and define the odds, employing computer programmers to do so, and using psychology to draw people in, particularly vulnerable customers.  For most punters, there is little chance of beating the system, and those who do so have their bets cancelled or find themselves excluded.  As our author (who must remain anonymous) says, it is a system of legalised theft, and there are only two ways forward: nationalisation or prohibition.

From the ridiculous to the sublime?  Our next article, by James Crossley, examines from a Marxist perspective “who or what is ‘the historical Jesus’”.  While historians have hitherto attempted to “assess the extent to which it is possible to reconstruct the words and deeds of the figure who was active in Galilee and Judea sometime around the year 30 CE”, James seeks instead to get behind the religious tracts written well after Jesus’ death, and to establish early themes and ideas that were most likely associated with the area at the time.  He describes Jesus’ conceptualisation of a new world as reflecting “peasant understandings of hierarchy with a just king … a theocracy which would replace the Roman Empire and their puppet rulers, dispense justice and ensure a bountiful existence for those saved.”  

James says further that “the movement associated with the historical Jesus had obvious differences from what followed.”  Christianity became co-opted as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and later provided ideological justification for feudal relations in Europe.  But emerging working class and dissident circles in the late 18^th and the 19^th centuries developed an alternative interpretation of Jesus, from a labouring or poor background, whose opponents were seen in middle-class or upper-class terms.  So Christianity has been, as Marx said of religion in general, “the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.”

Three more articles make up this edition of CR.  First, Greg Godels replies to Arvinder Kandola’s criticism of his original article in CR104.  He disputes the assertion that “unequal exchange” explains the inequalities of the imperialist system, and argues that, even if a multipolar world is emerging, we should not place false hope in the rivalries of capitalist states: “If capitalist BRICS governments like Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt etc are challenging the US, it is not the system itself or capitalism, but their place in it.”  The rivalries should not be a substitute for class struggle.

We follow that with a lengthy book review from Ken Fuller, thoroughly taking apart the Trotskyist criticisms of the Communist Parties of the Philippines by US academic author Joseph Scalice.  And in Fran Lock’s Soul Food column, we come full circle back to the cultural struggle, including – appropriately – a poem by our lead author Scott Alsworth.  Fran observes that ‘hope’ is an active verb, and we should be seeking ways of being hopeful.

Notes and References

¹ https://octavia.net/games-and-pastimes-of-the-anglo-saxons/.

² D Runyan, ‘Guys and Dolls’ in Guys and Dolls, Penguin, 1956, p 11.

Purchase the COMMUNIST REVIEW AUTUMN 2023 Edition

The class struggle is raging all around us.  It is, as Marx and Engels observed, a sometimes hidden and a sometimes open fight.  Across the country, it’s playing out on picket lines and factory floors, in our hospitals and in our schools; shop assistants, care workers, cleaners, students – millions are waking up and challenging a ruthless system dedicated to putting profit before people.  

But this conflict is also a battle for ideas.  Culture matters not just because it unites us but because it’s an inviolable arena, belonging to the mind.  No wonder then, that the ideas of the ruling classes are in every age the ruling ideas.  The illusion of capital’s permanence and power are sacrosanct.  Any artist today, courageous enough to take a stand against neoliberal agendas, must face an impossible choice: assimilation or annihilation.  By championing revolutionary politics, artists are forced to accept pariahdom and a lingering, spiritual death; or else, they must conform.  This agonising dictum blights every creative enterprise in the UK, including its biggest; the gaming industry.   

Video games add more to the British economy than film, TV, music, publishing, design, fashion, and architecture combined.  In 2019, some 18,279 game developers contributed a staggering £2.2 bn to the country’s GDP; an increase from £1.8 bn the year before.  The growth is looking exponential, and it shows no signs of abating.  More and more workers are flocking to development studios; PC gaming is up 46%, and mobile gaming, 17%.  Since the introduction of a rebate on production spends in 2014, the annual increase in sales from games in Great Britain has reached 8.9%, demonstrating the trend is not an isolated phenomenon, nor caused by the market boom brought about by the recent COVID-19 lockdowns.  

There is also the mainstream impact of virtual and augmented reality to consider, not to mention the future impact of AI-assisted software, the metaverse, and quantum computing.  Emergent technologies will change the way we spend our leisure time.  In fact, a 2020-2021 survey showed 92% of adults aged 16 and over are already playing video games, while projections for 2025 suggest the number of video game users in the UK will reach 51.8m.  If the population reaches the estimated 68.3m mark, that will be 75% of the nation, actively engaging in digital, interactive entertainment.  The figure is impressive globally too: 3.5 bn people around the world will soon be video game consumers.  In other words, approximately half the planet.

Thanks to the US Department of Defense! 

This embarrassment of riches is often lauded by business leaders and politicians as an entrepreneurial success story, made possible by competition between creatives in a capitalist society.  Never mind that video games, like other forms of art, are commercialised and regularly steered from their true potential as a means to explore the human condition – and never mind the awkward truth, that this multibillion-pound industry was founded by a group of self-professed hackers who stole time and resources from America’s military-industrial complex to prototype gaming machines.  Indeed, all contenders for the much-coveted title of ‘first video game ever’ have one thing in common; a paper trail leading to the US Department of Defense.  

Some examples of this historical context are worth exploring, as they lend us an important dialectical perspective.  In 1962, expectations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for missile targeting systems, capable of countering a Soviet first strike, were running high.  Yet, what was secretly in development there was Spacewar!, a two-player game conceived by Steve ‘The Slug’ Russell, and designed on a PDP-1 computer.  Russell and his colleagues were able to secure expensive research time, using a mix of pretences, to build a responsive computer where simulated spacecraft could launch torpedoes at one another while navigating a gravity well.  Needless to say, it was a far cry from contemporary video games.  The display was comparable to a battleship’s sonar panel with green blips, rendered without sound against a black, starless void.  For controls, heavy wooden blocks were used and capped with several switches, allowing both players to move around.  Although it was not much to look at, it was a fennel stalk concealing fire; a Promethean gift, snatched from the gods.   

Before long, Spacewar! spread across the US via the government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency network, the ARPANET, as an early instance of open-source freeware.  A decade later, a tournament was even held at Stanford University, in a room plastered with posters condemning Nixon and the Vietnam War.  Remarkably, it was not the first attempt to re-purpose military funds from within.  In 1958, William Higginbotham, a physicist who worked on the atomic bomb and later became a leader in the non-proliferation movement, devised Tennis for Two – a sports simulation, designed on computers intended for calculating ballistics.  One can only imagine the response of his superiors when it was finally unveiled at his laboratory’s annual visitors’ day.  

Another story relates to Ralph Baer, an engineer who redirected the resources of his 500-man team to build a console that could be connected to a television set.  Filing out patents under the name of his employers at Sanders Associates, a company supplying the US military with sophisticated technologies, Baer told his managers nothing and during the summer of 1966, laid the groundwork for the Magnavox Odyssey, which made history in 1972 as a commercial gaming platform.  

The origin of video games then, is linked to a technoscientific cognitariat that America’s powerful defence corporations failed to control.  Through channels like the Advanced Research Projects Agency, vast sums of money entered research centres in a bid to steer the first mass draft of immaterial labour in the US towards preparing for a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union – and we have video games because a little of that money was misappropriated and put to better use.   

Building socialism through the arts

Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining the military’s interests in the gaming industry, and how it was able to exercise its influence so quickly.  By liberating computers and video games from the Pentagon, hackers inadvertently set the stage for their ‘reterritorialisation’ by capital in pure commodity form.  This, and the associated cultural hegemony, superincumbent over all conceivable forms of virtual play, is not going unopposed.  Assemblies of immaterial labour have long resisted, and continue to resist, the insipid commodification of art as well as its overall subjugation to neoliberalism.  

After the 1960s, there came the creatively unmanageable developers at Atari who, in the 1970s, during the Golden Age of Gaming, drove studio executives mad.  Then came the suspect subculture of Manga artists who revived Japan’s burnt-out American industry in the 1980s, followed by the internal and external pressures of female players and industry workers on male-dominated networks in the 1990s.  

Later, into the 21^st century, we have the advent of modding communities and teams of micro-innovators reshaping video games as a provocative and independent force.  This increasing level of autonomy, energised to no small extent by the availability, affordability, and accessibility of development tools, is empowering ‘indie’ studios and attracting working-class artists; frustrating attempts to stifle outside opinions while compounding existing tensions within, with regards to unionisation and an inchoate class-consciousness.  The pace of technological progress, accelerated by the ruling elite’s blind pursuit of wealth and their ideological-aesthetic, has, paradoxically, left this cultural bastion vulnerable to attack.  Even in the early days of gaming, corporations struggled to leverage the creative talent of immaterial labour.  Now, the capitalist class is insisting its gravediggers take up the shovel.

The situation is particularly acute owing to the simple fact that, unlike film and literature, video games can achieve massive popularity and commercial success without significant financing from distributors or publishers.  Service platforms such as Steam afford blanket coverage for all titles and additional coverage based on sales, acting as an online storefront for a 30-40% share of revenues and a small charge.  Their principal competitor, Epic Games, offers a similar service for a 12% cut and no fee.  This arrangement means that video games disseminating alternative views can reach mainstream audiences.  

In addition, time-honoured tendencies from other artistic disciplines can be adapted and redeployed.  Social and Socialist Realist video games are already appearing on the market.  There are also those that educate players in Marxist theory; sometimes passively and sometimes with a clear didactic intention.  Both can be constructive.  The same may be said for the retro appeal of predominantly Soviet design, music, language, and symbology.  To take a case in point, I have heard from several comrades that Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 was an early influential factor in their political development.  This should come as no surprise.  Many of us will have been introduced to the concept of socialism through the arts.   

In 2019, the subject of Marxism and video games was put firmly on the table in an event that took the gaming world by storm.  At a crowded auditorium in Los Angeles, during an acceptance speech for the Fresh Indie Game Award, developers of the breakout hit, Disco Elysium, gave a passionate shout out to “some of the great people that came before [them]”; a roll call that included Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Soviet singer-songwriter Viktor Tsoi, and Russian painter Vladimir Makovsky.  It was an impressive speech, especially as it came from a team responsible for earning approximately £43m worldwide. 

Elsewhere, studios operating as workers’ collectives are also gaining media attention.  A year after Disco Elysium, an American profit-sharing group founded Pixel Pushers Union 512 and released Tonight We Riot – a side-scrolling ‘beat ’em up’ where you play as a crowd of revolutionary workers, hurling petrol bombs and taking on the state.  Although as subtle as a sledgehammer, its aggregate review score on Steam is rated ‘very positive’.  Video games such as these are, however, an exception rather than the rule.  To suggest otherwise is to ignore the direct and indirect ‘militarisation’ of the industry; not only by national governments and armed forces but also by arms manufacturers.  

In the UK, attempts to bring gamers into the military’s fold are openly acknowledged and play a part in recruitment propaganda.  The British Army’s latest advertising campaign demonstrates this perfectly with posters reading: “Binge gamers, the army needs you and your drive.”  In reality, video games themselves are working as a primer.  Many sanitise and glorify modern warfare, normalising violence while promoting nationalistic notions of who our enemies are.  This usually involves framing ‘good guys’ as freedom-loving US special forces and ‘bad guys’ as generic Middle Eastern terrorists.  Or Iranians.  Or nowadays, the Chinese or Russians.  

As a video game developer myself, I have seen first-hand how studio executives will push false narratives and politicise creative content.  Anti-Marxist sentiments are often mandated from above and historical events are regularly revised before being insidiously presented as fact.  Combined with this, for the sake of authenticity, game writers and designers are routinely paired with military consultants, who can prove instrumental in pandering to conservative paranoias.  Moreover, video games have also been targeted for product placement by major gun companies, who hope to reinforce their brand identities and have their merchandise showcased in realistic combat scenarios.  In this respect, video games are appropriated as interactive promotional materials.  Senior developers and stakeholders are approached and courted by arms dealers.  They are taken to factories and firing ranges, made to feel like ‘real soldiers’, and, in some cases, outside the UK, paid off with samples, taking home assault rifles to their families.  A few studios even collaborate with the military to further long-term business plans, leasing in-house software for training purposes.  

But once again, there are countercurrents.  In 2011, Polish developers at 11 Bit Studios launched This War of Mine, a survival game focusing specifically on civilian experiences of conflict.  Aside from winning more than a hundred awards, it also made a tangible difference in the world by raising over £400,000 for the charity, War Child.  Similarly, two projects I have worked on while contracting for the Czech studio, Bohemia Interactive, have sought to introduce players to International Humanitarian Law through the 2013 military simulation game, Arma 3 – generating nearly £300,000 for the International Committee of the Red Cross.   

Oppressive ‘crunching’

This then, is to describe something of the battle for ideas.  But what about those battles affecting game developers in the workplace?  Compulsory overtime is almost expected in the industry.  Known as ‘crunching’, it is a cost-cutting exercise that can lead to 80-hour weeks for extended periods of time, without extra pay.  This frequently results in ‘burn-out’, a catch-all term to describe the myriad health problems occurring when studio employees are pressurised into working day and night in stressful circumstances.  I can testify to this from personal experience and have been compelled to crunch for months on end; once, for 96 hours straight.  I remember how team members were invited to bring sleeping bags to the office and how, every morning, an anxious producer was forced to step over exhausted bodies to reach my desk.  

Situations like this are not uncommon.  In 2004, the fiancée of a game developer at Electronic Arts wrote a damning online article, describing how her partner was coerced to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, month after month, “with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behaviour (at 6.30pm)”. Her furious invective, charged with obvious concern and despair, made headlines around the world and shocked many; principally because, within the industry, such hours were not considered shocking at all.  Depressingly, not much has changed.  According to a 2022 study, 58% of game developers in the UK have experienced crunching within the last two years.  

Aside from this gruelling practice, thousands of others also face sex discrimination, bullying, and sexual harassment.  In the words of a fellow freelance narrative designer, Meghna Jayanth: 

“[It’s] a toxic confluence of worker disempowerment and a male-dominated managerial class [that makes game development] an especially unwelcoming place for women.  [The industry] sits at the intersection of the worst of the casting couch, predatory networking culture of the entertainment industries, and the unregulated boys-club mentality of Silicon Valley.  There’s an entire culture of silence, complicity and even enabling toxic behaviour.” 

This assessment, I would add, is an accurate one.  Reports of improper conduct against female employees are often dismissed by upper management.  At some studios, disciplinary action is even avoided unless an allegation of rape is made – anything less being blithely put down to ‘office hi-jinks’.   

Of course, workers have not been idle in resisting these conditions.  Over the years, many high-profile cases have appeared in the press and inspired efforts to establish unions.  In 2018, a British chapter of the international Game Workers Unite union was legally recognised as a part of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB).  The first labour association in the country to represent the interests of game developers, its goals are to end unpaid overtime, to educate and protect targeted workers, to improve inclusion and diversity, and to establish fair and regular wages.  In practical terms then, the familiar question of ‘what is to be done’ may be easily answered.  Those of us developing video games in the UK should join the Game Workers branch of the IWGB and encourage others in the industry to do the same, while championing and sharing information on the organisation’s campaigns.  Political education and further reading should also be considered; especially Marx at the Arcade by Jamie Woodcock and Games of Empire by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter.  Both books are recommended, for they are very accessible and offer a much richer insight than the one afforded here.   

Tackling cultural hegemony

On the subject of our response to capitalist cultural hegemony and video games, we must strive towards a more daring and creative solution.  The way ahead is open.  Now is the time to advance a radical agenda.  To educate, agitate, and organise.  To fight back, as artists – real artists, leveraging the power of virtual play with passion and integrity.  Not alone but together, as Marxist game developers.  To do this, we have to combine our skills and resources and establish at least one video game studio, run as a workers’ collective for peace and socialism.  Such an undertaking will be an ambitious endeavour.  It will require experienced and dedicated comrades.  But it will also require outside support; namely, from the Game Workers branch of the IWGB, and Communist Parties internationally.  In truth, we are at an exciting point in history.  The ruling classes, in an impulsive attempt to secure and further the runaway profits of the gaming industry, have left the gate of their falling castle unguarded.  By spurring automatised software, generous government subsidiaries, and free digital distribution services, they have unintentionally provided us with the means to confront a social, political, and economic status quo.  If we can rise to this occasion we will set an incredible precedent and liberate ourselves from a dominant, bourgeois ideology.  

■ This article was first published on the Culture Matters web site at https://culturematters.org.uk/index.php/culture/science/item/4209-a-virtual-world-to-win, on 12 April 2023.

Notes and References 

¹ Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Verso, London, 1998, p 35.

² M Kamen, ‘Games are Biggest Winner in UK’s Cultural Economy’, 4 May 2016, at https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-creative-industries-growth.

³ M Dealessandri, ‘Growth in UK games industry fastest ever recorded’, 19 October 2020, at https://www.gamesindustry.biz/growth-in-uk-industry-fastest-ever-recorded . 

⁴ J Clement, ‘Video gaming audiences in the United Kingdom (UK)’, 2 August 2023, at https://www.statista.com/topics/8281/video-gamer-demographics-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ #topicOverview. 

⁵ J Robards, ‘National populations projections: 2020-based interim’, 12 January 2022, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2020basedinterim/previous/. 

⁶ M Arora, ‘3.5 billion gamers to emerge by 2025: Global Market Report’, 2 August 2022, at https://illgaming.net/3-5-billion-gamers-to-emerge-by-2025-global-games-market-report/ .

⁷ J Woodcock, Marx at the Arcade, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2019, chapter ‘A History of Video Games and Play’ (pp 11-33).

⁸ The term ‘cognitariat’ refers to a collective work force, employed for immaterial labour, especially within the information technology sector.  It relates to the production of ‘intellectual capital’.

⁹ The idea of ‘immaterial labour’ was coined by the Italian sociologist and philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato in his 1996 essay ‘Immaterial Labor’.  It provides a Marxist framework to describe how value is produced from affective and cognitive activities, which are commodified in capitalist economies in various ways.

¹0 ‘Reterritorialisation’ is a restructuring of a place or territory that has experienced deterritorialisation.  For example, when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, and after they had deterritorialised the Aztec culture by destroying their ritualistic and sacred symbols, the Spanish then embarked upon a phase of reterritorialisation that saw the introduction of Christian rituals and beliefs. The concept of ‘reterritorialisation’ was devised by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their philosophical project Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972-1980). 

¹1 N Dyer-Witheford and de G Peuter, Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2009.

¹2 The ‘Golden Age of Gaming’ relates to arcade gaming and a period of rapid growth, technological development, and cultural influence, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

¹3 Dyer-Witheford & de G Peuter, Games of Empire, op cit, p 12.

¹4 Manga is a Japanese art style, initially popularised through comic books and graphic novels, typically aimed at adults as well as children.

¹5 Dyer-Witheford & de G Peuter, Games of Empire, op cit, p 18.

¹6 ‘Modding’ refers to the process of making changes to computer or games software or hardware.  ‘Modding communities’ are often leveraged by video game developers as ‘playbor’, increasing the value of commercial products through unpaid labour, undertaken freely by video game consumers as a form of play.

¹7 Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 is a real-time strategy game that playfully incorporates communist kitsch and evokes Soviet nostalgia.  

¹8 kotakuinternational, ‘Disco Elysium Developers Shout Out Marx and Engels in Game Awards Victory Speech’, 13 December 2019, at https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/12/disco-elysium-developers-shout-out-marx-and-engels-in-game-awards-victory-speech/.

¹9 https://store.steampowered.com/app/290690/Tonight_We_Riot/.

²0 P Tamburro, ‘UK Army Recruitment Ads Target “Binge Gamers” and “Snowflakes”’, 3 January 2019, at https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/477817-uk-army-recruitment-ads-call-for-binge-gamers-and- snowflakes.

²1 Engineering & Technology, ‘Military Scientists Partner with Video Gaming Company’, 31 July 2019, at https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/07/military-scientists-partner-with-video-gaming-company/ . 

²2 E Frauenheim, ‘No fun for game developers?’, 11 November 2004, at https://www.cnet.com/culture/no-fun-for-game-developers/ .

²3 J Rivera, ‘Inside the Video Game Industry’s Culture of Crunch’, 6 February 2014, at https://www.fastcompany.com/3026161/inside-the-video-game-industrys-culture-of-crunch-time .

²4 L Marks, ‘Crunch Time in Video Game Development – and How to Prevent It’, 18 November 2022, at https://www.runn.io/blog/crunch-time-in-game-development . 

²5 K Macdonald, ‘Is the video games industry finally reckoning with sexism?’, 22 July 2020, at https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/jul/22/is-the-video-games-industry-finally-reckoning-with-sexism .

Purchase the COMMUNIST REVIEW AUTUMN 2023 Edition