All Work and No Play

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“[T]he most popular games today do not contain, at their heart, ‘fun’.” Few video games today seem to promote imaginative play, where you are free to play make-believe. Instead, they seem to be “utopian work simulators”; our efforts to follow the rules of the game are rewarded regularly, much like how work (ideally) rewards us with wages for being obedient employees. Why? Perhaps it’s because art imitates life: the process of video game development overworks and puts employees through the wringer.
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