Empire@Play: Virtual Games and Global Capitalism

Amidst the current convulsions, global capitalism has one consolation left for its increasingly desperate subjects: you may have lost your job (or will never be able to retire from it), you can’t afford to go out, but you can always stay home (if you still have one) and play a video game. As Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch fell and General Motors, Ford and Chrysler reeled round the edge of their grave, North American sales of game hardware and software hit all-time highs in 2008. Forecasters claimed virtual play was recession-proof; a maturing audience of stay-at-home gamers would cocoon around the Wii, Xbox360 or PS3, or migrate to World of Warcraft or Second Life, to enjoy a diversion from economic disaster. Such estimates of game-business resilience may prove optimistic: by 2009 job losses were hitting industry behemoths such as Sony and Electronic Arts (EA). But this latest iteration of bread-and-circuses culture-theory nevertheless provides a timely entry for a discussion of digital games as exemplary media of contemporary Empire.