This is a terrific talk Paolo Pedercini of Carnegie Mellon University gave remotely to Indicade East 2014. It is hugely thought provoking in its interpretation of games as rationalizations of capitalism. I don’t agree, hewing to Jung’s view of games (see Talk 1) as a way of being in touch with our instinctive self. Of course the “too clever by half” way to bridge the gap is to suggest our instinctive selves are capitalistic. So the creator of the game is both in touch with their instinctive self and as a result building game structures that reinforce capitalism.
Here is the tough part. If the language of games is indeed inherently capitalistic there might be legal consequences. Wouldn’t that make it all the more challenging for legal interpretations to acknowledge the mutually dependant roles of developer and gamer from an intellectual property perspective?
jon
Videogames and the Spirit of Capitalism from paolo pedercini on Vimeo.
Check out theVideos of Interest to Law 423 on YouTube 
Communications Law
Join the Community!
I must say I found this talk incredibly interesting. It really is striking to consider the extent to which capitalist culture seeps into and expresses itself through games- from games that directly place one into the capitalist economic system (Railroad Tycoon, perhaps?) to games that encourage players to engage in more abstract forms of economic exploitation (something like Settlers of Catan). It seems that the forms of social and economic relationships that exist in capitalist society are reproduced at varying degrees of abstraction in virtually every game with sufficiently complex elements. But is there something inherent to the human desire for gaming that actually requires these elements? Or is their presence in our games simply a result of what Gramsci termed the “cultural hegemony” of capitalism? At the very least it seems to me that as a game form, capitalism is undeniably fun.
It is fascinating. You allude to in you final sentence to the real chicken and egg conundrum. Is our desire to forage, build, hoard the product of nurture of of nature? At least at this point methinks games reflect our deeper instincts (and probably reinforce them). Would love to be wrong about this. Wonder how the question might be studied academically.
jon