Gaming Labor: Class, Video Games, and the “General Intellect”

Video games have become a significant aspect of the technology industry, yet they have also become for many the image of an emerging contradiction said to reside at the heart of digital capitalism, namely that capitalism is no longer based upon the exploitation of workers’ labor by owners but rather upon tenuous control over the commons and creativity of the multitude. Examining the concept of general intellect through a comparison of the readings of such writers as Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Paulo Virno, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greg de Peuter with Marx’s theorization of the connection between science, technology, and labor in the Grundrisse, I argue that the dominant readings of the “ludo economy” of video games work to ideologically obscure a revolutionary critique of digital capitalism based upon the labor theory of value.