REGULATING (VIRTUAL) SUBJECTS

Abstract

In this article the author examines a number of ways in which the real world economy is currently merging with practices that have been classically understood as belonging to the spheres of culture and play. The article discusses several areas in which the conceptual line between the supposedly rational technologies of finance, and the ‘less serious’ or ‘irrational’ sphere of culture, is fading as finance is progressively enlisted to serve the purposes of entertainment, including film, fiction, and computer games. In addressing areas such as these, where play is steadily entering into the realm of finance, and finance is becoming ever more ludic, the argument also focuses on various ways in which financialised subjects are currently being produced and regulated.

Keywords:

• play
• culture
• finance
• computer games
• film

Notes

1. For more detail on aesthetics and advertising, see Stäheli (2007, pp. 310–358). On the market and visualization technology, see Pryke (2010).

2. See Taylor (2004, ‘Yahoo Nation’, particularly pp. 188–189). Finance clubs are seen as part of a more generalized trend that includes increasing numbers of social games and gadgets that revolve around money and finance. See also Martin (2002, ‘When Finance Becomes You’, pp. 55–103).

3. For more on this topic see Seth Priebatsch (2010), ‘Building a game layer on top of the world’, in which he discusses the ways in which game dynamics now structure all kinds of financial behaviours such as collecting air miles, and which dynamics act as incentives in, for example, credit card schemes.

4. It has also been suggested that the reason for the lag in time between the market crash and Hollywood productions on the topic is that ‘movies often take up to three years to move from conception to release because of the increasingly complicated financing required by soaring production and marketing costs’ (Barnes 2008).

5. See http://nymag.com/news/business/55687/

6. For a more detailed discussion of toy money in relation to video games, see Goggin (2009).

7. Likewise, Robert T. Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids about Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! has now grown into The Rich Dad Company and publishes other titles like Rich Dad, Poor Dad for Teens: The Secrets About Money – that You Don't Learn in School!, as well as board games Rich Dad Cashflow for Kids and Rich Dad Cashflow 101 among other titles in the franchise.

8. I am grateful to Ana Margarida Abrantes who has shared her current research on ‘neuroeconomics’, based on the findings of Brian Knutson who studies the subcortical area of the brain and its role in pleasure and addiction. The subcortical area becomes stimulated in activities such as gambling and trading, where ‘activation is proportional to the amount of money people expect to make’ so that ‘certain risk behaviours associated with money share features with certain compulsive conditions’ (Abrantes 2009). This same research is referenced in Inside Job. For more on this topic, see also Nelson (2010).

9. Passages such as these in Knorr Cetina echo much of the writing on video games and subjectivity by authors such as Sherry Turkel and Martti Lahti. See, for example, Lahti's ‘As We Become Machines: Corporealized Pleasures in Video Games,’ where he writes that the monitor guides gamers ‘into (a perceptual and corporeal) interaction with the computer and, as a technological form of vision, it becomes a component and extension of the body’ (2003, p. 164).

10. See http://www.1up. com/do/feature?cId=3117598. See also Stephen L. Kent (2001, p. 116) and Steven Poole (2000, p. 34).

11. This is not to say that the kind of activity that goes on in World of Warcraft is exactly the same as the social interaction that is conducted in Second Life. It is also important to keep in mind that in World of Warcraft money is generated through play and levelling rather than through the direct importation of currencies from the greater economy as is the case with the trade and work that goes on in Second Life. That said, however, the economic activity that takes place in both kinds of virtual worlds ultimately results in the merging of cash flows and currencies. On this more below.

12. I am grateful to Cátia Ferreira, who presented her work on Second Life at The Cultural Life of Money, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, on 13 November 2009. It is important to note that, since that time, other games have surpassed Second Life in terms of subscriptions, popularity, and rate of trade.

13. For a detailed study of virtual sweatshops see Dibbell (2006, pp. 280–313).

14. See http://www.doublehappinessjeans.com/ (2009).

15. See http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/www_innovate.nsf/images/gio-gaming/$FILE/ibm_gio_gaming_report.pdf