This double issue of
Digital Culture & Society
addresses the complex thematic field of the dialectics of play and labour. We will take a closer look at the problem of play and work from two overlapping, albeit not mutually exclusive, perspectives:
laborious play
and
playful work
.
The term
points to practices and processes that turn playful activities into hard work.
Laborious play
happens whenever playfulness turns into work, and may be observed in such activities such as e-sports, excessive play, "goldfarming", and Twitch gameplay broadcasting, amongst many others.
A complementary phenomenon to that of
is the practice and concept of
. The promises of a joyful and rewarding working experience have been promoted as "gamification" while critical voices denounce such attempts as ideology, exploitation or simply "bullshit".