Week Seven: Alex Dean Cybulski

In Cybulski's piece, he discusses the issue of "surveillant games" which "measure and mine play for data users". While it is an interesting read, it's certainly not anything gamers today are unaware of. The propensity of games to draw crowds, the hidden surveillance clauses within a company’s terms and conditions, as well as the code which can be disseminated to create valuable marketing information which tailor ads and improvements to the user experience - these are all things which gamers today are well aware of. In fact, most gamers take full advantage of these tools. Youtubers and streamers (TwitchTV, Youtube Gaming) take full advantage of the spectatorship drawn to gaming, news articles which call attention to the surveillance conducted in-game by big name companies proliferate social media and are accepted by the community as an effective way to improve games they play, and players themselves data mine games for useful information (for example: in online multiplayer games, future patches can be found by harvesting data within the existing game code). While some critics like Maiberg may see pervasive surveillance as something which exists primarily for the fiscal benefit of the game creators, we would be remiss to ignore the advantages those techniques can also create for the gamer. Do you guys feel differently? That such methods of video game surveillance should be scaled back in the future ?

References 

Cybulski, Alex Dean (2014). Enclosures at play: Surveillance in the code and culture of videogames. Surveillance & Society 12(3): 427-432.