Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World
Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World
Marijam Didžgalvytė
CommunitiesThe year was 2015, and I was in my safe cocoon of an anarchist lifestyle—political struggle day and night, more tranquil, private moments of partying and gaming in between. I fell in love with an English lad who was moving to London at the time. Like me, he also found temporary housing security through squatting. I was a political person with a niche interest in gaming. He was a fighting games influencer and YouTuber, known online as TheoryFighter, with a lefty heart. We started exchanging thoughts, ideas and life experiences, and an entire world opened up to me. It was TheoryFighter who first told me about the Goonswarm versus Band of Brothers struggle in EVE Online (2003), probably with some Polish beer in hand, during a cozy bohemian street drinking session in Hackney Marshes. As clearly as I can identify, this was the moment that broadened my conception of what gaming spaces are capable of. And opened my eyes to the possibility that all of us are living in a reflection of the customs of these spaces. To those who have not spent years in it, EVE Online appears like a glorified spreadsheet. Playing this space-themed MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) involves a lot of counting and organizing while dispensing a finite amount of resources among the characters within the game. Set more than 21,000 years from now, when Earth’s resources have been exhausted, EVE Online imagines humanity seeking to colonize the rest of the Milky Way. Players control a fleet of ships, the size and powers of which depend on the skill and social or material capital of each player.
However, by the late 2000s, this monetary inequality became glaring. While some players were investing tens of thousands of hours to upgrade their fleets, others took a short cut by acquiring in-game enhancements with real-life money. The so-called Band of Brothers was a small group of spaceships that used the latter tactic—outsourcing, or straight-up buying, power over the virtual environment—and soon dominated the galaxy of EVE Online. A group of poorer, but more skilled players grew fed up with this dynamic and began scheming and coordinating ways to reverse this trend, which they believed had wrecked the game.
In 2006, thousands of these players formed the group Goonswarm, and commenced an epic battle against the Band of Brothers. It took an incredible amount of gameplay, unity, and coordination, but eventually Goonswarm secured the victory in this modern David and Goliath story. The destruction of the Band of Brothers’ virtual fleet cost its players around $6,000 actual real-life dollars.
The key to Goonswarm’s success was their number, their anonymity, and their inventive communication techniques. Their members infiltrated the private forums of the Band of Brothers, leaking information to their teammates and sabotaging any counterattacks. Their large numbers and dedication to the mission allowed them to gain the upper hand over their affluent adversaries. The turning point came when the chairman of Band
of Brothers, Haargoth Agamar, defected to Goonswarm because he, by his own account, preferred the group’s more horizontal organizational structure. To add to the beauty of this marvelous act of resistance, it thoroughly undermined the business plan of the game’s developer—CCP Games. The company had introduced microtransactions to boost profits, a move seriously challenged by this legendary fight. Such activities by gaming communities exhibit the potential for game spaces to be sites of political expression. Unlike the narrative imposed from above by the game maker, the actions of communities are self-defined and self-motivated and reflect the active will of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of players. This expression adopts many different forms: explicit political organizing in games, consumer organizing, cooperative disruptions, and online meetings where players enact various functions in real life. This constitutes, perhaps surprisingly, an activation of otherwise passive individuals into political subjects.
Advancing will require readers to examine how and why players regularly behave as publicly engaged beings. What are some key examples of civic engagement in games? Why is it barely recognized as a form of political expression? At a time of general political malaise and nihilism, what is it about videogames that ignites a sense of belonging and what makes this space ripe for meaningful action? What is the spectrum of this expression, and who controls it? Some of us recognize our role as consumers in videogames and learn to affect change as active entities in this role. Having achieved our goal or enjoyed trying, we move on to attempting to affect real-life politics. Some succeed; in other instances, the results are devastating. From in-game experimentations with various models of self-organization to political actions and straight-up radicalization, the intensity and techniques represent an assortment of aims. While players like me simply admire clever storytelling tricks and engage in relatively basic sportsmanship, other players were creating entire civic systems in game. Sure, some of it arose from a spirit of competition, but as I started digging into the world of gaming communities, it became clear that much of it lay somewhere between power grabbing and seeking a sense of belonging. And if those are not politics, I don’t know what is.
Read Marijam’s book, Everything To Play For: How Videogames Are Changing The World, available now at Verso Books.
However, by the late 2000s, this monetary inequality became glaring. While some players were investing tens of thousands of hours to upgrade their fleets, others took a short cut by acquiring in-game enhancements with real-life money. The so-called Band of Brothers was a small group of spaceships that used the latter tactic—outsourcing, or straight-up buying, power over the virtual environment—and soon dominated the galaxy of EVE Online. A group of poorer, but more skilled players grew fed up with this dynamic and began scheming and coordinating ways to reverse this trend, which they believed had wrecked the game.
In 2006, thousands of these players formed the group Goonswarm, and commenced an epic battle against the Band of Brothers. It took an incredible amount of gameplay, unity, and coordination, but eventually Goonswarm secured the victory in this modern David and Goliath story. The destruction of the Band of Brothers’ virtual fleet cost its players around $6,000 actual real-life dollars.
The key to Goonswarm’s success was their number, their anonymity, and their inventive communication techniques. Their members infiltrated the private forums of the Band of Brothers, leaking information to their teammates and sabotaging any counterattacks. Their large numbers and dedication to the mission allowed them to gain the upper hand over their affluent adversaries. The turning point came when the chairman of Band
of Brothers, Haargoth Agamar, defected to Goonswarm because he, by his own account, preferred the group’s more horizontal organizational structure. To add to the beauty of this marvelous act of resistance, it thoroughly undermined the business plan of the game’s developer—CCP Games. The company had introduced microtransactions to boost profits, a move seriously challenged by this legendary fight. Such activities by gaming communities exhibit the potential for game spaces to be sites of political expression. Unlike the narrative imposed from above by the game maker, the actions of communities are self-defined and self-motivated and reflect the active will of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of players. This expression adopts many different forms: explicit political organizing in games, consumer organizing, cooperative disruptions, and online meetings where players enact various functions in real life. This constitutes, perhaps surprisingly, an activation of otherwise passive individuals into political subjects.
Advancing will require readers to examine how and why players regularly behave as publicly engaged beings. What are some key examples of civic engagement in games? Why is it barely recognized as a form of political expression? At a time of general political malaise and nihilism, what is it about videogames that ignites a sense of belonging and what makes this space ripe for meaningful action? What is the spectrum of this expression, and who controls it? Some of us recognize our role as consumers in videogames and learn to affect change as active entities in this role. Having achieved our goal or enjoyed trying, we move on to attempting to affect real-life politics. Some succeed; in other instances, the results are devastating. From in-game experimentations with various models of self-organization to political actions and straight-up radicalization, the intensity and techniques represent an assortment of aims. While players like me simply admire clever storytelling tricks and engage in relatively basic sportsmanship, other players were creating entire civic systems in game. Sure, some of it arose from a spirit of competition, but as I started digging into the world of gaming communities, it became clear that much of it lay somewhere between power grabbing and seeking a sense of belonging. And if those are not politics, I don’t know what is.
Read Marijam’s book, Everything To Play For: How Videogames Are Changing The World, available now at Verso Books.