2024
Scully-Blaker, Rainforest
Reframing the Backlog: Radical Slowness and Patient Gaming Book Section
In: op de Beke, Laura; Raessens, Joost; Werning, Stefan; Farca, Gerald (Ed.): Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis, pp. 505–24, Amsterdam University Press, 2024, ISBN: 978-90-485-5721-9.
Abstract | Links | Tags: Community, Critical theory, Exhaustion, Labor, Leisure, Slow gaming
@incollection{Scully-Blaker2024b,
title = {Reframing the Backlog: Radical Slowness and Patient Gaming},
author = {Rainforest Scully-Blaker },
editor = {Laura op de Beke and Joost Raessens and Stefan Werning and Gerald Farca},
url = {https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.10819591.27},
doi = {10.2307/jj.10819591.27},
isbn = {978-90-485-5721-9},
year = {2024},
date = {2024-01-30},
urldate = {2024-01-30},
booktitle = {Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis},
pages = {505–24},
publisher = {Amsterdam University Press},
abstract = {This chapter presents the findings of an investigation into /r/patientgamers, a forum for those who play video games well after their initial release. In theory, the community’s protracted approach to media consumption seems to resist the neoliberal, late capitalist instrumentalization of leisure time. However, upon closer inspection, I found that many patientgamers experience stresses caused by a framing of play as transactional. Users’ nostalgia for their childhoods and the exhaustion caused by their gaming backlogs are shown to be emblematic of how play is ensnared by capitalist logics. However, the patientgamer philosophy still suggests that play may radically slow present modes of media consumption with a view to imagining and even enacting more socially and ecologically sustainable futures.},
keywords = {Community, Critical theory, Exhaustion, Labor, Leisure, Slow gaming},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
This chapter presents the findings of an investigation into /r/patientgamers, a forum for those who play video games well after their initial release. In theory, the community’s protracted approach to media consumption seems to resist the neoliberal, late capitalist instrumentalization of leisure time. However, upon closer inspection, I found that many patientgamers experience stresses caused by a framing of play as transactional. Users’ nostalgia for their childhoods and the exhaustion caused by their gaming backlogs are shown to be emblematic of how play is ensnared by capitalist logics. However, the patientgamer philosophy still suggests that play may radically slow present modes of media consumption with a view to imagining and even enacting more socially and ecologically sustainable futures.