Not All Fun and Games: Videogame Labour, Project-based Workplaces, and the New Citizenship at Work by Marie-Josée Legault and Johanna Weststar (Concordia University Press, 2024)

Book review

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/23.8043

Keywords:

Game production, game labour, game developers, project-based workplaces, work regulation, industrial citizenship

Abstract

A review of Johanna Weststar’s and Marie-Josée Legault’s book Not All Fun and Games: Videogame Labour, Project-based Workplaces, and the New Citizenship at Work. Published by Concordia University Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-98811-149-0, 408 pages.

References

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Bulut, E. (2020). A precarious game: The illusion of dream jobs in the video game industry. ILR Press.

Cote, A. C., & Harris, B. C. (2023). The cruel optimism of “good crunch”: How game industry discourses perpetuate unsustainable labor practices. New Media & Society, 25(3), 609–627. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211014213

Game Industry Layoffs. (n.d.). Game industry layoffs. Obsidian Publish. https://publish.obsidian.md/vg-layoffs/Archive/2023

Harvey, A. (2019). Becoming gamesworkers: Diversity, higher education, and the future of the game industry. Television & New Media, 20(8), 756–766. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419851080

Keogh, B. (2023). The videogame industry does not exist: Why we should think beyond commercial game production. MIT Press.

Legault, M.-J., & Weststar, J. (2024). Not all fun and games: Videogame labour, project-based workplaces, and the new citizenship at work. Concordia University Press.

Marshall, T. H. (1950). Citizenship and social class: And other essays. Cambridge University Press.

O’Donnell, C. (2014). Developer’s dilemma: The secret world of videogame creators. MIT Press.

Ozimek, A. M. (2021). Construction and negotiation of entrepreneurial subjectivities in the Polish video game industry. In O. Sotamaa & J. Švelch (Eds.), Game production studies (pp. 257–274). Amsterdam University Press.

Park, S., Kultima, A., Lehtonen, M. J., & Krath, J. (2022). Everywhere but nowhere: Development experiences of the international game developers in Finland during the Covid-19 pandemic and remote work. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CHI PLAY), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3549496

Poell, T., Duffy, B. E., B. Nieborg, D., Mutsvairo, B., Tse, T., Arriagada, A., de Kloet, J., & Sun, P. (2024). Global perspectives on platforms and cultural production. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 28(1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241292736

Schreier, J. (2021). Press reset: Ruin and recovery in the video game industry. Grand Central Publishing.

Sotamaa, O. (2021). Studying game development cultures. Games and Culture, 16(7), 835–854. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211005242

Sotamaa, O., & Švelch, J. (Eds.). (2021). Game production studies. Amsterdam University Press.

Tô, L., Legault, M.-J. & Weststar, J. (2016). Collective action and representation gap among videogame developers, 2004–2014: Summary report. International Game Developers Association. https://r-libre.teluq.ca/1041/

Downloads

Published

2025-06-26

How to Cite

Houška, J. (2025). Not All Fun and Games: Videogame Labour, Project-based Workplaces, and the New Citizenship at Work by Marie-Josée Legault and Johanna Weststar (Concordia University Press, 2024): Book review. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 16(1), 149–156. https://doi.org/10.7557/23.8043