Who are the "players" in Zimmerman's Ludic Century?

I want to agree with Zimmerman’s manifesto. I want to believe that the twenty-first century will be defined by play (presumably instead of work). I want to believe that “everyone will be a game designer”. But when I look at the state of the world, it’s hard to conclude that this manifesto tells us much about the future of humanity. We live in a world where children are routinely murdered by the most powerful militaries and police forces in human history. We live in a world where workers (both in the first world and in the global south) are increasingly treated like slaves, not to mention the fact that there are still around 20-70 million actual slaves. (Ok I’m tired of links, you guys are going to have to take the rest of this spiel as given). National politics across the world are veering towards the nationalist right, while complete global ecological collapse looms in the near future. Wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, while the workers of the world work longer hours for less and less pay.

To me, this manifesto reads as naïve to the extreme. How will this world, defined by chaos and instability, produce a society of game designers? Granted, Zimmerman wrote his manifesto in the pre-Trump era, but the world today is not so different from 2013. Who are Zimmerman’s players, his designers? Surely not the single parents working three jobs to make rent, or the homeless, or the incarcerated. Even if we take a first-world, college-educated population as Zimmerman’s subject, his argument still seems a stretch. As a college grad in 2018, one has few options: get an administrative job (decidedly not “playful”), go to grad school where you will be overworked/underpaid to the extreme (and barely have a shot at ultimately becoming a tenured professor), or become another cog in the corporate machine. Perhaps the last option offers some opportunities for play (I can imagine marketing or development including the “systems thinking” that Zimmerman characterizes as playful), but most corporate jobs are about maximizing productivity, not play. Zimmerman himself says that the increase in play will take place in “leisure time”, but does not consider the fact that leisure time is a fast-disappearing luxury. The only people who really get to be the “playful designers” are the “lucky” few who get to earn their (meager) living as creatives, or the ultra-rich who’s wealth grants them the leisure time necessary for play.

Let’s examine a couple specific instances where Zimmerman’s argument goes astray. In the entirety of the manifesto, he never once mentions the exploitation rife within the games industry. Actually becoming a game designer or developer is notoriously difficult, and once you make it, you’re subject to longer hours and lower pay than comparable industries because your job is “fun”. And on top of that, you can be laid off at any moment with no compensation. His argument goes beyond actual game designers themselves though; he argues that to answer questions like, “How does the price of gas in California affect the politics of the Middle East affect the Amazon ecosystem,” we must think playfully. He does not stop to ask who would be answering these questions. The only people who would be making a living studying such questions of global economics, policy work for think-tanks and econ departments (ok maybe a few others, but you get the point)– not exactly the global proletariat. From this manifesto, it is clear that the “everyone” in “everyone will be a game designer” is not decidedly not everyone. It is the wealthy, the educated, the overwhelmingly white who will get the jobs that Zimmerman describes. The Amazon warehouse “associate” or even the graduate worker are not Zimmerman’s player-cum-designers.

This is not to say that play is inherently bourgeois. In fact, I believe play is inherently political and can indeed be radical. Games like Camover (described by Sicart in Play Matters) or kettling (in which protesters attempt to encircle police who themselves are attempting to encircle the protestors) are particularly stark examples of political play. Play, as it exists outside ordinary society, has a unique ability to disrupt ordinary society and modes of thinking. This is not a new idea, especially in art (for more on this stay tuned for my B.A). However Zimmerman chooses not to explore these possibilities. Instead of presenting play as imperative to overcoming the system of global capitalism (a stretch yes, but an argument I hope to develop in this class), he presents it as a totally compatible with the current system. Given that feudal peasants had more free time to play than we do today, such a claim is nonsensical. What is true is that play has never been more necessary– not for those who are lucky enough to get the (few) “playful” jobs, but for all of us to overcome the system that only allows a few to be Zimmerman’s “game designers”.

One could argue I’m being unfair to Zimmerman. He does say our “a social system [is] rife with contradictions and with possibility” that play can unlock, but he nevers says what the contradictions or possibilities are or that their resolution is necessary for everyone to become a designer. One might also point out that there are more “gamers” today than ever before. My gut sense is the majority of these gamers are either children with plenty of free time, adults who have enough money for free time, or people playing casual games on their phone while commuting, and all of those are undoubtedly concentrated in the first world.

Note: After I wrote this, I found someone had said the same thing more eloquently here, so y’all might just want to read that. Bogost also wrote a critique, but it’s actually pretty boring, mostly just “manifestoes are for 20th century art nerds” to which Zimmerman responded that calling it a manifesto was tongue-in-cheek.