The video game industry is a behemoth. It shapes our culture, it shapes our discourse, and it’s on its way to becoming something like a $200 billion industry. But what is it like for the people who make the games we enjoy? Unfortunately, many developers deal with long hours, precarious contracts, hostility, and harassment. There’s pushback, however, from workers who expect and demand better — and who are organizing to get just that. On this episode, we set out on a quest to level-up our knowledge of the video game industry.
As the pandemic drifts into its one-year anniversary, all eyes are on the end of the thing. Whenever that may be. Discovering, producing, and shipping vaccines is the big plank in the world’s plan to move beyond the coronavirus, but there’s more to it than that. We live in an era of distrust — of corporations, of governments, of experts, of science itself. We also live in an era of inequality. So, getting the vaccines out the door is one thing. Getting people to take them, including in communities that have traditionally been marginalized, is another.
For a moment, all the eyes of the world were on GameStop. It’s unexpected, meteoric rise. It’s inevitable fall. The saga became a rorschach test for our politics. Was it a revolutionary moment, the many pushing back against the few? Was it an old school pump and dump, just folks out to make some money?
Canada likes to trade on the “middle power” trope. Tucked away among the many, snuggled up with peer states just outside the focus given to global hegemons, the country goes about its business, friendly and mild. Nothing to see here. But behind the facade is a past and present of neocolonial plundering.
Our society is dominated by grifters. Cheats, cons, frauds: people who don’t really believe what they tell you. They’re just what they need to do to get ahead or to sell you something. Isn’t that that really what capitalism is about? The grift! We look at grifts in academia, and beyond.
