Hello there!
I summarize the publication “The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur The Boundaries of Work and Play (2006)” in this post.
Video games that are not only sites of play and entertainment but also incorporate well-known behavior conditioning principles are inherently work platforms to train us to become better game workers. Works in those video games blur the boundaries of work and play.
For example, if a player chooses pharmaceutical manufacturing as a career in the game Star Wars Galaxies, he needs to do a lot of works, which are very similar to the actual work such as managing the balance between the demand and supply, resource gathering, and marketing of the products. These works require a daily time commitment. Also, he has to acquire the abilities and schematics to be competitive in the market, which is also time-consuming. In fact, players in these games describe the game plays as an obligation or a second job.
There may be people who argue that game play can never constitute actual work because it doesn’t generate any economic values. However, this is not true. These days, there are companies such as IGE and TopGameSeller that create actual economic values through their business models using virtual goods. For them, there is no difference between playing and working.
The purpose of all of video games is to train a player to work harder while still enjoying them. For that, video games condition us to work harder, faster, and more efficiently. However, in the situation where the work being performed in video games and actual work in the industry have become increasingly similar, the boundary between work and play are blurring. And video games are obligation, tedium, and more like a second job than entertainment. Ultimately, the question is ‘what does fun really mean?’