Videogame Work In Poland Investigating Creative Labour In A Post-Socialist Cultural Industry

The Polish videogame industry has come a long way from its origins on the grey markets in the Polish People’s Republic to its recognition as a national speciality. However, in this atmosphere of celebration, and in the promise of securing its bright future from the government, there is one element rarely present in these discussions – the industry’s workforce. While video games that are developed, localised and tested in Poland are played by people all over the world, the working lives of the people who contribute to these games’ development are under- explored. This research investigates Polish videogame practitioners’ interpretations and negotiations of the risk associated with working in the Eastern European videogame industry. An investigation of working in the Polish videogame industry is not only a matter of discussing working practices and the unstable nature of being employed in videogame production but also about discussing the changes in approaches to work and cultural production in the context of a post-socialist country.

This research is inspired by autonomist Marxism and neo-Foucauldian theoretical frameworks widely used in studies about creative labour (Gill and Pratt, 2008; McRobbie, 2016; Gill, 2011a; 2002; Scharff, 2018; Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009). Videogame practitioners’ approach to the risk associated with working in videogame production is conceptualised through a discussion of the construction and negotiation of entrepreneurial subjectivities. However, in this research, I acknowledge the limitations of these theoretical frameworks by addressing their deterministic stances in discussing creative workers’ subjectivities (e.g. Scharff, 2018). This study overcomes this limitation by drawing on alternative approaches in discussing workers’ subjective experiences of work (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011; Banks et al. 2013; Taylor and Littleton, 2012).