Opinion | All Work, No Play for These Video Game Characters - The New York Times

Opinion Op-Docs

All Work, No Play for These
Video Game Characters

All Work, No Play
for These Video
Game Characters

As background extras, some nonplayer characters are
programmed to do one thing forever: drudgery.

As background extras, some nonplayer
characters are programmed
to do one thing forever: drudgery.

null

Opinion

All Work, No Play for These Video Game Characters

July 11, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

In this short documentary, a laundress, a stablehand, a street sweeper and a carpenter are observed with ethnographic precision. They are nonplayer characters, or NPCs, in the blockbuster Wild West-themed video game Red Dead Redemption 2, and many of them are trapped in work.

NPCs populate the gaming world as background extras. They simulate being alive, but their rhythm of life is controlled by looped activities — which they exercise tirelessly and repetitively into infinity.

These NPCs are Sisyphean machines, programmed to get stuck in the routines of everyday life without results. Occasionally, the NPCs glitch, breaking their cycles and revealing their own flawedness. In these moments, they seem touchingly human.

We’re an artist collective whose work explores contemporary computer and video games. Here, we reflect on the question of work and what’s supposed to be normal. Despite the game’s turn-of-the-century setting, the labor routines, activity patterns — as well as bugs and malfunctions — paint a vivid analogy for how workers today toil under capitalism.

Can we, the nonplayer characters of a political economy that controls, exploits and alienates us, find a way to rebel against the absurdity of our own activities?

The collective Total Refusal explores the field of contemporary video and computer games through artistic interventions.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.

---

Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries by independent filmmakers. Learn more about Op-Docs and how to submit to the series. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Adblock test (Why?)

https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiU2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjMvMDcvMTEvb3Bpbmlvbi9ucGMtdmlkZW8tZ2FtZXMtcmVkLWRlYWQtcmVkZW1wdGlvbi5odG1s0gEA?oc=5

2023-07-11 09:00:04Z
CBMiU2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjMvMDcvMTEvb3Bpbmlvbi9ucGMtdmlkZW8tZ2FtZXMtcmVkLWRlYWQtcmVkZW1wdGlvbi5odG1s0gEA

Bagikan Berita Ini