I'm gonna make you sweat (sweat, 'till you got sweat no more)

I was really amazed when I read THIS STORY . I guess I shouldn't have. the piece is from the NY times and it tells the story of World of Warcraft (WOW) sweatshops where Chinese people plays/works almost every day of the month for 30 cents an hour. they achieve magical weapons and artifacts (+5 anti-wrist infection stone) and their bosses sell them online. it was obvious at some point when big money got into the industry that things like that would happen but it made me think about few things that I would like to share here.

WoW. behind every strong man there is a chinese swaetshop worker.

First of all, is it the job of the ludologist to address phenomenas like this. the real question is should ludology perceive itself as a meta-critique or just a cultural-texts-analyzing-machine. should we speak about those Chinese at the same time we speak about important issues like Lara Croft's hooters or the psyche of the gamer. can we talk seriously about Agon (competition) or Alea (chance) when there is no category for abuse.

As it seems (and as always) there is no simple yes or no answer. but I think that if we imagine our ludic field of knowledge as a field that can embrace every phenomena of the human experience we can see right away that there is a lot of work need to be done. maybe the six categories of our fathers ( Huizinga's and Caillois's) are insufficient to hold all the ludic situations. Huizinga described games as a voluntary activity but can it be voluntary for those chinese ?is it not gaming than? is patching Nike logos for 20 hours a day can be voluntary or is it just one of a very few possibilities some people have to survive. on the other hand, can we imagine an athlete that sprint's for 10 years do anything else than sprinting in the next 10 years to come. or maybe most of us don't have as many possibilities as we would like to imagine.

Thomas More. Neo Ludo is not my cup of tea. bling bling is.

I wouldn't like to draw an Antihumanism conclusion, but at glance the neo ludology is not an emancipating project . maybe when society would understand itself as nothing much than a platform for characters to interact, when goals are valuable only until the next goal arrives, maybe there we can find some freedom. is freedom of consciousness is real freedom?what is real freedom? as i see it maybe the key is for people to take life like it was nothing more than a game. accept the limited possibilities. people can go behind their given options but it is nothing more than a bug, a glitch, in the system not the goal. do you already feel better?