Everything to Play For Quotes

“With little to no choice, we are locked in a relationship of passive consumption, entertained in a circus not only while the world burns, but as we–with every push of a button–burn it ourselves. 'Humanity's self-alienation has reached to such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order,' Benjamin wrote. Videogames are extremely good at this.”
― Marijam Did, Everything to Play For: How Videogames are Changing Our World

“Something about games and many of their designs points to more fundamental flaws. My conflicting feelings about the medium continue when I observe that their design is so often fundamentally tied up with competition and accumulation, justifying and validating many experiences under capitalist systems. Always chasing, panting to get ahead, needing to grind to succeed, to win or simply to survive. Even the more wholesome games, stripped of all such mechanics, tend to subdue us into inaction. The theorist Theodor Adorno would remind us here that much of entertainment is a ritual in which the subjugated celebrated their subjugation.”
― Marijam Did, Everything to Play For: How Videogames are Changing Our World