Playbour: Roleplay Reality

2018
A Non-violent Exploratory Video Game Addressing the Creative Labour

A video game that extends the visual identity of an exhibition, where players collect labour tokens while their time is mercilessly running out. Landscapes, sounds, and score mechanics reveal the dynamics of a creative worker’s life intertwined with the post-Fordist labour performed under the constant pressure of social media and inhumane neoliberal competitiveness. It renders the virtual environment as both liberating and limiting space in which the player can reflect on and reimagine the world of work. Commissioned by FACT Liverpool.

  • Playbour: Roleplay Reality: blue letters spell 'PLAY' over marbled video game landscapes, orange towers rise, score 2200
  • Playbour: Roleplay Reality: a player in headphones faces a screen in a wall of marbled crystals, pixel eyes, blue letters
  • Playbour: Roleplay Reality: blue 'RRRR' letters loom over marble blocks and a pixel eye, starry landscape, time running out
  • Playbour: Roleplay Reality: a seated figure watches the video game on screen, collage exhibition walls, shelves tagged €45
  • Playbour: Roleplay Reality: orange grid sky over crusty rock, rainbow landscape, a framed hooded face in the video game
  • Playbour: Roleplay Reality: cat posters lean among purple blobs and floating eyes, a giant eye over the video game landscape
  • Playbour: Roleplay Reality: a figure sits before the video game screen, exhibition walls of shards, pixel eyes, blue 'RRR'