Trigger Happy

Shoot first, ask questions later

- STEVEN POOLE

What goes into a video game? Creativity, intellect, art, humour sure, but also exploitation, injustice and despair. Many of the so-called 'rare earth' minerals used in modern electronics including game consoles - are mined under appalling conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Consoles and peripherals are then built by Chinese megacorps such as Foxconn, notorious for treating their workers poorly. Games themselves are developed by relatively privileged people in the rich world, but their employers are hostile to labour unions and they are routinely expected to work insane hours to hit the release deadline for Come To Honor: Final Headshot 11.

It doesn't have to be this way, Marijam Did proposes in her passionately argued new book, Everything To Play For. The author might be shaky on her videogame history, but she is a clever and often funny critic of aspects of the industry as it is today, from the "deeply conservative nature of overtly wholesome narratives" to the evergreen obsession with improving aesthetic fidelity: "One more eyelash can always be added to a character," she notes wryly, though logically that would eventually lead to videogame heroines with one million eyelashes.