No abstract

Gamification as the process of turning extra-ludic activities into play can be seen in two different ways: following Bataille, we would hope that play could be a flight line from the servitude of the capital-labour relationship. Following Adorno and Benjamin, however, we might discover that the escape from the drudgery of the worker leads to an equally alienating drudgery of the player. I argue that gamification might be seen as a form of ideology and therefore a mechanism of the dominant class to set agenda and to legitimize actions taken by this very class or group. Ever since the notion of gamification was introduced widely, scholars have suggested that work might be seen as a sort of leisure activity. This article analyses the controversial dialectics of play and labour and the ubiquitous notion of gamification as ideology.

No abstract

The European Commission's Creative Europe programme is due to replace the current programmes Culture, MEDIA and MEDIA Mundus in 2014, setting partly new priorities for supporting the European culture and creative sectors. In this context, the European Expert Network on Culture prepared a report on audience building across Europe, recommending that audience development should become a future assessment criteria for arts and cultural funding and that, for this purpose, a new European regulatory agency should be set up. It is noted that the report lives up to its objectives, though there are shortcoming. In particular, the evidence base is not sound and the sample of case studies does not appear representative. Notwithstanding, audience development will play a key role in the future Creative Europe programme.