“Pay for your choices”: Deconstructing neoliberal choice through free-to-play mobile interactive fiction games

Abstract

This article studied the neoliberal ideas of choice and agency manifested in the structures of two interactive fiction or “choose-your-own-adventure” games, Choices: Stories you Play and Episode—Choose Your Story, and their free-to-play profit system to explore the hegemonic operation of neoliberalism and participatory resistances to it. Neoliberal choice was approached as a strategy that operates by encouraging an actualization of one’s best self yet inscribing what it should entail. Despite the rhetoric of agency and fictitious simulation, the “best” choices and endings in the games were visible and accessible only with cultural, economic, and temporal capitals. “Right” choices required legitimate taste which needs savviness in dominant readings or time investment, and the “right est” choices required monetary investment. However, players’ subversive choices such as intentionally choosing “(not) rightly” to pursue negotiated readings and collective participation hinted at the potential of tactical practices in creating new strategies.

“I’m the leader and I’m going to save the world”: Characterizing Empowering and Disempowering Game Experiences

“…Of course such experiences of disempowerment can have a negative impact on players: Gowler and Iacovides [28] describe gaming experiences which players strongly disliked; noting that "players become uncomfortable because they just don't know what is going to happen next, or if they will be able to cope" [28, p. 333]. Likewise, disempowerment can be actively used to force players into predatory micro-transactions [38]. An important factor in this seems to be the disempowered player's ability to consent to the experience.…”