Fuel, Fatigue, Fashion: Towards a Media Ecology of Game Industry Conventions

This qualitative study, presented at DiGRA 2020, examines the mundane material artifacts that shape the atmosphere of a mid-size games industry convention in the Southeast United States. Drawing on a media ecological framework informed by Matthew Fuller, the authors argue that the spatial and technological arrangements of such events reveal how game production and game workers are imagined during a turbulent period marked by harassment scandals, labour unrest, and marginalization within North American and European games industries. The inquiry is explicitly exploratory: it treats its inventory of objects as provisional and sets aside insider accounts of industry attendees in favour of attention to bodies, technologies, and practices.

Three artifacts anchor the analysis. Cargo shorts, worn exclusively by white men at the event, are read as an emblem of masculine practicality and technical intimacy that implicitly disregards fashion's feminized norms, with pockets functioning as mobile storage for portable devices. Mountain Dew's Game Fuel ccans, sampled at a high-traffic booth staffed by female employees, are interpreted through their oversized format, pebbled texture, and resealable lid as materializing a gendered gaming body that remains engaged with the screen during prolonged play. Massage chairs staffed by physical therapy students are presented as a symbolic response to burnout, suggesting an industry framing of worker well-being that shifts responsibility toward corporate care technologies rather than collective worker organization.

The authors acknowledge that their inventory is incomplete and that their claims are evocative rather than definitive, presenting the work as a methodological test of media ecology applied to convention contexts. Its contribution lies in demonstrating how liminal industry events construct the games worker, materially and discursively, during a period of industry upheaval.