In his 2005 article “Precarious playbour: Modders and the digital games industry”, Julian Kücklich describes playbour as a type of free labour that does not “fit the categories of wage labour, freelance, or voluntary work” while simultaneously failing to fulfill “the categories of leisure, play, or art.”
We’ve talked at length about how playbour manifests itself in gaming, from Cookie Clicker to American Truck Simulator to Minecraft. What I want to discuss here is how playbour seeps into games that are ostensibly not created with such themes in mind, especially Esports.
Now, I say Esports, but I’m not talking about people who play video games professionally for a living because their labour is paid and thus, not playbour. I’m talking about the experiences of people who play Esports games in a non-professional setting. People like me.
The game I’ve spent the most time playing is Rocket League. I’ve been playing consistently for eight years now, since 2017. In that time, I’ve gotten pretty good at hitting a ball with a flying car.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PXMyf_pvDoq66rITJ2aA2tV_QxE4j5Ek/view?usp=drive_link
But, for all I’d played, I had consistently fallen around the top 10 – 15% of the playerbase, good, for sure, but never excellent. That all changed a few summers ago when I decided it was time to “git good” and started playing “for real”. There isn’t really a secret to improving at competitive video games. Pretty much no matter which game you play the answer is the same: workshop maps. These specialized training tools are designed to help players practice one or two specific skills without the pressure of real consequences but while still maintaining high fidelity gameplay.
For Rocket League, the most common such tool is the Ice Rings Aerial Car Control Map, created by former professional player Lethamyr. It’s a grueling exercise where you fly through a series of obstacles in order to reach a checkpoint. There aren’t other players, there isn’t even a ball. It’s just you and the rings and a simple question: can you do it?
Here’s what a typical session of Rocket League looked like for me before I started playing “for real”:
- Boot up the game
- Play Ranked – 1 – 2 hrs
- Hop Off
Here’s what a typical session of Rocket League looked like for me after I started playing “for real”:
- Boot up the game
- Free Play warmup – 5 mins
- Ice Rings – 15 minutes
- Eversax’s Olympic Training – 45 mins
- Flick (3x 500m+) – 5 mins
- Pinch (1x 1000m+) – 5 mins
- Air Dribble (levels 1 – 5) – 10 mins
- Shooting (22/25+) – 10 mins
- Defense (until satisfactory) – 15 mins
- Post warmup Free Play session – 5 mins
- Play Ranked until one Loss – 5 – 25 mins
- Hop Off
And it worked. I quickly climbed out of the top 10% and into the top 5%. And then into the top 1%. And I was elated to see my effort pay off. And I was exhausted. The game had ceased to be leisure. It was now playbour.
I don’t really have anything else to say about the experience than that it was complicated. There were good parts and bad parts. I’ve decided to be a “sh*tter” again (for now), playing just to enjoy the game and not only to win. And that’s worked too.
