13. Laborious playgrounds : Citizen science games as new modes of work/play in the digital age

Via citizen science games, players are invited to contribute to the production of knowledge. In their chapter, Fizek and Dippel see the games as laborious playgrounds, with qualities associated previously with leisure or pastimes and with productive or useful time. The chapter investigates citizen science games as new modes of work/play, surpassing a strictly dualistic mode of thinking and showing how the capital-oriented logic of a productive human existence is encoded into play. Fizek and Dippel argue that such blurring lines lead us into an age of post-ludification, urging us to consider these playful technologies and phenomena as empowering, engaging, and participatory, or to observe them with caution, restraint, or even suspicion.