While Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and other popular AI-image systems have rekindled the debate about the future of creative work in the digital age, many cultural industries are already heavily reliant on machine learning and automation to produce content traditionally created by artists and designers. A key example is the digital games industry, where game engines, procedural content generation, and AI systems play an increasingly prominent role. In this episode, Dr. Sara Grimes (Director of the KMDI) chats with Dr. Aleena Chia, Lecturer in the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, about her research on the ongoing transformation of creative work in the digital games industry. The discussion is focused on two of Dr. Chia’s recent articles: “The Artist and the Automaton in Digital Game Production,” published in Convergence (2022); and "The Metaverse, but not the way you think: Game engines and automation beyond game development," published in Critical Studies in Media Communication (2022). 

Type of research discussed in today’s episode: political economy of communication research; digital game studies; ethnography; labour studies.

Keywords for today’s episode: procedural generated content (PCG); game engines; creative work; affective labour; automation; outsourced labour; racial capitalism; human-in-the-loop.

For more information and a full transcript of each episode, check out our website: http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/the-critical-technology-podcast/

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