Construction and Negotiation of Entrepreneurial Subjectivities in the Polish Video Game Industry

Abstract

Using the framework of critical creative labour studies, I discuss Polish video game workers’ construction and negotiations of ‘entrepreneurial subjectivities’. Drawing on secondary sources and 44 interviews, I position Polish video game workers’ perspectives within the economic and socio-cultural context of a post-socialist country. I argue that entrepreneurial discourses were developed in relation to the industry’s socio-historical development, the government’s promotional initiatives, and on-going precarization of employment in the Polish labour market. This contribution discusses the tensions between claimed meritocratic nature of the industry and pervasiveness of informality; between the requirements of sociality and the exclusionary mechanisms of local occupational community; between the interviewees’ acknowledgement of inequalities and the emphasis on individual responsibility and resilience.