We are excited to host author Marijan Did for a reading and discussion to introduce her new book Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World. Marijan will be in discussion with Jamie Sutcliffe.

This book is an insider’s account of the videogame industry telling how gaming can become a force for good:
Everything To Play For asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist, reactionary agendas. Combining cultural theory and materialist critiques with accessible language and personal anecdotes, industry insider Marijam Did engages both novices and seasoned connoisseurs. From the innovations of Pong and Doom to the intricate multiplayer or narrative-driven games, the author highlights the multifaceted stories of the gaming communities and the political actors who organise among them. Crucially, the focus also includes the people who make the games, shedding light on the brutal processes necessary to bring titles to the public.

The videogame industry, now larger than the film and music industries combined, has a proven ability to challenge the status quo. With a rich array of examples, Did argues for a nuanced understanding of gaming’s influence so that this extraordinary power can be harnessed for good.

Marijam Did is a Lithuanian-Tatar games industry critic dissecting the intersection between videogames and IRL politics. Her work has been published by the Guardian, VICE, GamesIndustry.biz, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and others. Marijam was a Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is currently a Senior Marketing Executive at a Bafta-winning videogames studio. In the past, Marijam served as the Chair of Communications Committee for Game Workers Unite International - an organisation that assisted the global push for unionisation in the videogames industry; she also co-founded GWU UK - the first legal trade union that has come out of the movement. In 2019, Marijam was nominated for GamesIndustry.biz’s 100 Women in Games as well as Campaigner of The Year at MCV UK Awards.

Jamie Sutcliffe is a writer, curator, and a publisher at Strange Attractor Press. His essays, interviews and reviews have been published by Art Monthly, Art Review, e-flux Criticism, Frieze, Rhizome and The White Review. He is the editor of Documents of Contemporary Art: Magic (Whitechapel/MIT Press) and co-editor of Weeb Theory (Banner Repeater).