The Game of Loyalt(o)y: Diversions and Divisions in Network Society

This paper maps the biography of a new media product as a way of exploring how a network society is emerging. While Castells identifies the importance of the spirit of informationalism, he leaves the ethics of this culture relatively under-developed. Focusing on the development of a computer game for employee training purposes, the paper argues that some of the characteristics of play – its holding or hooking power, its ability to break down the distinction between pretence and belief, and its role in the development of gaming skills – may be relevant here. It further suggests that play has the potential to contribute to divisions as well as to diversions, and in this way contribute to the dis-embedding and re-embedding of individuals, and to changes in relations of power and inequality.