Paying to win, part 2: Serialization, power creep, and late capitalism in hearthstone

Abstract

This paper discusses power creep in the digital game card Hearthstone (Blizzard, 2012), questioning it from the perspectives of mediatization, serialization and late capitalism. The goal is to politicize the issue by pointing to the overlapping of contemporary cultural industry with game’s epistemological and ontological perspectives. We undertake the effort to review some theories of mediatization, observing the particularities of serialization in games. To achieve the main goal, we set out for an exploratory empirical analysis of professional players discourse on YouTube, revealing traces that help us locate the agency of late capitalism and serialization in Hearthstone’s power creep. Finally, we reinforce the need to scrutinize the contemporary entertainment industry, as well as the need to (re) think understandings about digital games and their cultures.