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Karitta Christina Zellerbach
Professor John Sanbonmatsu
IMGD 2001 Paper 3
March 2nd 2018
Capitalism, Aggression, and Race in RuneScape
RuneScape, a fantasy MMORPG developed by Jagex, currently boasts over 200 million
player accounts created and is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world's largest
free MMORPG and the most-updated game (Jagex). Thus, as an influential medium through
which players experience culture, and as a wide social platform connecting players from around
the world, it has the power to make statements about society, and the structures, prejudices and
systems of power that exist within.
Contradictory to what may be suggested by the connotations of a “Free-to-play” (F2P)
game, consumerism is thriving in the world of RuneScape. Within the game exists “The Grand
Exchange”, a system where players can buy and sell items, without having to interact with one
other, or engage in any form of communication. It is all mediated through the interface of the
Grand Exchange. However, with the economy of RuneScape acting as a large component of the
game, the focus of many players suddenly shifts to the accumulation of material wealth, rather
than the other parts of the game, such as skilling, questing and cooperative play. This shift in
attention has become such that player demand allowed for the establishment of industries and
websites dedicated to “gold farming”, where workers spend hours accumulating gold and
material wealth in the game in order to sell it for real-world currency. Furthermore, while the
game is free, this is only to a very limited extent. The game offers a monthly subscription
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package which gives players access to a wider variety of skills, quests, explorable areas and
much more. It also changes the label of free players to “members”, which creates a sense of
belonging to a superior group. However, it doesn’t stop there. RuneScape is very much a
“Pay-to-win” game, in that players can use real-world currency to obtain in-game advantages
over other players. Once again, this shifts the purpose of the game from enjoyment and
entertainment to status and domination, which occurs when developers capitalize on how players
can be incentivized. In RuneScape, players can buy cosmetic overrides, additional bank space,
“auras” that can be activated for special effects or combat bonuses and even “lamps” that will
give the player experience in a skill, reducing the time they need to spend on tedious tasks as
would be required otherwise. Once free of “Pay-to-win” microtransactions, RuneScape, like so
many other games, is now “being shaped, contained, controlled, and channelled within the
long-standing logic of a commercial marketplace dedicated to the profit-maximizing sale of
cultural and technological commodities.” (Kline et al, p. 21)
Moreover, the obsession with the accumulation of achievement diffuses into other parts
of the game, with the existence “power levelers”, who, similar to “gold farmers”, charge players
real-world currency to train their characters for them. This raises the question of why so many
RuneScape players are willing to outsource their play when it is supposed to be something
enjoyable. To answer this, it is vital to examine the way that RuneScape and other MMORPGs
blur the line between work and play. In a game like Runescape, which attempts to imitate the
real world's economic system, it comes as no surprise that such a system would also replicate the
delegation of tedious labor to those who will do it for less pay. As Marcuse argues for the
existence of an advanced industrial society, “it is necessary to achieve a libidinal cathexis of the
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merchandise the individual has to buy (or sell), the services he has to use (or perform), the fun he
has to enjoy, the status symbols he has to carry” (Marcuse, p. 191). This is reflected in
RuneScape, as virtual society whose existence similarly requires their “uninterrupted production
and consumption” whereby “social needs must become individual needs, instinctual needs”
(Marcuse, p. 191). Thus, RuneScape must be capable of producing these needs, making players
invest their mental energy into all aspects of the game so that they can be controlled. Thus,
RuneScape not only requires mass production and consumption within the game mechanics but
furthermore, the consumption of the game itself, of its purchasable subscription. Thus,
RuneScape developers are “implicitly urging [players] to attain, sustain, or raise a certain level of
income in order to support the computer game playing habit” (Kline et al, p. 271), which
inadvertently or not, serves to continue the cycle of capital.
However, while Digital Play argues that “meeting the demands of marketing eventually
intersects with a “design” process” (Kline et al, p. 221), it seems that RuneScape has
transcended this, where marketing exists within the structure and mechanics of the game itself.
Perhaps leveling up skills has purposely been made tedious, with developers capitalizing on the
impatience of players, tempting them into purchasing additional features that will speed up the
process, promising a quicker route to in-game accomplishments, and by extension, player status.
Therefore, RuneScape has been created to produce consumer needs as “the commodification of
cultural experience is, above all else, an effort to colonize play in all of its various dimensions
and transform it into purely saleable form” (Kline et al, p. 284). For instance, additional bank
space can be bought so that players can store more items, trapping players in a cycle of
consumerist and materialist desires. Additionally, free players only have three spaces for “Grand
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Exchange” transactions, whilst members have eight; this naturally makes it more difficult for
free players to trade items through the Grand Exchange, making them painfully aware that they
may very well be missing out on opportunities for more accumulation of wealth. Even additions
to the user interface, such as action bars, and loot statistics can be purchased, which allow the
player to progress faster and “enhance” the play experience. As a bourgeois artifact of late
capitalism, RuneScape exhibits “purposelessness for purposes dictated by the market” (Adorno
and Horkheimer, p. 65). Thus, RuneScape is a prime example of the commodification of play
that is, contradictory to designing a fun and worthwhile experience, aimed at creating “game
players who will also, simultaneously and of necessity, be game consumers” (Kline et al, p. 283)
With this understanding, it may be useful to look at the consequences of such a system.
Within RuneScape exists the “buying gf” phenomenon, where players advertise their desires to
purchase girlfriends using in-game currency. While this exists outside of the game mechanics, it
is facilitated through the game’s free trade and chat. Thus, we see the impact of the
commodification of play leading to the commodification of player interrelationships. When
everything in the game is commodified, players lose the desire and perhaps even the ability to
produce meaningful relationships, such as can be achieved through socialization within the
game. When capitalist and consumerist ideals are exploited in games, players view socialization
solely as the opportunity for trade. With this, interpersonal relationships become commodified
products just like the items in game and women are subject to this objectification, such that “the
body becomes a commodity as a manifestation or bearer of the sexual function” (Marcuse, p.
86). Moreover, it is important to note that the majority of cases in the “buying gf” trend occurs
between male players, many posing as female players, perhaps fulfilling some male fantasy that
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wouldn’t occur otherwise, especially when 90% of the RuneScape player base is male (Jagex).
This case is a particularly interesting study, as it can be argued that this phenomenon had nothing
to do with the design of the game, but was rather solely a product of the desires of players. On
the other hand, it can also be argued and that this was encouraged through the inherent structure
of the game, which requires players to “learn to satisfy all [their] needs in terms of commodity
exchange” (Lukács, p. 91).
To examine this further, in Marx theory, a commodity is defined as “a thing which
through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind” and capitalism as a mode of
production requires “an immense accumulation of commodities” (Marx Capital, p. 27). I propose
that the “Grand Exchange” system has perpetuated this, as a form of commodity fetishism in
reification, where relations between people appear as “material relations between persons and
social relations between things” (Marx Capital, p. 48). In terms of RuneScape, “[the Grand]
exchange establishes [relations] directly between the products, and indirectly, through them,
between the [players]” (Marx Capital, p. 60). This perception of social relationships as economic
relationships among commodities exchanged in market trade in encouraged in RuneScape, where
in-game items are detached from the players who collected them and are seen to have inherent
value in themselves, rather than from the result of the labor performed to achieve them.
Furthermore, according to Marx, a commodity must also have “exchange value” (Marx Capital,
p. 27). Thus, if human companionship can be bought with in-game currency, then it too has
become a commodity in a devastating act of social alienation and estrangement. However,
perhaps the commodification of interrelationships is better attributed as a consequence of the
society of the spectacle, proposed by Guy Debord under Marxist theory, where life is the
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“immense accumulation of spectacles” (Debord, 1). Defined as the “perfect image of the ruling
economic order”, the spectacle only “plans to develop is itself” (Debord, 14). Debord argues that
mass media is not the spectacle, but rather an instrument for its development, where in turn, the
spectacle is merely an instrument for capitalism to distract and pacify the masses. Debord’s
critical approach to the spectacle resonates with Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the culture
industry, and RuneScape is dutifully playing its role in the cycle of capital, which both the
spectacle and culture industry are concerned with maintaining. Furthermore, in the modern
capitalist society of the spectacle exists the “sale of “completely equipped” blocks of time”,
which includes “the sale of sociability itself” (Debord, 152). This is such that a person views
their own existence as a commodity, because they regard every human relation as a potential
business transaction. In this perspective where RuneScape can be regarded as the sale of a block
of time, we can see cultural hegemony asserting itself, as RuneScape acts not only as a
commodity in the cycle of capital, but as an effective mechanism that trains players to conform
to the system, rather than question it. RuneScape as a capitalist artifact is concerned with
ensuring that “the more [the player] accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need,
the less he understands his own existence and his own desires.” (Debord, 30), and thus acts as a
commodity that is “crucial for the subjugation of [player’s] consciousness” (Lukács, p. 86).
In continuation of Marxist theory as it relates to RuneScape, we can see the manifestation
of estranged labor, where labor “produces itself and the worker as a commodity” (Marx 1844, p.
29) in the existence “gold farmers”, who own nothing but labor to sell and thus are “the most
wretched of commodities” (Marx 1844, p. 28). Capitalism reduces labor to a commercial
commodity to be traded on the market and empowers itself through the exploitation of the
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worker. This exploitation causes “gold farmers” to be alienated from one another, “the
estrangement of man from man” (Marx 1844, p. 32), which occurs as a result of the competitive
labor market that capitalism produces. Workers suffer from a sense of false consciousness, in
that they are pitted against one another, which combined with the cultivated and standardized
consumerist needs of RuneScape players who desire the accumulation of material wealth for the
cheapest price, continues to strengthen the forces of cultural hegemony. In this realization that is
as devastating as it is maddening, we see just how strongly capitalism has entrenched itself in
society and has consequently become a dominant part of our culture.
Moving away from Marxist theory, next is the examination of the gameplay mechanics
within RuneScape. While there exist a variety of skills available to the player, most seemingly
innocuous, such as “Farming”, “Cooking”, and “Smithing”, there also exists more aggressive
skills such as “Slayer”,“Hunter” and “Thieving”. In the “Slayer” skill, players are given tasks to
kill an arbitrary number of monsters, and thus engage in endless slaughter to regain a temporary,
superficial, and fleeting sense of accomplishment. Likewise, “Hunter” is comprised of several
different methods of poaching animals, such as box traps, deadfall traps, snares, noose wands,
and butterfly nets. However, the hunting of animals in game seems to serve no purpose besides
increasing the player’s level, in order to allow them to repeat the same thoughtless tasks with
different animals, or methods of trapping. Similarly, the “Thieving” skill encourages players to
steal from market stalls, chests, or pickpocket NPCs for trivial amounts of loot. Thus it is simply
a means of acquiring achievement for its own sake, allowing players to compare their levels to
assert some seemingly justified sense of superiority. However, this repetition of thoughtless
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virtual murder is capable of “destroying mental autonomy, freedom of thought [and]
responsibility” (Marcuse, p. 201) in players.
So while these “skills” can be seen as unethical in their nature, there exists a bigger issue
when every action in the game is made by the simple click of the mouse and “everything is an
object that yields a measurable benefit when some action is performed upon it” (Kline et al, p.
276). What differentiates clicking to kill an animal from clicking to craft leather boots? As
represented by the game mechanics, the difference is virtually nonexistent. Thus we must
consider the effect when the mental significance of such actions are presented to be equal, when
the manipulation of fabric material is equivalent to the manipulation of other beings for one’s
own success. Furthermore, in engaging in such repetitive behavior, there is the consequent result
of the desensitization to violence, especially when it is presented as a form of thoughtless
distraction. If RuneScape acts as a form of entertainment, where “amusement always means
putting things out of mind, forgetting suffering, even when it is on display” (Adorno and
Horkheimer, p. 57), perhaps then in the context of technological aggression, in which aggression
is transferred from the player to the character in which they control, it is the interruption and
frustration of the “instinctual satisfaction of the human person” that leads to “repetition and
escalation” (Marcuse, p. 263). In this case, the digital suffering viewed in RuneScape is unable to
provide any such libidinal fulfilment besides a superficial sense of accomplishment, as it only
prompts repetition that can never truly satiate the primary impulse when the responsibility of the
player is shifted to that of the character in which aggression is mediated.
However, another concept I would like to present is that essentially all skills in
RuneScape are simply stepping stones to the end result of combat. “Mining” is used to obtain
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ores, which are then turned into bars by “Smithing”, and subsequently made into various
weapons, such as arrowheads for “Fletching” arrows and armor for “Defense”. Just as logs
obtained from “Woodcutting” can be used to make fires with “Firemaking”, which can be used
with “Cooking” to cook food obtained from “Fishing”, which is then be used to replenish life
points to help in “Combat”. Despite the advertisement of an “open world” with infinite
possibilities, there seems to be no escape from the desire of domination and aggression, where
everything is a means to be the strongest killer.
The last issue considered in this paper is the representation of race in RuneScape. While
player characters themselves are customizable, from options such as gender, skin tone, and hair
color, there are still discriminatory and stereotypical representations of NPC characters, namely
the exotification of people of color. Just as Hollywood has been plagued with “lazy Mexicans,
shifty Arabs, savage Africans and exotic Asiatics” (Stam and Spence, p. 6), in RuneScape
caucasian NPCs are usually depicted as advanced members of civilization, while those of color
are reduced to primitive symbols of tribalism. This is such that the NPCs of “Man” and
“Woman” are represented as white individuals, literally setting the standard and “legitimizing
White hegemony” (Leonard, p. 6). The lack of racial and ethnic diversity in such a wide-reaching
game has real-world ramifications, as it prevents players from relating to the characters, and
instead continues the misrepresentation of minorities that effectively prolongs racial segregation
within society. Notably, in RuneScape, the only population of Arabs are bandits who live in the
desert and wield scimitars, most of which are named “Ali”, as some supposedly hilarious joke
made by the game developers. Furthermore, the only black NPCs are tribesmen who live in the
“Karamja” jungle and are equipped with spears and loincloths (Appendix Fig 2). This type of
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representation of people of color is not uncommon in video games and media, but unfortunately
only serves to further disseminate harmful stereotypes. By allowing these stereotypes to exist
within RuneScape, it acts as “elicit approval for the status quo” (Leonard, p. 8), and “just as the
logic of sexism leads to rape, so the logic of racism leads to violence and exploitation” (Stam and
Spence, p. 4).
Additionally, “Aggressiveness” is a trait in RuneScape monsters that determines if a
monster will initiate combat. While most attackable NPCs are not aggressive, there is one
exception. Bandits, who are tacitly meant to represent to Arabs, will prompt the response “A
tough-looking criminal” (Jagex) when examined in-game and furthermore, will attack any player
wearing equipment or accessories belonging to either “Saradomin” or “Zamorak”, two of the
gods in the game. This wouldn’t be so significant if it wasn’t for the fact that out of 23,700
RuneScape NPCs, this is the only instance where an NPC will attack a player based on religious
grounds. Furthermore, when attacking the player, bandits might exclaim “Time to die,
Saradominist filth!" or "Prepare to suffer, Zamorakian scum!" (Jagex), reducing the player-NPC
interaction to the simple defeat of a Machiavellian enemy. In this case, we explicitly see racism
as “the generalized … assigning of values to real or imaginary differences … in order to justify
… aggression” (Stam and Spence, p. 6). Suddenly, this medieval fantasy game seems to be
perpetuating offensive stereotypes, especially towards religious extremism in the Middle East.
Furthermore, while a minute detail and seemingly insignificant, it is important to realize the
effect of repeated exposure only continues to perpetuate harmful and discriminatory cultural
ideologies. In a space that allows for players to explore, practice, and reinforce cultural and
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social identities, RuneScape has failed to realise its potential to promote the cooperation and
mutual respect of all races.
This trend is unfortunately continued in RuneScape with the representation of gangs.
Namely, the “Menaphite” and “Bandit” gangs, who are rivals in the game, and once again both
represent Arabic stereotypes. It should also be noted that while other gangs exist in RuneScape,
such as the “Phoenix gang” and “Black Hand gang”, these gangs are predominantly white and
can actually be joined by the player as an important part of the questline. Whereas the
“Menaphite” and “Bandit” gang serve only as a collectivised enemy for the player to defeat, and
consequently limit players' choices to preconceived notions of racial bias. Just as FPS games
present monolithic, one-dimensional representations of Arabs where “the enemy is collectivized
and linguistically functionalized as 'various terrorist groups', 'militants' and 'insurgents'” (Sisler,
p. 7), RuneScape uses the terms “criminals” and “bandits”.
Video games are “devices of semiotic address that invite players to take up certain
subject positions and exercise certain options, widely or narrowly defined, within those
positions, positions that in turn replicate, reverberate with, or revise ideologies embedded in a
wide variety of cultural discourses” (Kline et al, p. 275). Therefore, as medieval fantasy game
that freely utilizes magic, monsters, gods, and other supernatural phenomena, RuneScape simply
has no excuse to perpetuate harmful and prejudicial cultural ideologies that “contribute to the
consolidation of white supremacist power” (Sisler, p. 6).
Therefore, while supposedly an escape from the real world, RuneScape acts as evidence
that even a virtual world isn't necessarily capable of detaching itself from the societal and
cultural prejudices that serve to exploit and perpetuate harmful ideologies that have so deeply
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entrenched themselves in all aspects of culture. Ultimately, RuneScape is as much a product of
cultural hegemony as it is a device to assert and maintain the system, acting as a vital part of the
spectacle. Furthermore, as a modern capitalist artifact that has allowed for commodity fetishism
within the player community, and has assisted in the commodification of human relationships
along with the estrangement of labor and the alienation of “gold farmers”, RuneScape continues
to demonstrate how “social space is invaded by a continuous superimposition of geological
layers of commodities” (Debord, 42). However, in this depressing discovery, there is still hope
for video games. In the words of Marx, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in
various ways. The point, however, is to change it” (Marx 1845, p.15). Thus in this moment of
enlightenment, the only next step is change.
Appendix
In the game, there are 27 skills the player can train. There are 4 skill types. Combat,
Gathering, Artisan, Support. The player can train in these skills and gain experience, commonly
abbreviated as XP or exp, which acts as a measure of progress in a certain skill. It is generally
obtained by performing tasks related to that skill. After gaining a certain amount of experience,
players will advance to the next level in that skill, which can result in new abilities, items, and
other achievements.
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Fig 1. Game Interface
Fig 2. Representation of Color
Fig 3. Grand Exchange Interface
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Works Cited
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2002. 94-136. Print.
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Culture, and Marketing. MQUP, 2003, https://books.google.com/books?id=5dPeI11a9u4C.
Marcuse, Herbert. Negations. Allen Lane Penguin Press, London, 1969.
Šisler, Vít. "Digital Arabs: Representation in video games." European Journal of Cultural Studies
11.2 (2008): 203-220.
Leonard, David. "Live in your world, play in ours: Race, video games, and consuming the
other." Studies in media & information literacy education 3.4 (2003): 1-9.
Stam, Robert, and Louise Spence. "Colonialism, racism and representation." Screen 24.2 (1983)
Jagex. A Friend Indeed. “Question 1 - Are you male or female? Male: 90%; Female: 10%”
(March 2008).
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Trans. Ben Fowkes. New York:
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Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. New York: International
Publishers, 1964. Print.
Marx, Karl. “Theses on Feuerbach.” Marx/Engels Selected Works: Volume One, by Friedrich
Engels, 1969, www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.pdf.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Bread and Circuses Publishing, 2012.
Lukács, György, 1885-1971. History And Class Consciousness; Studies in Marxist Dialectics.
Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1971. Print.
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