Producing Play: The Political Economy of "Actual Play" Media

"Actual Play" (AP) is a recent genre of online videos and podcasts focusing on unscripted play of tabletop roleplaying games (TRPGs). Its most popular exemplars, such as Critical Role and The Adventure Zone, account for large revenue streams and are important cultural actors in TRPGs recent surge in popularity. However, despite widespread monetization, only a tiny fraction of AP producers earn enough to make a career of AP. This dissertation approaches AP from a political economic perspective, analysing its composition as a field of cultural production, and exploring its producers' practices in relation to questions of creative labour and what David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker term "good working lives." Building on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and in-depth qualitative interviews with 24 AP producers, it maps out relational networks with key actors that give shape to AP, including the TRPG industry, major brands like Critical Role and Dungeons & Dragons, online distribution platforms, co-production networks, and audiences. This account of the field undergirds an analysis of AP production as labour. The analysis indicates that AP producers are aware of the structural economic limitations of their craft, and underscores the importance of non-economic values, such as cultural participation, enjoyment, and community, in motivating their work. Despite AP's deep imbrication in processes of commodification and neoliberal structuration, this research speaks to its embeddedness in parallel economies of affect and play. The concluding chapter connects AP to broader evolutions in the creative economy, namely ubiquitous commodification and platformization of cultural production, and argues for the necessity of multilayered analyses of labour that are sensitive to questions of pleasure, community, and coping, as significant dimensions in the political economy of cultural production.