This week in Notes from North PhiladelphiaTongyu Wu, author of Play until submission, writes about her “Triple Cultural Outsider’s Adventure”.

Play until submission stems from the research adventure of a China-educated PhD student and explores the enigmatic playful culture of Silicon Valley’s technology companies. When I began my graduate studies in the US in 2010, I could never have imagined that Silicon Valley would become the focus of my PhD. However, as I gradually established my academic identity, two things became clear.

First, as an antinomian Chinese scholar, I resisted the notion that researchers from developing countries should focus exclusively on their home country. I wanted to research “Western world” issues just like scholars from the West. Second, as a sociologist, I knew early on that I wanted to devote my work to labor research. But my rebellious nature pushed me to deviate from the conventional focus on service work that prevailed in 2015 and instead to research understudied work and occupations—types of work that represent the future.

After a summer of hesitation, Silicon Valley came into play in 2012. After spending another year or two reading, I entered the tech world believing I was well prepared. I joined Behemoth (pseudonym), the tech company I was researching, with the idea that nice-to-haves like gaming TV stands, video game consoles, pinball machines, and Nerf guns were mere gimmicks, a facade of corporate culture designed to distract. Based on previous ethnographers, I expected engineers to tire of this “fun” environment. But when I came across the Code Review Roulette game, my assumptions were shattered.

Imagine this: engineers faced with the dreaded task of code review invented a game reminiscent of Russian roulette. The rules were brutal: “Whoever gets the bullet gets the CR!” Watching Jay load a toy revolver, spin the cylinder, and pull the trigger at his temple was nerve-wracking, but he survived the empty chamber. Peter was next, muttering nervously that the odds were in his favor (“That can’t be me… The odds are slim! Only one in six.”). Charlie, the analyst, calmed Peter down with math: He turned to the whiteboard and wrote Peter’s odds as an equation: “(5/6) * (1/6) = 5/36.” Despite his fear, Peter also escaped the bullet. But when it was Charlie’s turn, the game ended with a bang, and he took over the code review task.

That moment was a wake-up call for me. The chaotic fun I had dismissed was much more spontaneous and authentic than I had imagined. It wasn’t just a company gimmick, but deeply rooted in their work process. Behemoth had turned reality into a game. The question now is what really goes on behind the scenes of playful play.

To solve this cultural puzzle, I used my dual status as a cultural outsider as a Chinese person and as a gaming amateur. When I saw a “Dungeon Master” hat and a manual titled “A Dungeon Master’s Guide to Software Development” being passed around during a software design meeting, I asked Jack, “What is a Dungeon Master and why is this relevant here?” Jack’s reaction was utter disbelief. “You don’t know D&D?” he asked, confused. This may be surprising for an American, but as a Chinese person, the world of Dungeons & Dragons was foreign to me. Jack, of course, could not accept that there were people on Earth who did not know Dungeons & Dragons, so he explained D&D and its parallels to software development to me in detail.

Under Jack’s guidance, I saw the software development team in a new light. The D&D framework transformed their routine work into an epic narrative. Team members, now metaphorical warriors, wizards, and oracles, navigated the unpredictable terrain of code with the same determination found in a fantasy realm. This narrative portrayed the constant twists and turns and uncertainties of software development as adventurous detours full of surprises and excitement. This playful lens transformed the drudgery of “crunch mode” into a narrative of triumph and adventure. Engineers stayed up nights battling “pirates” (bug spikes) and hijacking “ferries” (ingenious algorithms) to keep their projects afloat.

Through this revelation of my cultural naivety, I began to crack the code of behemoth culture. The D&D story was merely the entry point into a world of gamification. Wild games dominated the engineering floor. Racing games pitted engineers against machines (and each other) to quickly restore systems, spiced up with leaderboards. Completing scattered tasks within the minimally viable products became a game of badge-collecting. Prank games brought hacker humor to routine tasks.

As I became familiar with Behemoth’s gaming history, I became an attentive audience. Yet I knew I would never be a true gamer, as I was not deeply immersed in gaming culture. But why were these engineers so invested? The answer emerged from conversations in which the term “gamer” was frequently mentioned. It became clear that most engineers were born between 1979 and 2000, which linked them to the rise of the video game industry and they probably referred to themselves as the “gamer generation.”

As I looked at these engineers through their gamer identities, a harsh truth about the tech world revealed itself. For these gamers, the gamified environment was not just entertainment, but a necessity. The world of Behemoth was their reality, which was in stark contrast to their sparse home lives, which were usually limited to a bedroom with four walls and a $30 inflatable bed. This escapism drove them to immerse themselves in the company’s constructed wonderland until they became addicted. Ben’s story was particularly revealing. He always expressed how lucky he felt to have this job at Behemoth, as he was able to make money doing what he was passionate about and hang out with like-minded friends all the time. However, right after I left Behemoth, I learned that Ben suddenly quit by simply getting up from his desk one day, giving the manager his ID, and leaving. Perhaps he had reached his limit—records show that Ben logged into the work system for nearly twenty hours a day.

My adventure in the tech world brought another layer of unpredictability, as I married a Chinese software engineer in the middle of my research work. This marriage gave me two new identities: the wife of an engineer and the girlfriend of many Chinese engineers. To put it in engineering terminology, I now had the opportunity to play two new characters and explore even more fascinating detours.

As an engineer’s wife, I witnessed firsthand how gaming-based work relationships affected our family life. Almost every evening, my husband would rush to his STEAM account and engage in virtual battles with his software development team late into the night. Our interactions dwindled to a few minutes before bed. When I asked him if he enjoyed the game, he explained that he played not only for fun, but also out of a sense of duty – to build a relationship with his development team.

When I was friends with many Chinese engineers, I saw them struggling in the gamified tech world. My friends were confused by their white colleagues’ obsession with these games and often met to discuss strategies for participating and fitting in. When I asked them if they really needed to get involved in these games, their answer was clear: “Of course.” They understood that their outsider positions regarding games seamlessly translated into a peripheral working status on the team. So they had to overcome all obstacles to participate. Such is the nature of this work culture.

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