Paolo Pedercini
Associate Professor | Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA, UNITED STATES
Paolo Pedercini's artistic practice deals with the relationship between electronic entertainment and ideology.
Biography
Paolo Pedercini is a game developer, artist and educator. His artistic practice deals with the relationship between electronic entertainment and ideology. Working under the project name “molleindustria,” he produces videogames addressing various social issues such as environmental justice (McDonald’s videogame, Oiligarchy, Phone Story), religion (Faith Fighter) and labor and alienation (Every Day the Same Dream, Unmanned, To Build a Better Mousetrap). Molleindustria obtained extensive media coverage and critical acclaim while hopping between digital art, academia, game industry, media activism and internet folk art. In addition to his studio practice, Pedercini advocates for independent and socially conscious gamemaking.
Areas of Expertise (6)
Environmental Justice
Internet Folk Art
Social Issues
Video Games
Digital Art
Media Activism
Media Appearances (5)
Finding Connection and Resisting Extraction in Quarantine Gaming
Edge Effects online
2021-04-20
As game designer Paolo Pedercini argues, many developers know that their systems intentionally bring about Weberian rationalization: the “replacement of traditions, customs and emotions as motivators of human conduct in favor of quantification and calculation.” Pedercini spoke about this in a 2014 IndieCade talk titled “Videogames and the Spirit of Capitalism,” beginning by exploring how games are designed for addiction
‘Pokémon Sleep’ Wants to Gamify Your Dreams
Vice online
2019-05-29
“We can think of the evolution of video games as a race to capture new spaces and parts of our everyday life,” Paolo Pedercini, a game designer and associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told VICE. “The bedroom is one of the spaces that are still relatively untouched by play technologies. Sleep patterns are valuable source of data for marketers, so there will be attempts to monetize them. The gamification/commodification of sex and dreams are likely to be the next steps. Unless, of course, we stop centering our whole economy on the business of screwing people over.”
The Division 2 And The Severing Of Politics From Video Games
The New Yorker online
2019-03-15
In recent years, video-game developers have continued to borrow politically charged settings while arguing that, unlike Suffragetto or Juden Raus!, their games remain, as Ubisoft’s C.E.O. put it, politically impartial. Partly, this is a result of backlash from players. “Publishers are aware that there is a militant fringe of gamers that don’t want to see any politics, or, at least, progressive politics, in their hobby,” Paolo Pedercini, an Italian game designer who teaches experimental-game design at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, said. “They may not represent a majority, but they are vocal and eager to start another battle in the ongoing culture war.”
The game changers: meet the creatives shaking up the gaming world
The Guardian online
2018-08-19
Since 2003, Pedercini, working under the moniker Molleindustria, has earned a reputation for little games that make a major impact. A pioneer of the “serious games” movement, the cutesy aesthetic of Pedercini’s work often masks its bruising satirical content, which addresses social and environmental justice, religion, labour and sexuality.
When Your Day Job Is Also Your Favorite Video Game
Vice online
2016-03-24
Notions of measurable productivity are programmed into the fiber of most video games. Control, gaugeable progress, streamlined processes and known goals—all the trappings of job satisfaction—are also the elementals of gaming. Game developer and Carnegie Mellon professor Paolo Pedercini, who created the existential vignette game Every Day the Same Dream about white collar employment, is preoccupied by the portrayal of labor and capitalism in gaming.
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