This double issue of Digital Culture & Society addresses the complex thematic field of the dialectics of play and labour. We will take a closer look at the problem of play and work from two overlapping, albeit not mutually exclusive, perspectives: laborious play and playful work. The term laborious play points to practices and processes that turn playful activities into hard work. Laborious play happens whenever playfulness turns into work, and may be observed in such activities such as e-sports, excessive play, 'goldfarming', and Twitch gameplay broadcasting, amongst many others. A complementary phenomenon to that of laborious play is the practice and concept of playful work. The promises of a joyful and rewarding working experience have been promoted as 'gamification' while critical voices denounce such attempts as ideology, exploitation or simply 'bullshit'.

Pablo Abend (PhD) is the scientific coordinator of the Research School 'Locating Media' at the University of Siegen. He is interested in geomedia, situated methodologies, participatory culture, and Science and Technology Studies. Sonia Fizek (Dr.) is a digital games, design and media scholar. She was senior lecturer in the School of Informatics and Design at Abertay University in Dundee. Before joining Abertay, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Fizek is an active member of the research community as an associate editor of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, and a board member for multiple initiatives and journals, such as: Digital Culture and Society Journal, Digital Games Research Association (British DiGRA), Replay. The Polish Journal of Game Studies, and Journal of the Philosophy of Games, amongst many others. Her current research focuses on the relationship between digital games and automation. She looks at self-playing games, automated gameplay, and algorithmic players to understand the essence of and the fascination with self-acting playful systems. Mathias Fuchs (Dr.) is an artist, musician and media scholar. He is the director of the Gamification Lab at Leuphana University in Lüneburg. He is a pioneer in the field of game art and is a leading scholar in game studies and directs a project on Gamification that is funded by the German Research Council (2018-2021). Karin Wenz (Dr.) is an assistant professor of Media Culture at Maastricht University, Netherlands, and director of studies of the MA Media Culture.