By The Intrepid in Folktales — 12 Jun 2025

The Dungeon as Neoliberal Exploitation Device

An Economic Anthropology of Fantasy Capitalism

Introduction: Situating the Dungeon in Critical Fantasy Studies

Building on John Molyneux's Marxist analysis of Tolkien's critique of industrial capitalism and Kennedy & Shapiro's examination of neoliberalism's "fantasy work," we argue that the fantasy dungeon represents the purest expression of neoliberal logic: a space where subjects willingly enter systems designed for their exploitation, paying for the privilege while believing themselves empowered.

While scholars have identified fantasy literature's capacity for political critique—from Tolkien's romantic medievalism to contemporary analyses of meritocracy in Harry Potter and Percy Jackson—the dungeon represents a previously unexamined site where these critiques converge. Unlike traditional fantasy narratives that maintain romantic illusions, the dungeon strips away narrative comfort to reveal the pure mechanics of what we might call "ludic neoliberalism."

This analysis employs what we term "ludic materialism"—examining how game-like structures embed and materialize abstract economic relations. Unlike textual analysis of published fantasy literature, this approach treats the dungeon as a playable system that makes visible the otherwise obscured processes of neoliberal subjectification.

The adventurer emerges as the archetypal neoliberal subject—entrepreneur of their own destruction, consumer of their own commodification, and producer of value through their very elimination. They embody what Wendy Brown describes as the "economized subject," where all human activity becomes understood through market logic, including the logic of their own expenditure.

The Dual Nature of Adventurer-as-Subject

Consumer Identity: Purchasing Experience

Adventurers enter dungeons as customers expecting a product, exemplifying what online critics have identified as fantasy's promotion of "meritocratic neoliberal ideology." They pay entry fees, purchase equipment, and often subscribe to premium services ("Dungeon Prime™: No lines. More chests."). This consumer relationship creates the illusion of agency—they are choosing participants in a market transaction, not victims of systemic exploitation.

The dungeon industry has perfected what Maurizio Lazzarato calls "immaterial labor"—the production of subjectivity itself. Extending Kennedy & Shapiro's analysis of neoliberalism's "cultural fantasy work," adventurers don't just buy access to a space; they purchase an identity transformation, the possibility of becoming "heroic." The dungeon sells them the story of themselves.

This commodification of identity operates through what Eva Illouz terms "emotional capitalism"—the transformation of emotional and spiritual experiences into market goods. The dungeon packages courage, purpose, and self-actualization as purchasable experiences, creating what Benjamin calls "the aura" around commodity consumption.

Resource Identity: Value in Death

Simultaneously, adventurers function as raw materials in a complex extraction economy, revealing what Molyneux identifies as fantasy's capacity to expose capitalist exploitation. Their labor power is harvested through unpaid quality assurance testing of traps and puzzles. Their behavioral data feeds algorithmic optimization systems. Their bodies become inputs for recycling operations that resell their possessions to subsequent adventurer-consumers.

Most critically, their deaths generate what we might call "aesthetic capital"—the atmospheric value that authenticates the dungeon experience for future customers. Each corpse adds to the dungeon's "vibe valuation," creating what Marx would recognize as dead labor crystallized into exchange value.

This dual exploitation mirrors what Christian Marazzi describes in contemporary capitalism: subjects who are simultaneously consumers of their own exploitation and producers of the surplus value extracted from them.

The Three Phases of Value Extraction

Pre-Death: Labor and Capital Extraction

Before their demise, adventurers perform substantial unpaid labor that exemplifies the "gig economy" logic scholars have identified in contemporary fantasy narratives. They test trap mechanisms, identify design flaws, and provide real-time user experience feedback. This constitutes what Tiziana Terranova calls "free labor"—work performed by consumers that appears voluntary but generates corporate value.

Adventurers also represent capital investment, purchasing equipment that will eventually be reclaimed and resold. They function as what David Harvey terms "capital in motion"—their consumption drives markets in weapons, armor, and magical items, while their predictable mortality ensures constant demand.

The pre-death phase also harvests what Gilles Deleuze calls "control societies" mechanisms—continuous monitoring, behavioral prediction, and algorithmic adjustment based on adventurer performance metrics. Every sword swing generates telemetry; every puzzle solution refines difficulty algorithms.

During-Death: Spectacle and Narrative Production

The moment of adventurer death produces what Guy Debord theorizes as "spectacular" value—entertainment that mediates social relations through images rather than direct experience. Live-streamed dungeon runs on "Twitch of the Damned" transform death into content, generating advertising revenue and subscription fees.

This phase exemplifies what Jean Baudrillard describes as the transformation of reality into simulation. The "authentic" heroic experience becomes a performed authenticity for audiences who consume the simulation of adventure without its material risks.

The narrative production during death creates what Walter Benjamin calls "storytelling" value—but inverted. Rather than communal meaning-making, these stories become intellectual property, licensed and monetized across media platforms. The adventurer's final words become trademarked content.

Post-Death: Material and Memorial Monetization

After death, adventurers enter what might be called the "posthuman economy" of value extraction. Their material possessions are processed through what Rob Nixon calls "slow violence"—systemic harm that appears natural rather than manufactured. The violence of their recycling is obscured through euphemistic corporate language about "asset recovery" and "sustainable resource management."

Their memories and stories become what Jodi Dean terms "communicative capitalism"—content that circulates endlessly, generating engagement and data while evacuating political meaning. Memorial plaques become marketing devices; biographical details become product descriptions for resold equipment.

Most perversely, their deaths generate what Lauren Berlant calls "cruel optimism"—the attachment to conditions of possibility that are actually impediments to flourishing. Each documented adventurer death sustains the fantasy that the next adventurer might succeed, maintaining the system's legitimacy through the promise of exceptional outcomes.

Neoliberal Subjectification Mechanisms

Risk as Responsibility

The dungeon system perfectly embodies what Ulrich Beck calls the "risk society," where systemic dangers are reframed as individual choices. Adventurers are told that dungeon death results from inadequate preparation, poor teamwork, or insufficient skill—never from the systematic design of spaces intended to kill them.

This represents what Wendy Brown identifies as neoliberalism's key operation: the transformation of political problems into technical ones, and social issues into individual responsibilities. The dungeon's mortality rate becomes a matter of adventurer competence rather than structural violence.

Entrepreneurial Selfhood

Adventurers embody what Michel Foucault calls "entrepreneurial subjectivity"—the requirement to treat oneself as a business enterprise. They must invest in equipment, develop skills, manage reputation, and optimize performance metrics. Their heroic identity becomes what Pierre Bourdieu terms "cultural capital" that must be constantly accumulated and deployed.

This entrepreneurial mandate operates through what Maurizio Lazzarato calls "subjective machines"—apparatuses that produce particular forms of subjectivity. The adventuring party functions as a micro-enterprise, with each member responsible for their own "human capital development" while collectively generating surplus value for the dungeon economy.

Gamification of Exploitation

The dungeon exemplifies what Tiziana Terranova calls "digital capitalism's" core strategy: the gamification of work and consumption. Experience points, loot acquisition, and level progression transform systematic exploitation into achievement systems.

This operates through what Byung-Chul Han calls "achievement society"—the replacement of disciplinary power with the internalized demand for constant self-optimization. Adventurers police their own performance through metrics that align personal fulfillment with corporate value extraction.

Manufactured Agency

The dungeon creates what Jodi Dean calls "the illusion of participation" within systems designed to exclude meaningful agency. Adventurers choose their equipment, their companions, their strategies—but never the fundamental structure that ensures their expendability.

This mirrors what Colin Crouch describes as "post-democracy"—maintaining democratic forms while evacuating democratic content. Adventurers have consumer choice within a system that eliminates political choice about the system's existence.

The dungeon operates through what Lauren Berlant calls "aspirational normativity"—the promise that proper performance within exploitative systems will eventually yield escape from exploitation. The rare successful adventurer becomes proof that the system works, rather than evidence of its systematic failure.

This aspirational mechanism functions through what Sara Ahmed calls "the promise of happiness"—the idea that certain life paths (heroic adventure) will deliver fulfillment, despite evidence that these paths primarily serve capital accumulation rather than human flourishing.

Methodological Innovation: Ludic Materialism

This analysis contributes to the emerging "fantasy as protest" movement by demonstrating how game mechanics can serve as critical theory praxis. While traditional literary criticism examines textual representations of economic systems, ludic materialism analyzes how interactive systems materialize economic relations through player participation.

The dungeon functions as what we might call a "neoliberal simulator"—a space where abstract economic processes become embodied experience. Unlike the romantic critiques Molyneux identifies in Tolkien, or the implicit ideological reinforcement critics find in contemporary fantasy series, the dungeon makes neoliberal logic playable and therefore critically examinable.

This methodological approach reveals how game mechanics embed political relations not through narrative representation but through structural participation. Players don't just read about exploitation; they perform it, experience it, and potentially recognize it through embodied play.

Implications: The Dungeon as Diagnostic

The fantasy dungeon reveals neoliberalism's ultimate logic: the transformation of humanoid subjects into voluntary resources for capital accumulation. It demonstrates how market mechanisms can make exploitation appear as empowerment, death as achievement, and systematic violence as individual choice.

Perhaps most critically, the dungeon shows how neoliberalism operates through the production of particular forms of subjectivity—subjects who desire their own exploitation, who find meaning in their own expenditure, and who understand their value primarily through their contribution to systems that destroy them.

The adventurer's willingness to pay for their own commodification represents not false consciousness but the successful operation of what Mark Fisher calls "capitalist realism"—the inability to imagine alternatives to market-mediated social relations, even when those relations are literally fatal.

Conclusion: Beyond Literary Critique

While scholars like Molyneux have identified fantasy's critique of industrial capitalism, and Kennedy & Shapiro have analyzed neoliberalism's cultural fantasies, the dungeon represents a previously unexamined site where these critiques converge into systematic praxis. Unlike Tolkien's nostalgic medievalism or contemporary fantasy's meritocratic narratives, the dungeon strips away romantic illusions to reveal the pure mechanics of neoliberal subjectification.

Understanding the dungeon as a neoliberal device illuminates how contemporary capitalism operates through the production of consent rather than simple coercion. The adventurer's enthusiasm for their own exploitation mirrors the broader neoliberal subject's investment in systems designed to exhaust them.

The dungeon's particular horror lies not in its violence but in its voluntarism—the way it transforms systematic predation into personal choice, collective exploitation into individual adventure, and structural violence into entertainment commodity.

This analysis suggests new directions for critical fantasy studies: examining how interactive systems embed economic relations, how gameplay mechanics naturalize exploitative logics, and how "ludic materialism" might serve as both analytical method and political praxis. Breaking from dungeon logic requires recognizing that the problem is not adventurer unpreparedness but the existence of systems that require adventurer death to function. It demands moving beyond optimizing performance within exploitative systems toward questioning why such systems exist at all.

The dungeon asks us: What would it mean to refuse the invitation to our own commodification? What forms of collective organization might emerge if we stopped treating our exploitation as our empowerment? These questions extend far beyond fantasy literature into the heart of contemporary political possibility.