“In Medieval Northern Europe, courtly love was capitulated as ‘the great game,’ and a ‘game of chance’ in which unmarried knights attempted to acquire the favour of the most powerful woman on the estate, testing their mettle against her husband, the Lord. In Medieval European contexts, recorded romantic expression was often not for one’s spouse, but for the idealised wife of the Feudal Lord. It is the erotic dimension of love that gradually takes centre stage in modern European culture. Deemed a scandalous expression of secularism, ‘fin’amors’ (‘elegant or aristocratic love’), courtly love was a game devised and played by men, exalting masculine values, Love, situating women as lure and prize.The Lord himself, might mobilise his wife as ‘bait’ as a means of ultimately drawing the knights closer to him. These tensions were dramatized by romance literature and poetry, in which courtly love became known as ‘the great game’. Thus, winning the favour of the Lady not only indicated an increased advantage over peers, but potentially over the Lord himself.

Shoshana Zuboff (2019) claims smartphones become increasingly difficult to distinguish from the body of the user, contributing to the increasingly compulsive use of digital apps.

It is questionable whether the ‘relationship’ here is between ‘users,’ or between user and digital corporation, often personified by the entrepreneur of Silicone valley.

Like other digital platforms, Tinder, owned by Match Group Inc., capitalises
upon user data through methods such as tracking online behaviour and location to target advertising; trading data to data brokers; and entraining AI systems. Digital platforms and apps utilise compulsive, often addictive, game structures first observed in casino environments. In her analysis of gambling architectures, Natasha Schull (2005) claims that contemporary game designers aspire to the creation of a “total machine,” where play can adapt to the speed and preference of every player. Digital gambling venues improve user comfort and blood circulation, reflecting the improved circulation of capital and extended play.

Like today’s market paradigm of high frequency trading, where traders depend on nanosecond differences in fibre optic cables to gain competitive advantage, we too are beholden to connection speed and adrenal reflex, lest we lose our advantage over one of many million possible competitors. From this perspective, it is possible to consider dating platforms as forms of labour performed for digital corporations that mirror digital gambling strategies. Their success is due, in part, to the way that human qualities can increasingly be understood as quantities, to be hedged or invested.(…)”

fragments of
Lee Mackinon’s essay
“Love, Games and Gamification”