Digital labor in free-to-play games: player as commodity and interaction as labor in MMOGs

ABSTRACT

As the lines between leisure and work have become increasingly indistinct, gaming has evolved from a purely recreational pastime to a productive endeavor, leading to a shift from players as consumers to players as laborers. Inspired by “women's work” studies and audience commodity theory, this research takes League of Legends (LoL) as a case to analyze how player interactions, as labor, create value within free-to-play (F2P) massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). This article employs a combination of political economic, and critical analysis to demonstrate how free-to-play games monetize player interactions within them. It also proposes a pattern for understanding the exploitation of players' labor in three phases: the labor process, remuneration settlement, and consumption. Thus, this study contributes to the digital labor debate by combining the notions of “women's work” and digital labor and extending audience commodity theory into the domain of video games. It also enriches the scholarly conversation on the monetization strategies of video games and free-to-play commodities, emphasizing the unrecognized labor inherent in player interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital labor
• MMOGs
• audience commodity
• in-game labor; women’s work

Acknowledgment

I extend my heartfelt thanks to Professor Whitney Pow for their invaluable guidance. Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful and inspiring feedback, as well as to the editors for their dedication and patience.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/806975/lol-revenue/

2 https://www.businessofapps.com/data/fortnite-statistics/

3 https://dotesports.com/apex-legends/news/how-much-money-has-apex-legends-made#:~:text=Apex%20Legends%20total%20earnings%20to%20date%20(2023)&text=The%20last%20time%20EA%20pulled,surpassed%20%242%20billion%20in%20earnings.

4 https://www.businessofapps.com/data/top-grossing-games/

5 https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Frtoacademy.com%2Fleague-of-legends%2Fgeneral%2Fbeginner-guide-to-league-of-legends%2F&psig=AOvVaw3Ysb6q_MCQzvVqADq6aPtS&ust=1639469242813000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCOC4yoSp4PQCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAU