Working as Playing? Consumer Labor and the Guild of Online Gaming in China.

The interactive online gaming industry is increasingly bolstered by the bottom-up energy of consumer participation and innovation. Given the contribution of the gamers made to the industry in terms of revenues and popularity of the games, it is no longer sufficient to describe them as mere consumer; rather, the discourse of consumer labor proffers a better framework to understand the change. Compared to guilds in other countries, Chinese guilds are larger in scale, more formally organized and better integrated into the commercial operation of the Chinese gaming industry. Taking Chinese online gaming guilds as my subject of study, I argue that the guild serves paradoxically as a unit for biopolitical control, aiding game companies in channeling and monetizing consumer labor, and as a site of empowerment and innovation, helping guild gamers valorize their labor while facilitating institutional changes to accommodate the rise of consumer labor. In discussing their implications, I have situated the dynamic institutional and subjective transformations in the transition to a Post-Fordist society and the specific context of Chinese cultural and information industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]