core post 4

While WoW wasn’t one of the MMO’s that I played growing up, Nakamura’s discussion around the racialization of these virtual communities and environments certainly resounded with my past and recent experiences within MMO and gaming communities. She examines the phenomenon of gold farming, one strand of “pay-to-play” or “play-to-win” services, as an entry-point to dispelling the neoliberal myth of the classless and raceless utopian spaces and communities within online gaming. If neoliberalism “is premised on the notion of colorblindness”, then it is also the means and rhetorical strategies through which such discriminatory rhetoric becomes “permissible” within these worlds; “The notion that it is permissible to condemn someone for how they behave rather than what they are is a technique for avoiding charges of racism…” (37). Although I appreciated Nakamura’s argument and approach in the essay, I was left wanting more coverage on the material “side of things”. Even though she focuses on the racialization of online social spaces that “players bring to the game” in order to unpack the celebratory discourse around players and fan practices as “progressive” and “socially productive”, she teased the rough conditions and environments of the gold famers in China. Certainly, there is a lot to be discussed around the unregulated labor practices of these gold farming factories, such as work hours, pay, lack of unionization, living conditions, and gender (most of the gold farmers are young males) etc. Years ago, I watched a documentary produced by a PhD candidate from UCSD Communication that specifically addressed these concerns. I’ll post them separately. 

Continuing with the week’s theme of labor and Nakamura’s emphasis on race, I thought that the recent policy changes around the League of Legend’s professional North American league was timely. League of Legends (LoL) is the most played video game around the world with over 100 million players every month. Naturally, this means that the game has a huge player-base incentivizing Riot Games to professionalize the game and its players to capitalize on the popularity as well as ever-increasing player-skill and knowledge. Currently, there are many professional leagues in different regions of the world, but the biggest regions comprise of North American, Europe, China, and Korea. From what I understand, teams within each region are required to have players that are citizens of the regions. In other words, a North American team must have players that were born within North America. That is, until recently. In the past offseason, the North American LoL region (LCS), allowed more “imports” to fill in the rosters for each North American team. This means that NA teams can sign additional players from other regions to team contracts. One of the teams that I follow, Team Liquid, has just signed a player from Europe. Currently, the team’s comprised of 1 North American player, 2 South Korean players, and 2 European players. Within the LoL community, this rhetoric of imports as well as regionization of players and professional players leads to racial and regional discourses circulating within the online forum and game spaces. However, the disparity between labor conditions among the regions must also be addressed and considered alongside the racial and transnational implications of such regionalization/globalization. China and South Korea’s professional leagues are known for extensive daily work hours, with some days lasting as long as 18 hours of “play”. Certainly, future scholarship around this topic must closely examine and distinguish between “work” and “play”. But more importantly, I found it interesting that many of the North American “imports” from China and South Korea noted on the difference of culture not only within “North America” (which is really SoCal), but North American teams, referencing the lack of regulation around labor conditions and labor policies of Riot Game’s professional “players”. But as I’ve been hinting, there must be a line drawn at some point between players and workers. As Nakamura emphasizes, the utopia of online virtual spaces and communities is only a myth, and eSports certainly falls within these same parameters.