{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","uuid":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","normalized_title":"digitallabortheinternetasplaygroundandfactory","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","isbns":["9780415896948","9780415896955","9780203145791"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":267,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/DIGITAL%20LABOR%20THE%20INTERNET%20AS%20PLAYGROUND%20AND%20FACTORY","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/search"},"page":{"printed_page":191,"pdf_page":198,"physical_index":198,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a483661fad391e0a6487876d53941c23df6a57cfd7e7ca770de3ab40da0517fc"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"MUDs—virtual communities based upon gift economies that were distinguished by their key differences from the real world of capital, labor, and profit— have given way to for-profit virtual worlds that increasingly dominate the media landscape. This has created an increasingly polarized social environment; one divided into leisure players and player-workers, virtual property buyers and laborer/ sellers, and Asians and non-Asians. Asian “farmers\" or virtual capital laborers have a significant cultural and social impact on MMOs. Though not all farmers, or for-profit workers, are Asian by any means, the image of the farmer has come to include race as part of the package. This racialization of the player-worker in online social spaces is actively constructed by WoW fans, who have produced an extensive body of writing and digital cinema that cybertypes Asian farmers as unwanted, illegal, and antisocial workers (Nakamura 2002).\n\nIn an essay on the social lives of guilds in WoW, Dmitri Williams (2006: 358) asks, “How is race being managed within the anonymity of avatar space?\" While Castronova (2005) and Julian Dibbell (2006) have produced excellent book-length treatments of digital economies in online gaming spaces, there is little scholarship on the way that the rapidly expanding economies of MMORPGs are creating differentially racialized profiles, images, and behaviors (see Chan 2006; Yee 2006) While WoW and other MMOs do permit users to choose their own avatars within the range offered by the game's protocols, they are far from anonómous spaces for avatars. Race is indeed managed in MMOs, both by the affordances or rules of the game and by the game's players. While others have noted that the game narrative is structured around the notion of racial conflict between distinct races that players must choose, my focus here is upon the racializations that players bring to the game (Gotanda 2004). Player resentment against Asian player-workers results in a continual process of profiling other avatars to determine their status aslegitimate leisure players or as unwanted farmers. Player class (as Yee 2005 notes, rogues and hunter class avatars are often chosen by player-workers because they can accumulate saleable property without needing to group with other players), language use or unwillingness to speak to other players, equipment type, and repetitive behaviors are noted by other players as evidence that a player is a Chinese gold farmer. Although these behaviors, player classes, uses of language, and equipment types are often employed by other leisure players, prejudice against farmers who are “ruining the game\" results in the production of media texts that reproduce familiar\n\nDon't Hate the Player, Hate the Game\n\n191","previous_page":190,"next_page":null}