Chinese Gold-Farming in the 2000s

Worker Empowerment and Local Development Through Video Games-Based Digital Labor

Dados Bibliográficos

ID19003679
AutoresMatthew Ming-Tak Chew (0000-0001-5065-5652, Hong Kong Baptist University, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume18
Fascículo6
Páginas783-803
Data de publicação2022-11-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoGames and Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1555-4120 • E-ISSN: 1555-4139
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/15554120221134459
OpenAlexW4309271480
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas25

This study investigates how gold-farming contributed to worker empowerment and local development in China in the 2000s. Adopting a critical development studies perspective, I appraise the positive social impact of gold-farming but also explicate how it is constrained by the capitalist economic and authoritarian political contexts. I find that gold-farming offered workers informational mobility and low-overhead entrepreneurship opportunities and that it created employment and enhanced social order in marginalized localities. But it provided only slightly better wages and work conditions than the average Chinese factory. A major reason was exploitation by global capitalist corporations and local officials. My primary dataset was collected between 2005 and 2008 from participant observation and interviewing in three gold farms, multiple and in-depth interviews of over 40 insiders, and online documentary sources

Agriculture · Business · China · Economic growth · Economics · Empowerment · Entrepreneurship · Geography · Informal sector · Interview · Participant observation · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance