Paid to Play: Gender, Intersectionality, and Labor in Online Game Companionship

Abstract

Using interview data from game companions across 19 countries on the gaming freelancer platform E-Pal, this study explores the nature of their work and how workers’ intersectional identities relate to their work experiences. The findings suggest that gaming companionship work is a highly affective form of playbor, as producing or manipulating relationships and emotional responses is more important than gaming itself in the labor process. Game companions’ labor is also gendered and racialized on this platform. Female workers, especially Asian and Latina females, are more successful, but they experience more gender-related stereotypes and objectification. Moreover, the findings suggest that Black workers are especially marginalized. On an international labor platform such as E-Pal, languages, time zones, and local political economies shape the labor process and demonstrate unequal power relations in the global gaming industry.