Sociotechnical Scale| Scaling Digital Labor in Gaming Guilds: Metaverse Workers as Imaginaries of Futurity

Abstract

Yield Guild Games (YGG), a prominent blockchain gaming guild based in the Philippines, operates on different scales of labor. It extends as an intermediary that helps players navigate cryptocurrency-based work opportunities and their associated risks. This study focuses on the emergence of new labor collectives, such as gaming guilds, in the case of YGG, by examining their operation within a multi-scalar organization of work at the micro (individual), meso (organizational), and macro (platform) levels. Understanding these distinct scales can provide broad insight into how collective organization emerges in blockchain gaming labor. Work performed within blockchain-enabled virtual environments makes use of platform-based economic mechanisms (cryptocurrencies, NFTs, token rewards) for financial sustenance, organized through collective arrangements, such as gaming guilds. It can be perceived as unstable due to the negative reputation associated with blockchain-enabled virtual environments. In this case study, we aim to acknowledge that blockchain gaming can be both a site of liberation through economic empowerment and a space of imagined better futures, while also possibly masking underlying reinforcement of colonial legacies. This research addresses the following question: How do gaming guilds organize blockchain gaming labor across multiple scales, and what does this reveal about power dynamics in emerging digital work?