”I'm afraid currency is the currency of the realm!”

This week’s readings revolved around the topics of co-creative culture and labour within computer games, which resulted in a number of different discussions on for instance gold farming, player modding, avatar re-skinning, gamification in the workplace as well as machinima. Furthermore, the presenting team went on to highlight some interesting case examples of co-creative culture and labour in computer games, of which I have chosen to elaborate furthermore upon the much debated auction house for the upcoming Diablo 3 game from Blizzard Entertainment.

Within the article Interactive Audiences? The Collective Intelligence of Media Fans Henry Jenkins elaborated upon the co-creative audience culture that throughout the last decade has sprung up around different new media artefacts such as television series as well as computer games, since “[…] we should document the interactions that occur amongst media consumers, between media consumers and media texts, and between media consumers and media producers […] audiences are gaining greater power and autonomy as they enter into the new knowledge culture. The interactive audience is more than a marketing concept and less than "semiotic democracy." However, Jenkins’ arguments about the co-creative audience culture must be understood in relation to the broader academic developments within media studies, since different researchers throughout the last decades have attempted to substitute the so-called passive audience model with a more active or participatory audience model. For instance, the media studies faculties on the universities have started educating the students in qualitative reception analysis, and different researchers in the game studies discipline likewise began to point out that the more dedicated players could be understood as a co-creative as well as immaterial labour force for the game developers. In the book Games of Empire Nick-Dyer Witheford and Greig De Peuter have for instance pointed out that “Immaterial labor is less about the production of things and more about the production of subjectivity, or better, about the way the production of subjectivity and things are in contemporary capitalism deeply intertwined”, and the authors furthermore tried to situate this phenomenon within the broader historical developments behind the computer game medium.

Chinese gold farming has for instance been accentuated as the most obvious example for immaterial labour in computer games, since the economical differences in wages between the west and the east have encouraged people to sell virtual items for real-world currencies on different online auctions houses. In the book Play Money Julian Dibbel has described the fascinating meta-game surrounding online auctions for virtual items, and he furthermore emphasised that the gold farmers often could choose to utilise different glitches as well as exploits inside the computer game in order to earn a huge amount of real-world currencies. However, the Chinese gold farmers have become a much-chastened demographic group inside the virtual communities, which is why both the game developers as well as the more player-driven cultures have attempted to prevent this phenomenon from happening through different legal and emergent methods. Constance Steinkuehler has for instance described the emergent manner, in which the different player-driven communities within the computer game Lineage began to hunt down the Chinese gold farmers that harvested the in-game items as well as resources. Furthermore, the persons that decide to purchase virtual gold or items from the Chinese gold farmers could likewise be looked down upon by the other players in the online communities, since the in-game achievements for the computer game are supposed to reflect the player’s personal skills.   

One could therefore argue that Blizzard Entertainment’s controversial decision to include an auction house in Diablo 3 that encourages the players to sell virtual items for real-world currencies might seem outright provocative to the dedicated people, who for years have been attempting to prevent the Chinese gold farming from happening inside for instance World of Warcraft. The players have therefore begun to spam the different online forums surrounding Diablo 3 with negative comments about the planned auction house, since the intermixture between the virtual currencies and the real-world currencies could break the balanced ludic experience inside the computer game. Furthermore, Blizzard Entertainment is planning to earn a certain percentage from the virtual sales on the action house, and one player has therefore emphasised the unethical paradox that “So real money goes in and none comes out. They charge you to auction, they skim the top of that auction sale, and then whatever money you get ultimately can only be handed back over to Blizz in some way.” And other players have even correlated the planned auction house for Diablo 3 with the micro-transactions in Facebook games, since the more inexperienced player easily could purchase a powerful avatar using his real-world money. However, in order to understand the reasons for the strong outcries surrounding the planned auction house for Diablo 3 one should bring Johan Huizinga’s influential idea about the so-called magic circle into the discussion, which he used to describe how play […] proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and spaces according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner.” The auction house for Diablo 3 will therefore transgress the magic circle that should delimit the computer game from its surrounding sociocultural context, and Roger Caillois likewise argued that real-world money unavoidably turned the ludic experience into a professional sport. One could therefore argue that the controversial auction house for Diablo 3 should be understood as the most recent example for a more general discussion within the game studies discipline about the relationship between ludic experiences and real-world currencies.