poster

The Rise and Fall of Moral Labor in an Online Game Community

Authors:

Xinning GuiAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '17 Companion: Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

Pages 223 - 226

https://doi.org/10.1145/3022198.3026312

Published: 25 February 2017 Publication History

Abstract

In this study we use moral labor to denote a particular form of work primarily driven by moral sense -- people believe it is right to do so and such work is utilized to improve commercial product. We examine moral labor in League of Legends, a popular online game. The game's developer, Riot Games, built a crowdsourcing platform that solicited free labor from players to deal with massive toxic behaviors including trolling, griefing, and bullying. Our ethnographic study of the game revealed how players willingly contributed their moral labor to improve the game regardless of rewards. We also found inherent tensions between players' moral sense and Riot's corporate agenda, manifested in the differences and similarities between the narrative of players and that from Riot, which evolved along the release, maintenance, and closure of the system. We consider future research directions on the relation of moral labor to online community.

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Cited By

Lalvani SPal J(2022)The Moral Orders of Matchmaking Work: Digitization of Matrimonial Services and the Future of WorkProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35129686:CSCW1(1-23)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3512968
Freeman GBardzell JBardzell SMcNeese N(2020)Mitigating ExploitationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33928644:CSCW1(1-23)Online publication date: 29-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3392864
Knittel MPitts SWash R(2019)"The Most Trustworthy Coin"Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33591383:CSCW(1-23)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359138
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The Rise and Fall of Moral Labor in an Online Game Community
1. Human-centered computing

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '17 Companion: Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

February 2017

472 pages

ISBN:9781450346887

DOI:10.1145/3022198

General Chairs:
Charlotte P. Lee
University of Washington
,
Steve Poltrock
Retired
,
Program Chairs:
Louise Barkhuus
Stockholm University and Cornell Tech
,
Marcos Borges
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
,
Wendy Kellogg
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Copyright © 2017 Owner/Author.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 February 2017

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CSCW '17

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CSCW '17: Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

February 25 - March 1, 2017

Oregon, Portland, USA

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CSCW '17 Companion Paper Acceptance Rate 183 of 530 submissions, 35%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

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CSCW '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

October 18 - 22, 2025

Bergen , Norway

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Citations

Cited By

Lalvani SPal J(2022)The Moral Orders of Matchmaking Work: Digitization of Matrimonial Services and the Future of WorkProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35129686:CSCW1(1-23)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3512968
Freeman GBardzell JBardzell SMcNeese N(2020)Mitigating ExploitationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33928644:CSCW1(1-23)Online publication date: 29-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3392864
Knittel MPitts SWash R(2019)"The Most Trustworthy Coin"Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33591383:CSCW(1-23)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359138
Kou YGui XZhang SNardi B(2017)Managing Disruptive Behavior through Non-Hierarchical GovernanceProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/31346971:CSCW(1-17)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3134697
Kou YJohansson MVerhagen HDeterding SCanossa AHarteveld CZhu JSicart M(2017)Prosocial behavior in an online game communityProceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3102071.3102078(1-6)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3102071.3102078

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