Labor Consent And Platform Control: A Study On The Platform Labor Of Game Video Creators

With the development of the industry,more and more people have become game video creators.Game video creators are not only active game players,but also creative workers on short video platforms.Their dual identity gives them unique cultural and commercial value.Through digital ethnography and Depth interview,the researchers develop the understanding of the labor situation and psychological state of game video creators on the mainstream short video platforms,and analyze their labor process and platform labor control mechanism.The platformization of short video makes game video more entertaining and commercialized.Game video creators have become platform workers.They actively devote themselves to video creation and consent insecure,unstable and competitive platform labor.The creator’s "labor consent" includes two dimensions: active consent and manufactured consent.The author’s interest and initiative in the creation of the game are recognized in the internal dimension;The production characteristics of creativity first drive individuals to constantly learn and improve themselves;The flexible and free working mode creates an individual’s sense of control over labor;And video creation can bring them the accumulation of social capital.These characteristics of game video creation cater to the Neo liberal ideology and the game as participatory culture.In the dimension of manufacturing consent,the platform builds a diversified,automated and networked labor management model with the help of a series of technologies and organizational strategies,and is committed to reducing the uncertainty of production,establishing the internal differentiation and competition of creators,transferring the risk of labor control,and efficiently screening high-quality creators,so as to strengthen the infrastructure status of the platform and improve productivity and residual value exploitation.Game video creators are still "double dependent" on short video platforms and game companies,which further complicates their labor situation.In the face of labor control,the creator also uses the subjective strategy to fight actively.For example,form virtual community and enhance collective cohesion;Make "flexible" use of platform rules to seek more benefits;Develop professional quality and creative passion,and pay attention to the value of social capital;Or adjust themselves by "anti-involution";Resort to external power to fight,etc.However,these resistances are usually scattered,one-sided and partial.Basically,we need to develop diversified governance of the platform and establish a healthy platform ecology.Finally,from the perspective of " the contingent cultural commodity " theory,the researcher analyzes and summarizes the platform content production of game video creators,takes the relationship and conflict between the participatory game cultural and the commercialization development of game video as the fourth "contingency",and regards the content platform labor as a negotiation process.With the diversification and concealment of platform labor control,some classical concepts and "control-resistance" framework of labor process research are reconsidered in order to develop the explanatory power of labor process theory to platform economic model.