Sunset chasers: The labour and rhythms of game service workers

Abstract

This article explores the spatiotemporal practices of an emerging digital workforce – game service workers, who provide in-game services in online multiplayer video games. Though this form of digital labour is somewhat under-researched in the current literature on platform-mediated gig work, a growing number of people across the globe turn to so-called “Elo platforms” in efforts to make a living by teaching or playing video games with or for other more affluent players. Drawing on interviews with workers offering two popular services known as “coaching” and “boosting” as well as participatory observations on Elo platforms, this article examines the spatial and temporal dynamics that shape game service work. I analyse how this work is structured by two intersecting rhythms depending on the service that these workers provide: time zone rhythms and latency rhythms. These two rhythms shed light on the spatial and temporal conditions of the planetary labour market that allow workers to make a living in spaces others around the globe mostly turn to for leisure during their “free time” in the evenings. The article contributes to the conceptualisation of the “planetary labour market” for digital remote work within the labour geography scholarship by showing how game service workers are temporally and spatially enabled or constrained to “chase sunsets” in different time zones across the globe in attempts to reappropriate the playful spaces of multiplayer video games.