Abstract

In the game industry, community managers engage in social and emotional labor as they split their loyalties between game communities and game companies. Community managers do not fully represent the interests of one group, and their intermediary role puts particular stresses on the types of emotional labor that they are called upon to enact. Further, community managers must also participate in social labor---work that builds and exploits social connections for monetary gain. Most of this labor, however, is undervalued and in some instances is simply uncompensated "free" labor carried out by members of a fan community. Ultimately, we argue, casting the role of the community manager as a social and emotional laborer feminizes this work, monetarily devaluing it while isolating workers in these roles from the communities that they ostensibly serve.