Selected Papers of #AoIR2024: The 25th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers Sheffield, UK / 30 Oct - 2 Nov 2024 1 BROKERS OF THE METAVERSE: HOW A WEB3 PLAY-TO-EARN GAMING GUILD ACTS AS CULTURAL MEDIATOR ON TWITTER Violeta Camarasa The Chinese University of Hong Kong Dmitry Kuznetsov University of Amsterdam Introduction Considered “showcase pieces” of how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) work (Serada et al., 2021, p. 460), play-to-earn (P2E) games target users unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies, thus playing a crucial role for blockchain industries developing cryptocurrencies, NFTs and other related technologies. While common opinions consider such technologies as either a past fad, or just a scam, the industry commonly known as crypto, blockchain or web3 has continued to develop and attract investors and users. P2E games allow players to earn rewards through ‘farming’ (Tai & Hu, 2018) or trading digital assets, which can be turned into conventional money (Zaucha & Agur, 2023). Echoing narratives that these technologies facilitate a more user-centric Internet (Ragnedda & Destefan, 2019), industry actors describe P2E games as decentralized “player-owned economies” (Sky Mavis, 2021). However, soon after P2E games gained traction in 2021, an outsourcing structure emerged to help new users in low-income countries overcome the high complexity and cost of entry. NFTs rental schemes (Zaucha & Agur, 2023) evolved into programs coordinated by P2E gaming guilds (Elliott, 2021). This paper focuses on Yield Guild Games (YGG), founded in the Philippines, one of the first developing such programs and a prominent P2E guild with global reach. While diverse (Williams et al., 2006), guilds are generally defined as semipermanent online gaming groups “with a social hierarchy and shared resources” (Poor & Skoric, 2014, p. 183) and their own culture (Snodgrass et al, 2017). Zhang and Fung (2014) note the commercialization of guilds as "significant players in the complicated negotiations between capital and labor, commerce and community" (p. 42). Creative industries are “a general enabling social technology” (Hartley, 2009, p. 50) often representing early forms of new knowledge-based economies. Research on P2E Suggested Citation (APA): Camarasa, V., Kuznetsov, D. (2024, October). Brokers of the Metaverse: How a Web3 Play-To-Earn Gaming Guild Acts as Cultural Mediator on Twitter. Paper presented at AoIR2024: The 25th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. Sheffield, UK: AoIR. Retrieved from http://spir.aoir.org. 2 guilds can therefore help understand the ongoing process of platformization (Poell et al., 2019, 2021), which includes the development of blockchain technologies. Research on blockchain applications has mostly focused on industry discourses (e. g. Egliston & Carter, 2023; Brody & Couture, 2021) and the cultural implications of NFTs (Zaucha & Agur, 2022). P2E guilds remain largely unexplored. This paper examines the structure and communication practices of YGG by analyzing, both quantitatively and qualitatively, its activity as a “cultural broker” (Foster & Ocejo, 2015) on Twitter. Cultural Brokers Social network theory includes the study of brokerage motivations, such as Simmel’s (1902) classic tertius gaudens (the third who benefits) and the more recent tertius iungens (the third who connects) (Obstfeld, 2005). This paper focuses on the less well- known approach tertius transferens (the third who translates), an approach combining social network theory with Bourdieu’s (1993) notion of cultural intermediaries and proposed within the creative industries to study the symbolic work done by cultural brokers (Foster & Ocejo, 2015). YGG self-defines as a DAO, a blockchain-based decentralized and autonomous organization (DuPont, 2017) and has been described as the “recruitment agency of the metaverse” (Dempsey & Ahmed, 2021). YGG purchases in-game NFTs of their partnered games and lends them to players (Cointelegraph, n.d.), mainly located in weak economies (Delic & Delfabbro, 2022), thus gaining income and power (tertius gaudens). By doing so, YGG claims to facilitate financial inclusion and offer economic opportunities to the disadvantaged (Li, 2021) (tertius iungens). As a cultural broker (tertius transferens), YGG engages in symbolic work: it trains, mentors and loyalizes new users (Bennington, 2022; Elliott, 2021), helping them overcome technical complexities, the greatest barrier for blockchain industries (Serada et al., 2021). YGG promotes the adoption of blockchain technologies and ideologies (Swartz, 2017), ascribing legitimacy and value to particular actors in the Web3 ecosystem. This paper asks: How does YGG perform its role as a cultural broker on Twitter? Methodology We conducted a computational analysis of YGG’s presence on Twitter, informed by ongoing ethnographic research by the first author. Twitter has been used for researching cryptocurrencies (Hoyng, 2023; Kraaijeveld & De Smedt, 2020), and for promoting new cultural trends (Chow-White et al., 2021). Many users first encounter Web3 applications, such as P2E games, on Twitter (Hoyng, 2023), a key platform bridging Web2 and Web3 ecosystems. To map YGG’s network on Twitter, we created an initial list with accounts of YGG’s members, co-founders, core team, investors, and partners. These accounts were identified through YGG’s white paper, reports and Discord channels, and by searching accounts on Twitter mentioning YGG’s handle on their profiles. Official guild accounts were also included. We divided the list into two: G1 for accounts directly affiliated with 3 YGG (e. g. cofounders, members), and G2 for indirectly affiliated accounts (e.g., investors, partners, advisors). Twitter API was used to collect the user data and account timelines. We used R 4.2.2 (R Core Team, 2022), tidyverse (Wickham et al., 2019), rtweet (Kearney, 2019) and academictwitteR (Barrie & Ho, 2021). User data for accounts retweeted or mentioned within the initial set of tweets were also collected. We created two mention networks corresponding to two time frames. The first one (April 2021-Dec 2021) covers a period of optimism, which we call summer (S), including events such as the popularity surge of Axie Infinity, arguably the first P2E game. The second time frame (March 2022- November 2022), corresponds to a period of crisis, named winter (W), including the hacking of Axie Infinity and the collapse of FTX. We used network analysis to examine the structure of YGG communication on Twitter (Rathnayake, 2023), we analysed tweets using BERTopic topic modeling (Grootendorst, 2022), and extracted links to determine what information is shared within the network (Hoyng, 2023). Preliminary Findings Network Analysis We identified key nodes by in-degree (popularity) and betweenness centrality, which measures the ability of a node to connect nodes otherwise disconnected and control information flows (Easley & Kleinberg, 2010) (Tables 2 & 3). Account activity will be qualitatively analyzed. Topic Modeling The most popular topics coincide with our expectations (Table 4). Both SG1 and WG1 results demonstrate YGG’s role as a cultural broker promoting blockchain technologies such as NFTs (SG1 Topic 2, WG1 Topic 0) through play-to-earn games (SG1 Topic 0, WG1 Topic 0 & 1) located within broader cryptocurrency markets (SG1 Topic 3, WG1 Topic 2) and the “metaverse economy” (SG1 Topic 19). The guild also ascribes legitimacy and value to particular products, namely the game Axie Infinity (SG1 Topic 1, WG1 Topic 3). Moreover, the topic lists highlight prominent communication practices related to community building, such as weekly community streams (SG1 Topic 5), AMA (ask me anything) sessions (WG1 Topic 5), recruitment and training (SG1 Topic 6), promotion of YGG esports events (SG1 Topic 8 & 15), giveaways and airdrops (SG1 Topic 2 & 14, WG1 Topic 7), encouraging charity donations (SG1 Topic 15) or discussing DAO governance (SG1 Topic 16). Comparing G1 and G2 reveals YGG’s purpose in the Web3 ecosystem, combining promoting blockchain technologies with community building. Compared to G2, G1 tweets content revolves more consistently around blockchain applications and guild activities. We expect differences between the Summer and Winter periods to emerge in further qualitative analysis. 4 Linking Behavior YGG accounts engage in linking behavior that promotes community activities on Discord, and information published on YouTube and Medium (see Figures 1 and 2). Further analysis will determine the specific channels and information sources promoted within the network, enabling a better understanding of brokerage processes. 5 References Bennington, A. (Host). (2022, January, 26). Axie Is Set for Infinity and Beyond [Audio podcast episode]. In Real Vision Crypto podcast. Real Vision Creative Studios . URL https://www.realvision.com/shows/the-interview-crypto/videos/axie-is-set-for-infinity- and-beyond Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. Columbia University Press. Brody, A., & Couture, S. (2021). Ideologies and imaginaries in blockchain communities: The case of Ethereum. Canadian Journal of Communication, 46(3), 543-561. Chow-White, P., Al-Rawi, A., Lusoli, A., & Phan, V. (2021). Social construction of blockchain on social media: framing public discourses on twitter. J. Commun. Technol, 4(2), 1-31. Cointelegraph (n.d.) A beginner's guide to Yield Guild Games (YGG). Cointelegraph. Retrieved October 28, 2023 from https://cointelegraph.com/learn/a-beginners-guide- to-yield-guild-games-ygg De Jesus, S. B., Austria, D., Marcelo, D. R., Ocampo, C., Tibudan, A. J., & Tus, J. (2022). Play-to-Earn: A qualitative analysis of the experiences and challenges faced by axie infinity online gamers amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Psychology and Counseling, 1(12), 291–424. Delfabbro, P., Delic, A., & King, D. L. (2022). 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Playbor, gamble-play, and the financialization of digital games. New Media & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231190907 Zaucha, T., & Agur, C. (2022). Newly minted: Non-fungible tokens and the commodification of fandom. New Media & Society, 14614448221080481. Tables and Figures 8 Table 1: Number of tweets and unique accounts in each period and group Tweets and Accounts Summer Winter Group 1 37,254 (56 Accounts) 171,284 (63 Accounts) Group 2 112,099 (111 Accounts) 133,392 (126 Accounts) Table 2: Key Nodes by Betweenness Centrality (BC). Accounts of individuals are anonymized. Summer Winter Node Followers BC Role Node Followers BC Role Official 1 84720 0.0007 9 co-founder yggjapan 36627 0.0011 1 official yieldguild 187233 0.0006 1 official yieldguild 187233 0.0006 2 official Supporter 1 519785 0.0004 3 supporter Official 1 84720 0.0006 1 co-founder Member 1 105142 0.0004 0 member Member 1 105142 0.0002 2 member thesandboxga me 1066242 0.0003 7 game partner illuviumio 369687 0.0002 0 game partner 9 Figure 1. Winter Most Linked Domains Figure 2. Summer Most Linked Domains Table 3: Key Nodes by In-Degree (I-D). Accounts of individuals are anonymized. Summer Winter Node Followers I-D Role Node Follower s I-D Role axieinfinity 892558 5206 game partner axieinfinity 892558 371 6 game partner staratlas 314975 4775 game partner staratlas 314975 236 0 game partner yieldguild 187233 2439 official account yieldguild 187233 210 8 official account thesandboxga me 1066242 1701 game partner thesandboxga me 1066242 167 8 game partner Official 1 84720 1632 co-founder yggindia 426 147 7 official account 10 Table 4: Key terms for topic modeling by period and group. T SG1 SG2 WG1 WG2 0 Blockchain Gaming, Play-to-ear Gaming Splinterlands Giveaway NFT Gaming, NFT Marketplace Splinterlands, Axie 1 Axis staking, Axis Player NFTs, NFT Community Blockchain Gaming, Web Gaming Blockchain Gaming, Web Gaming 2 NFT Drop, NFT Community Bitcoin, Crypto Bear Markets, Crypto World Good, Hope, GM (General Communication) 3 Crypto Market, Crypto World Axie Infinity, Scholarships Axie Infinity Origin, Axie NFTs Token Incentives, Token 4 Crypto Twitter, YGG Discord Land Sales, Auction YGG Managers Cup Staking, Airdrop 5 Gamehunters, NFT Gaming Metaverse, WeAreStartAtlas AMA Session, Discord Community Metaverse, Storyverse 6 Axie Scholars, Axie Scholarship Pyr Vulcan, ForgeYourWorld YGG Twitter Spaces, YGG Discord Beta, app, android 7 Mental Health Day Awork, Collection NFT Giveaway, INDIGG Vulcan, Pyr 11 8 YGG Managers Cup, Charity Tournament Mint, Presale, Space Misfits Builders, Knowledge, Community Voxedit, Live Contest 9 YGG Token Sale, YGG Founders Coin Space Misfits Community YGG Guild Advancement Program Cathletes, Breeding 1 0 Highest Sale, NFT Auctions Discord, Telegram Philippine Web Festival, Guild Meetup Builders Program, Community 1 1 Product Building, Marketing Hex, Pulsechain Mint Details, Upcoming Mint 1 2 Year End Festivities, Happiness Reflection OS, Windows, Steam MonkeyFans, MonkeyLeauge 1 3 Creation Moment, Sculpture Atari, First Edition Stepn, Walkn 1 4 NFT Giveaway, NFT Mystery Boxes Start Atlas Metaverse Music Video Contest, Trailer 1 5 Odette Donations, Crypto Donations Bored Apes PA Community, Journey 1 6 Dao governance, dao community NFT Gaming Sipher Bear Market, Bull Market 1 7 Freya Mask, Mask Piece Floor Price, Sales Solana, NFTs 1 8 Brooklyn, New York Amouranth, Misogyny Awesome Mech Photo 1 9 Metaverse Economy, Metaverse Work Community Discord, Stream 2 0 Coffee, Food