More than Just Play: Organizational Dynamics and Professionalism in Online Gaming

This study aims to explore the social and organizational behaviors of amateur players, streamers, and E-sports players within Call of Duty: Warzone, a multiplayer game in the FPS (First Person Shooter) genre that requires significant organizational efforts to achieve game objectives. The explorative hypothesis of the study is that there exists a wide range of behaviors among players, who—as suggested by the literature, have profoundly different affective, social, and economic motivations for playing. This research intends to offer an in-depth analysis of the gaming experience in online virtual environments and contribute to the understanding of emerging digital professions, with a specific focus on E-sports players, who represent a growing but still under-explored professional category. To explore these topics, since 2021, I have undertaken digital ethnography and autoethnography within the Italian Warzone community, employing both participant and non-participant observation techniques, semi-structured interviews, and the analysis of in-game communicative interactions. I interviewed 27 players and recorded and analyzed approximately 7 hours and 40 minutes of gameplay, corresponding to 5,654 utterances expressed by 38 different players, also collecting qualitative material from social media and social networks. The “reflective” ethnographic approach included my experience as a player-researcher, comparable to that of the other participants. The results show substantial behavioral differences, especially concerning the perception and practice of problematic organizational behaviors, such as cheating, defined as the use of cheats (third-party software capable of altering the game code) to illicitly gain advantages in the game. These behaviors reveal the need for a thorough analysis of the challenges and specific experiences of these new actors in the context of digital labor. Furthermore, the study highlights how the interaction between casual players and professional Esports players contributes to the creation of a complex gaming culture, where elements of collaboration, competition, and mutual learning are constantly evolving. These results are discussed in light of existing literature and offer new perspectives for understanding how online games can influence social and organizational dynamics in the context of emerging digital professions.