BROKERS OF THE METAVERSE: HOW A WEB3 PLAY-TO-EARN GAMING GUILD ACTS AS CULTURAL MEDIATOR ON TWITTER

Abstract

Play-to-earn (P2E) games targeting users unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies are playing a key role within the industries known as blockchain, crypto or Web3. P2E gaming guilds (Elliott, 2021) are emerging as essential intermediaries bridging Web2 and Web3 ecosystems. Drawing from social network theory’s study of brokerage motivations, this paper examines the structure and communication practices of a P2E guild, Yield Guild Games (YGG) on Twitter. Through a computational analysis of YGG’s presence on Twitter, the paper compares two mention networks corresponding to a period of optimism, and a period of crisis. We used network analysis to examine the structure of YGG communication on Twitter (Rathnayake, 2023), analysed tweets using BERTopic topic modeling (Grootendorst, 2022), and extracted links to determine what information is shared within the network (Hoyng, 2023). The results demonstrate YGG’s role as a “cultural broker” (Foster & Ocejo, 2015) promoting the adoption of blockchain technologies, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and ideologies (Swartz, 2017), ascribing legitimacy and value to particular actors and products in the Web3 ecosystem. The topic lists highlight prominent communication practices related to community building, such as AMA (ask me anything) sessions and airdrops.