Bio
Aleena Chia is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University where she is currently writing her dissertation, “Just Add Work: Emergence, Compensation, and Productivity in Participatory Game Worlds.” This research draws from a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork with player organizations of digital and live-action role-playing games, and investigates the cultural politics of fantasy and collectivity, ideologies of productivism, and systems of social compensation, as they interplay in branded game worlds. Her research fields include digital media, game studies, and consumer culture. Her writing has been published in American Behavioral Scientist and Antenna, a media studies blog.