UGC user-generated content (UGC): Digital laborers’ immaterial labor in virtual cultural spaces. The ‘Eggy Party’ online game as a Chinese media phenomenon

This paper takes the Chinese videogame Eggy Party as the research object and analyzes in depth the behavior and production characteristics of game players under the user-generated content (UGC) ecological model. Against the background of online games as a virtual cultural space, this paper describes Eggy Party's characteristics of breaking the limitations of real space, carrying multi-cultural connotations, and promoting cultural exchange and integration. From the perspective of digital labor, it reveals that players become digital laborers under the UGC model, investing their time, emotions and social resources to carry out non-materialized production, and their production is characterized by intangibility, intertwining of labor and entertainment, and indirect value creation. Based on Marxist theory, it points out the nature of exploitation of labor by capital and the irrationality of value creation and distribution behind this phenomenon. This raises issues of the protection of the rights and interests of digital laborers and the sustainable development of the digital economy, with the aim of providing inspiration for the further theoretical research and practical improvements in the era of digital economy.