TOOBAO - The (Unofficial) World's Best E-Commerce Selling Platform

TOOBAO - The (Unofficial) World's Best E-Commerce Selling Platform is a mobile seller simulation game that highlights the physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting job of being an online business owner in a system-ruled platform.

Project Video

Abstract

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you started your own online business? Well…it’s not as easy as it seems.

TOOBAO - The (Unofficial) World’s Best E-Commerce Selling Platform is a seller simulation game that uses multiple devices to allow the player to experience a day in the life of an online shop owner and test their ability to handle the intense demanding labor that typical shop owners face on a daily basis. Players can set up their own store, sell products, livestream, pack orders and answer customer chats while also managing their own inventory, balance, views and store rating. It may start off easy but as the game progresses, these tasks become increasingly overwhelming, forcing players to constantly multitask while trying to satisfy the platform’s wishes.

Throughout the gameplay, the player is monitored and guided by Mr. Bao, a platform manager who assigns tasks, sends alerts, and reinforces the feeling that the seller is always being watched. Ignoring Mr. Bao and failing to complete tasks results in consequences such as loss of views and followers which are detrimental to the player’s success in the game. The game takes away player’s choices and forces them into a system of pressure and visibility. Success is not always guaranteed but chances are slightly higher depending on how well the player obeys the platform’s demands.

TOOBAO is designed to encapsulate how digital platforms today surveil and control the behaviors of their consumers in order to make money which often comes at the expense of individual freedom and expression. Nowadays, platforms are run with their own set of rules and expectations for their consumers, users are never freely able to be themselves as they are constantly leaving a digital footprint to be traced back to them. TOOBAO is a platform run in the same way, where players cannot always exert free will out of fear of failing and hope for success.

Played as a mobile game with a synchronized laptop manager screen, players are immersed in a state of constant multi-tasking and digital labor consumption in order to appease the boss of the platform. Through endless tasks, constant notifications, and the fact that every action the player makes feels calculated, monitored, and judged, the game exposes the exploited labor behind platform capitalism especially on platforms like Taobao (淘宝), where sellers are reduced to system-approved performance metrics and algorithmic surveillance.

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