“Dos átomos aos bits”: movimento de significados e consumo no metaverso do Roblox

Abstract

The virtual environments of games, as a result of technological advances, have provided a new spectrum of consumption that can affect consumer behavior in digital contexts. These innovations have created an ecosystem of interconnected networks and, at various stages, technologies have taken on important roles in introducing new meanings into the lives of modern consumers. Resulting in a widespread digitization of many consumer goods which makes them more dematerialized. Therefore, in order to define how meaning moves in themrelationship between consumer and digital good, in the context of the metaverse, this work aimed to investigate meanings and meanings that permeate the consumption of virtual products on the Roblox gaming platform, from the analysis of public material, available on the Youtube platform, mainly from content producers of generation Z. To this end, a method was followed that combines exploratory searches - both for texts and videos, with netnographic observation. From the texts returned in the search, the theoretical framework was structured, while a descriptive analysis was carried out from the search for videos. From the selected and observed videos, a thematic analysis was carried out with contributions from semiotic analysis (HOHLFELDT et al., 2008; SANTAELLA, 2017; BARROS, 2001; FIORIN, 1990). From the study carried out, it can be seen that consumers/players start from the associations of virtual goods having as a reference characteristics and aspects of the concrete world and commonly the items that consumers have are assimilated to their own peculiarities. In this way, it was possible to consider that digital artifacts gain meaning as users attribute meanings to goods from the social interactions of the metaverse and beyond. That is, the construction of meanings and their movements become effective, as the relationship between players, developers and brands is established on a dynamic, which