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MMORPG Item-Accumulating 'Sweatshops' On Rise?
Thanks to Play Money for its post discussing the rise of the big-business MMORPG trading entrepreneur, with particular reference to Internet Gaming Entertainment, of which weblog author Julian Dibbell says: "In addition to the half dozen executive types working out of IGE's Boca Raton headquarters, the company employs another 65 Chinese citizens at its Hong Kong base of operations, the majority engaged in 24/7 delivery of virtual goods." He continues: "Imagine, furthermore, my wonder at learning that some of IGE's chief suppliers are mainland Chinese subcontractors running EverQuest-playing sweatshops in the hinterlands (at a level of production perhaps only hinted at in the famous but abortive Black Snow sweatshop in Tijuana)."
The situation is a bit more interesting than that. There's a real world parallel that isn't even much of a stretch. Take a RL hunter, killing a buck, and selling the trophies and the meat. This is essentially goods that comes "out of nowhere", but sells for real money, and there is always demand.
The parallel breaks in two points. The proportion of RL hunters to game hunters is VERY low. Also, the RL items are mostly consumables, whereas in game items tend to me more along the lines of the +5 Mace of Thwopping. Still, deer in RL have a 100% drop rate of a head (if you shoot them right), meat, etc. -- not so in games :). Also, in RL if you have a deer head on your wall, you're probably good for rustic decorations. In a game, you ALWAYS need more maces of thwopping.
Just like Ebay
A current nasty scam on Ebay is to hijack the account of someone who's built up a good reputation rating and then to do fraud through that account (e.g. sell something big that you have no intention of delivering - like a G4 Powerbook or such).
In a certain way buying an account from someone on EQ is the same (admittedly much less nasty) scam. What's different is the real currency being exchanged in game. In Ebay it's cash, in EQ its admiration. In Ebay you see someone with a good rep, you feel safe giving them your money. In EQ you see someone with a +bigSomething staff of whateveringImpressively you feel it might be appropriate to have them join your group that's going to camp the OverweightTrollOfAtkins.
But unfortunately, comes the day/hour of reckoning and there's no G4 and your enchanter has the grouping skills of a lizard.
(Two notes - I last played EQ long before "platinum servers" so the assumption players had was that you'd "earned" whatever you had *in game*. And yes, I know, that *we* know better than to bid on notebooks on ebay at unreal prices or [insert EQ equivalent] but such fraud does grind away at the broadening of the attraction of these sort of things for newbies...)