Mass Media on Gold Farming

The International Herald Tribune, of all places, has an in-depth look at gold farming in China. From the article: "The people working in this clandestine locale are called 'gold farmers,' for every day, in 12-hour shifts, they are killing monsters and harvesting 'gold coins' and other virtual goods they can then sell to other online gamers. From Seoul to San Francisco, gamers who lack the hours or patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are hiring young Chinese to play the early rounds for them."

Comments

OMFG! This is *horrible*! BOYCOTT!

[Seumas]

I'm sure I will have the support of my fellow tech industry slashdot brothers when I say how horrible this is. Why are we, gaming geeks that we are, tolerating the export of good old American jobs to China?! There are people in this country perfectly capable and willing to earn a living farming our gold, but we ship it overseas just for a few extra bucks worth of savings and avoidance of OSHA ordinances? This is a TRAVESTY!!!

The best job they can get

[tansey]

My friend is an addicted WoW player and was friends with a gold farmer from a poor area of China. From what he has told me, the $20-$30 or so they make a day by gold farming is more than they could get working at a real job.

Re:The best job they can get

[Pxtl]

I find it rather odd that the machine they play on probably cost more than a year's rent for them.

An Analogy...

[Sugar Moose]

Imagine for a moment that Blizzard ran an amusement park instead of an online game. While waiting in line for a ride, you notice when one guy gets to the front, he does not go on the ride. He sells his spot to someone else and that person goes on the ride instead.

From a legal standpoint, you know Blizzard made everyone sign agreements that they would not transfer their spot in line to anyone else. What's more, you know Blizzard does not allow customers to run any business of any kind within their park. When confronted, the "line-farmer" says that he isn't selling the ride, he's selling his time spent waiting in line. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't tell you who is legally right.

From a moral standpoint, you might be thinking, only one person went before me, what do I care who it was? You see the line for one awesome ride is over eight hours long, and you think, I can certainly understand why someone would pay a line-farmer to go on that right away instead of waiting. Eight hours is a long time, a lot of people wouldn't even be able to go on that ride without paying.

What you don't see is that there are hundreds of line-farmers waiting in every line in the park. Wait times for all rides have quadrupled because they are all bloated by line-farmers. Remember that awesome ride with the eight hour line? You could have gone on that after just an hour wait if not for the line-farmers. They aren't providing a nice service, they are screwing you out of a part of the experience you already paid for, and then charging you money to get that part back.

Farmers in online games don't just "give people a chance to experience stuff they normally wouldn't be able to." They wreck the in-game economy and then charge you real money to be able to play the game like you should. Do you want to know why that sword hasn't dropped after 100 kills? It's because some jerk item farmer kills 10,000 every single week, and the developers have had to drastically reduce the droprate to prevent the item from being common. You know why you can't afford to buy that pair of boots? Because gold farmers have driven the price of all items way up past what a normal player can afford.

People complain about $15 a month being too much, but they don't care that others out there are ruining that game experience to make a quick buck. That's just crazy.

Re:An Analogy...

[Wilson_6500]

Though I can't prove it, I'd be willing to bet that someone who purchases their way to the front of the line in your analogy will also have missed the safety lecture. Not knowing to buckle his harness, the rider will fly out of the car and injure or at least seriously inconvenience other riders.

It's hard for me to believe that someone who leaps over the early stages will be as competent a party member as someone who has ground their way to the top. What is there then for the level-99 newbie to do? With whom will this noob form a party, having not made any online acquaintances on the way up? How will he ever learn when he's constantly kicked out of groups for getting people killed? Even if he's an FFXI veteran, will that do him any good in WoW? As much as I hate to say it, the player is depriving themselves of the chance to develop the "skills" needed for an MMO, and won't have had that long, long, long period of time in which to find other players with similar interests.

I can understand wanting to subvert the underhanded treadmill design scheme, that stretching of level-gains and money by which designers milk every last play hour from MMO gamers. This really highlights a massive problem with the massively multiplayer game scheme: people are willing to pay real money to start at a different point in the game. Either grind away and hope the game starts getting fun after level 60 or so, or jump stright into the mess and start searching for something interesting left to do.

(I have lots of problems with MMOs that I shouldn't go into right now, but will anyhow. I think that any item that becomes recognized by the community as "uber" should suddenly randomize its appearance each time it spawns, so gamers can't just go hunting and hunting (or shopping and shopping) for the "Super Yellow Sword of the Graveyard Fist" so they can get their damage potential up by that extra .002 dps. This'd at least make player equipment have a little more variety, and mabye this effect could trickle down so that every level 11 Fighter isn't wearing Scale Mail. Frankly, I think a game should encourage a player to make do with what they have or can get their hands upon without Herculean effort--like the old D&D spirit of using role-playing and cleverness (_player_ characteristics) to overcome deficiencies in a _character's_ skills and attributes. MMOs that I've seen boil down to getting numbers up high in order to play the game the "right" way. Unless I have an understanding group of friends, I'll have to spend fifteen hours getting a marginally (or perhaps even significantly) better sword/spell so that a group of gamer-gunners can kill stuff ever-so-slightly faster. What if I _LIKE_ how my character looks in the "Rusty Leather Armor of the Ninja Puppy School," even though all the other Iron Chefs are using "Superb Hot Pants of the Damned" and I'm obviously a fool and a n00b for not following the herd?)

Re:An Analogy...

[Slime-dogg]

My experience has been that the BoE blues that are world drops pale in comparison to the BoP instance drops. In order to get a BoP drop, you have to be in the instance, present whenever it drops. This counts for instances from Stratholme to MC to BWL.

Though the "lower" instances like Strat and Scholo don't require a whole lot of skill, the items you get from them aren't all that spectacular, when compared to an instance that requires a commitment of time and playing skill, like MC, BWL, ZG, and AQ.

Re:Yawn

[Eightyford]

Why should the fact that the demand is driven by games make it anything different than it is in other industries?

Because it's a game! The exact same thing could be acomplished with a usergold+=50000 command... it's crazy! What a waste of man-power.

They cannot ruin poor game design.

[Shivetya]

Let them farm gold, let those who want to buy gold do so. Farmers don't ruin games. Games are ruined by poor design and implementation.

Face it, the one commodity these developers refuse to code around is time. Those who can invest a large amount of time come out of ahead. The problem in these environments is the way things are implemented in most MMORPGs money is a driving force in the game. It only stands to reason that if you have more time to invest in the game the more money you can have. As such the ability of some people to play the game for long hours tips the balance of the game. Since the developers love to create money sinks and tweak them to keep the supply and demand where they want them they will invariably harm those with the least means. The in game economy is wrecked far before any farmer sets foot in the game. The farmer exists because people are trying to exist in this artificial economy and they don't have the one resource needed for it, time.

Gold Farmers merely point out the flaw of the game. If it so damn important that someone can make real world cash off of it the developers should instead find methods to reduce the importance instead of wasting time trying stop the actual sale. My analogy, stopping gold sales by going after the farmers is like closing plants to reduce the number of cars you build so you don't get stuck with too many unsold. The gold farmers exist because you failed to create a system where people with inordinate amounts of game time cannot dictate the economy. The cars remain unsold on the lot not because you make to many but because your goal wasn't to make them more popular and thereby sell more. Both ignore the hard issues. The gold farmer can be defeated by finding ways to remove the exaggerated affect "lifers" have on game economies and you can sell cars once you realize that that is the real goal.

Re:dont hate the players

[Sugar Moose]

My question is, once you've equipped your great new item, what are you going to do with it? Take a screenshot?

Getting the items IS the game, and buying them online is just fast forwarding to the credits. You obviously hate playing the game, why don't you quit? The better way to "stick it to Blizzard" might be to stop giving them your money.

I think it's just crazy enough to work.

Re:Yawn

[zoips]

The difference, of course, being that you own shares of stock in companies, and you own currency. In online games (that do not base their entire model around RMT, such as Project Entropia or Second Life), you own nothing. The company owns everything. Essentially, people who participate in RMT pay money for an item that is not only intangible, but is never even theirs; the company who runs the game can delete their account for violation of the ToS and they are out whatever actual real currency they paid with no real recourse.

Why not just fix the game?

[Chemisor]

To my programmer's mind the problem seems to be in the game rather than in the politics. If people don't want to wade through hundreds of boring hours of leveling up before they are allowed to do anything interesting, the logical solution is to fix the game so that they wouldn't have to. When will MMOG writers figure out that nobody wants to kill rats for a living?

Re:Yawn

[Red Flayer]

Yeah, just devalue the game currency so fast you'll lose all your subscribers.

It's entertainment. Just like so many industries we waste countless hours on, like literature, or movies.

Why doesn't everyone spend every minute of their time producing hard goods, after all, everything else is a waste of manpower? Do you think, then, that all service industries are a waste of manpower?

If I buy farmed gold in a game, I'm just trading my capital for their time. And since my capital is (unfortunately) derived almost completely from my labor, it just means I'm trading my labor for theirs, albeit at a rate of exchange that favors me... except that the same money will go farther where they live.