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The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer
An anonymous reader writes "This weekend's New York Times Magazine puts a human face to the 'gold farming' profession. Virtual world economist Julian Dibbell travels to Nanjing, China, for a look at the working conditions and first-hand experience of farming gold from virtual monsters as a way to make a living. From the article: 'At the end of each shift, Li reports the night's haul to his supervisor, and at the end of the week, he, like his nine co-workers, will be paid in full. For every 100 gold coins he gathers, Li makes 10 yuan, or about $1.25, earning an effective wage of 30 cents an hour, more or less. The boss, in turn, receives $3 or more when he sells those same coins to an online retailer, who will sell them to the final customer (an American or European player) for as much as $20. The small commercial space Li and his colleagues work in -- two rooms, one for the workers and another for the supervisor -- along with a rudimentary workers' dorm, a half-hour's bus ride away, are the entire physical plant of this modest $80,000-a-year business.'"
what is bad about gold farming? well, it allows some rich asshole to buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at. it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy. hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill. and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke
furthermore, what is good about gold farming? well, some guy in china is actually feeding himself on the effort. this matters a whole hell of a lot more than some stupid game and the feelings of the players of that game in my book. real life survival is a whole hell of a lot more important than the romance of a MMORPG
so i vote: gold farming is fine by me
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have no problem with some Chinese people making money off of selling "farmed gold" to rich gamers in the West, but the fact that more than 90% of what the customer pays goes to middlemen, rather than the "farmer", in a set of transactions conducted entirely on the internet is rather rankling.
Well in the case of something non-trivial, like the military, the reason why it's a Bad Thing is because then you end up with some rich incompetent running something that they have no business running. Which is not to say that the military is anything like a meritocracy in its current form, but it's a little better than cash-on-the-barrel-head.
That general point is true of more trivial activities, like games; if you destroy the meritocratic aspects in favor of pay-to-play (really, pay-to-advance; you already have to pay to play!) then you'll end up with a worse result, in most cases, overall. The difference due to putting people with either less skill, or less interest, in higher positions than they would otherwise occupy.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
100 gold coins takes this guy Li 4 hours to come across. He gets paid $0.30 for it. I pay the end seller $5 for the same 1 hour of coins (25 gold coins). So I'm basically saving myself 1 hour (or more, if Li is extra-efficient) for the low cost of $5. Sounds like a winning situation for me.
As for Li, it sounds like a good place to start also. It's a new market, and in all new markets people have to work for peas (or less) to until the market breaks open. We might see Li running his own show in 5 years (or we may not).
Until then, he gets to work indoors, on a computer, smoke as much as he wants (try that in the US!), and learn a skill that some may consider mundane, but shows a helluva lot of marketability with a longterm and bright future. Now it sounds like a win-win situation.
I really like the part where he was saying that he was making less money as a vehicle repairman. It really brings the discrepency of money accross the world to light. Although the shifts seems fairly excessive they seem to be able to live off of it decently. I really have a problem seing the downside to it. Besides the fear of taxation and policing by the providers of the game. They are providing a service for a fee. If people weren't willing to pay for it they wouldn't exist. Inflation works both ways. If people with more money buy the best gear its easy for the people not willing to pay up for their gold to make a lot of money selling the gear they get for profit. Really isn't it about finding what makes the game fun for you and doing that part of it?
You need to hire your own Chinese guys to farm gold for you! There's a 1600% markup on Chinese gold, if you go through the retailer.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
is to not play.
Here's a challenge to all of Slashdot: Cut out the middlemen.
Gold-farming isn't going away, but at least it could be a positive social force, fighting global inequality while building IT capacity in the developing world. As it is, most of the money is going to middlemen. But the product is virtual, and we can bring farmers to markets at potentially no cost. If 100 gold (or whatever the unit) retails for $20 in the west, then let's transfer that money into technology cooperatives in developing countries, who use their non-gaming hours to provide email, web access and other vital resources to their communities. Wouldn't you rather buy 'gold' from a fair trade source? Given the enormous markup, it might even lower prices. And here's the kicker: A community center could have kids playing for free in exchange for donating "gold" to pay the bills. Along the way, maybe they take attend a class on HTML programming, and start thinking more like IT professionals than farmers. Suddenly buying "gold" starts feeling a lot less exploitive.
So have at it:
1) We need a web portal to connect buyers and sellers directly. Can ebay do it? If not, how?
2) We need to explore a certification model, such as TransFair USA's fair trade certified produce.
3) We need a start-up information kit with instruction on how to open a community technology center (such as Room to Read's), but financed by gold farming.
4) We need a micro-credit source to pay for hardware and software.
5) We need a marketing movement within the gaming community.
...that people pay to avoid it? It's interesting; skill in other games in non-transferable. You can't sell people your muscle memory from playing an FPS or fighting game. I don't see anything wrong w/ gold farming, and I don't see it subverting a 'meritocracy.' It's just circumventing time spent, to which we should be asking: why are we making/playing such laborious games?
Relax. Have a muffin. Enjoy the show. --Slick, Sept 13th, 2007.
The problem with these types of games is that in their effort to be "massive" they link everyone together in the same type of game with the same type of players. Associating "worth" with your character's stats and fake digital possesions has been the bane of these types of games (and even going back to some MUDs, Telearena, BBS, etc). You will get a good crop of obsessive "gotta have it all" type players, but it really alienates the casual type of player who might like to have access to the high-level content but doesn't have the same amount of time as everyone else. Now, you're saying, "well, that's fine, he'll just take longer to get there", but in a PvP world, you're behind the curve if you're not on all the time raiding with your guild. Really what they need to do is set up "weight classes" for players. Let some servers have time limits on the amount of stuff you can do per day - BBSs used to have thsi stuff out of necessity, but I think actually only allowing an hour or two online on a server would keep things fair and more interesting to casual players. People who want a more "immersive" experience can play on the "heavyweight" servers and spend as much time online as they want. Other things that could help would be adopting a more Eve like approach to skills where you earn them per day, but maybe tweaking it a bit so the power players can still level up by doing tasks, etc. I just think MMORPG makers need to think a bit more about the casual gamer who really doesn't want to spend all day online - 5-10 hours a week for busy people with jobs, families, other hobbies, etc. There's a lot of money to be made from subscriptions outside of the hardcore, powergamer scene.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
It's the way of the world and always has been.
Thing is, see, this isn't the world. Its a game. Games have always been distorted to an extent by financial interests, but games always *resist* this distortion. In theory the fastest man wins the 100 yard dash, not the richest, the best chess player wins the tournament, not the richest, etc.
Sure these players use their wealth to their advantage. They don't have to work other jobs, they can hire coaches, and personal trainers etc... but on the PLAYING FIELD, its just them. That is part of the appeal of games.
Nobody wants to play a game that simply rolls over to rich folks paying for *in-game* advantages. Its one thing to buy books about the game, hire someone to learn to be a better player, buy a faster computer, or to have enough money not to need to work so you can spend more time playing the game. Its something else to just buy advantages INSIDE the game.
In chess for example, no matter how much wealth you've expended in honing your ability to play the game itself you still can't drop a thousand bucks in someones pocket and add another queen to your side. Its simply against the rules. And that's all a game is -- a set of arbitrary rules. If you disregard the rules there is no point to playing the game.
If you want to disregard some of the rules, that's a different game. And its ok to play different games under any rules you want, but if you are playing the game with someone else, you can't just decide to which rules you want to ignore mid-stream whether they want to or not.
In other words, if you want to play games that let you buy your in game items, fine, find or start a game that allows it and play it. But don't play games that don't allow it and then break the rules.