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In-Game Gold Farming a $500M Industry
SpuriousLogic brings us this excerpt from a BBC report:
"Prof. Heeks said very accurate figures for the size of the gold farming sector were hard to come by, but his work suggested that in 2008 it employs 400,000 people who earn an average of $145 (£77) per month creating a global market worth about $500m. ... Already, he said, gold farming was comparable in size to India's outsourcing industry. 'The Indian software employment figure probably crossed the 400,000 mark in 2004 and is now closer to 900,000,' said Prof Heeks. 'Nonetheless, the two are still comparable in employment size, yet not at all in terms of profile.' Prof Heeks suspects gold-farming might be an early example of the 'virtual offshoring' likely to become more prevalent as people spend more time working and playing in cyberspace. "
We discussed the life of a gold farmer last year.
gold farmers have wrecked mmo's for me. why bother when farmers can sell high level gear to 12 year olds?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
If not for these vile creatures of the 3rd world, game economies would be much, much easier to manage and not get so out of balance the normal players would have to resort to paying money for gold.
"Vile creatures"? LOL. You're a fucking dipshit. (Any WoW player calling anyone else a "vile creature" is a fucking dipshit, but really, you're extra-dipshitful.)
Furthermore, no, game economies wouldn't be balanced. It just means that RMT would require higher USD prices because people want to take shortcuts and will pay to avoid grind, regardless of the expense.
Do you have any idea how economics works, "vile creature"?
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
It's not that you should be living in poverty. It's that that poor Chinese bastard -- and my heart truly bleeds for him -- deserves more.
If you studied in school, if you hold down a "real" job that does more than just shuffle paper, if you do an honest day's work, then you deserve your nice house.
Why, because you're an entitled spoiled brat? No. Because that nice house is just a fair share of the wealth a modern worker produces. That house is the beginning of the return on your educational investment you made for the rest of us.
When you were a child, we made you an explicit promise. Don't give us trouble, follow our rules, work with us, learn what we teach you and when you are grown and capable, you'll get a job that pays you enough to be a full member of this society. Maybe not opulence, but certainly housing, transportation, food, medicine and time enough to have a life.
If you're posting on Slashdot, chances are good you held up your end of the deal.
For the past thirty years, I've followed the growth of a cancerous meme that has become a monster. Whether it's Carl Icahn or Robert Kiyosaki or the rest of that ilk, they argue "Nobody owes you anything. The world doesn't owe you a living. Your credentials are meaningless. You only 'deserve' what you can get."
We're supposed to be coders here. We should be able to understand the consequences of rule sets. Idealism breeds happiness. Cynicism breeds destruction.
If we all agree to work together, if we keep our compacts with our young, if our cops believe they are servants of justice, if our doctors believe they have a sacred calling, if our teachers believe they are keepers of the flame of knowledge, if we fairly share the wealth we all produce, then we will have a society that will be the envy of the world -- like it used to be.
If we all decide to be cynics, if we all decide it's every man for himself, if we believe that school is for suckers, if we idolize men who make billions by clever paper shuffling or outright theft, if our cops are in it for the power, our doctors for the money and our teachers believe themselves fools for their career choice, then we're going to wake up in a failed society like every other third-world shithole I've visited.
Idealistic societies that work together and hold to their ideals produce the stability that makes the building of wealth across generations possible.
Cynical, corrupt societies that don't honor their commitments to each other fall apart after a generation or two. The decay becomes amazing. Witness the Banana Republics of South America, the bottomless pits of Southeast Asia, Russia, and lately -- us.