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.

Comments

Obligatory Penny Arcade post

[Das Modell]

Might as well get it out of the way.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/02/16/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/4/14/

Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade post

[narcberry]

Game creators work so hard to stop these guys... Maybe they should realize their content sucks if people are willing to pay to skip it.

Thanks China, for $5, you saved me two weeks of grinding!

Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade post

[WinterSolstice]

Agreed.

I played fanatically 1-55. Loved it, and then got above 55 and started having to grind for MC and all that stuff. Getting together huge Raid groups sucked too. It became a real job, and the differences between characters vanished. Hunters had to be spec'd and armored like this. Warriors like this. Etc etc.

So I went and created a new player, and it was a BLAST doing it all over again.

Gold farming exists to address the desire for an easy out. It's not so much the low levels (where a small amount will get you totally set) but the high levels where it takes 20 hours a week just to keep up.

Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade post

[Hal_Porter]

> Game creators work so hard to stop these guys... Maybe they should realize their content sucks if people are willing to pay to skip it.

You sir, just summed up the root cause of RMT in one sentence.

Unfortunately, solving the "how to keep people engaged for hundreds of hours without grinding" problem seems insurmountable with the current crop of game designers.

No silly, grinding is part of the plan. Look at how pasty, spotty and overweight a Wow player is after a few months grinding. His lifeforce has been sapped. Now lifeforce is conserved globally so that means someone else has gained it. Look at photos with Blizzard executives if you can find them. They look 20-30 years younger than their chronological age.

It's like The Picture of Dorian Grey. The only reason Blizzard charges is to increase the degradation of the players, the real money they make comes from rich people buying lifeforce from them.

It's quite a paradox.

[Kingrames]

When I was unemployed, I saw the gold farmers as a scourge, letting people pay to get stuff for nothing.

Now that I have a job, and next to no time to play the games I like, it pisses me off that I never have the in-game cash to get the stuff I'd need to play alongside my friends without letting them down.

It's a real shame on both ends of the spectrum. Them, for giving people the easy way out, and the game makers, for requiring so damn much of a time investment.

Re:mmo's waste of time

[Lemmy Caution]

It's not the 12 year olds who buy high-level gear: the kids are the ones with more time than money. It's the busy thirty-somethings who want to have fun for a couple hours a week that pull out their credit cards to buy gold.

THAT'S NOTHING

[Anonymous Coward]

THAT'S NOTHING... I farm Karma on Slashdot for $0.12/hour

Re:it shows you why happiness is fleeting

[Lemmy Caution]

The reason it seems odious is because the very act of farming highlights the paradox that threatens the very reason one plays: MMOs are work disguised as leisure.