If you’re interested in learning more about the growing phenomenon of the Chinese gold farmers, there are three good clips posted on YouTube from a documentary-in-progress.
If you have no idea what I’m referring to, low-cost labour (especially in China) is being used to play games like World of Warcraft for 12 hours a day in order to amass large amounts of in-game currency, rare items (like armour), and high-level characters. These are then sold to Westerners who have the money but are short on time, or not interested in spending months killing beasts to reach level 70. Obviously this has been a huge concern for other players in the games.
The three video clips are short but give an interesting glimpse into actual Chinese gaming workshops. Just search for “Chinese Gold Farmers Preview” on YouTube and all three parts will come up.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Micha // Apr 5, 2007 at 7:00 pm
On the subject of gold farming, here’s an interesting (and pretty good) short-story (fiction)about the phenomenon and some attitudes and dillemas about it.
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/11/15/andas_game/
2 Garrison // Apr 9, 2007 at 8:24 am
I continue to be deeply suspicious of claims about the diffusion and scale of the practice of gold-farming. I’ve no doubt that it occurs, but the media’s obsession with it likely stems from the novelty of the virtual/real crossover, as well as anxiety about the looming power of China.
The real concern isn’t gold-farming, which is predicated on a “laborer’s” possession of basic computer literacy (making that laborer valuable, and giving them some self-determination), but the well-being of hundreds of millions of persons who have left rural areas of China for the manufacturing towns, where they live in agonizing poverty and work in untenable conditions, sometimes for 16-18 hours a day.
Media interest in “gold-farming” allows us to ignore the more salient, more urgent questions about our complicity in the unfair labor practices of the East.
One recent documentary that has done an admirable job of trying to understand the matter, is China Blue: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/
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