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.'"

A sad state of affairs

At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of him.

They've built a mom's basement in China where they can all do it better for half the price. Even geeks aren't immune from outsourcing.

If any of you have access to good prices for bulk tissue and lotion, I have a great idea for the next activity to outsource to China. Access to a tiled area with good drainage a must.

Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

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.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

Yeah, and sell them at Whole Foods with a big poster showing one of the gold farmers and the story behind his life and his gold farming. It shows him staring passionately at a computer screen in some smoky room with a bunch of post-it notes on the monitor.

"This is Chang Lee. He helped bring this WoW gold to your local store. He works over 12 hours a day, part of which pays back the microloan he used to purchase the lvl 20 paladin he uses to harvest gold..."

Putting things in perspective

30 cents an hour amounts to about 48 dollars per month. Putting things in perspective, when I lived in Asia, that was more or less the normal wage of a janitor. Not a lot of money, and life conditions are poor with those wages- but the money goes a long way compared to the same kind of money in western 'civilization'. In those countries, 30 bucks pretty much buys you nutricious, delicious, high-quality all you can eat for 8 people. 20 cents amounts to a liter of petrol which goes a long way as well in those cranky noisy motorcycles of theirs.

Sounds like a great deal for us Westerners...

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.

Very hard to imagine

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?

The lesson here is an obvious one

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.

Oppertunity for pro-poor development

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.

 

why are we making gameplay so laborious

...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?

Re:i look at it this way

I completely agree. Seriously.

Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming? I mean, we're talking about a game, after all. And it's not even a game with PRIZES. It's not even a game you can WIN. What could the gold farmers possibly be taking away from other players, besides time? Time which they are spending on a GAME that they aren't obligated to play.

The only way to win WoW

is to not play.

Re:i look at it this way

If the game is so badly designed that it's more fun to pay someone else to do 90% of the playing for you, then I can't help but wonder why people play it at all.

Re:i look at it this way

I completely agree. Seriously.

Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming? I mean, we're talking about a game, after all. And it's not even a game with PRIZES. It's not even a game you can WIN. What could the gold farmers possibly be taking away from other players, besides time? Time which they are spending on a GAME that they aren't obligated to play.

There is much more than meets the eye about the negative effects of gold farming.

In MMO games there is a lot of space shared by players. If player X is killing mobs in the same area as me, we'll have to share or fight for spawns, that's fine if we both use ingame tools. Now enter gold farmer with bots, insane knowledge of spawn patterns and times, and you won't find mobs to kill. In WoW for example, you can go around in zones and mine ore for your weapon that you want to craft as a blacksmith. Good luck, gold farmers are on ore veins the moment they appear. Gold farmers make it nearly impossible in many cases for legitimate players to collect items/resources/gold for themselves because gold farmers can (and do) monopolize entire regions of the game. People who played WoW can surely remember zones like Tyr's Hand being perma camped 24h a day by gold farmers.

Also, every time an exploit or bug is found, gold farmers exploit it massively and force the game company to bring down servers and fix them causing downtime for players. Not to mention you can kiss the game economy good bye. How many games have had their economy ruined because of gold farmers. Gold farmers abusing bugs/exploits not just flood the economy, they have no problems in griefing players (Final Fantasy Online) and monopolizing game content (WoW). Even if they get banned, they are back operating within hours. To them a ban from game is the cost of doing business, just like Microsoft and lawsuits against it.

And finally, in game currency can be used to gain advantage in PvP (buying gear, potions, consumables). PvP is competitive, maybe you don't care because it's a "game" but some people care because they want a leveled playing field. You know, having a game that's fair and fun ...

Gold farmers are a cancer to MMO games. Some people might not care, but these people negatively impact everyone's enjoyment of the game, be it because they destroy economies or hack or monopolize content. It's not healthy for games.

Re:i look at it this way

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

I think of it this way: a rich guy buys a top-of-the-line $5000 Digital SLR camera, and then he takes fifteen snapshots of his beagle, and doesn't really scream when his silver-spoon daughter drops it down the country club's marble terrace staircase a couple months later. The guy was a boor when he showed off this camera to his friend, who busted his ass to get through photojournalism school with a $500 camera. The guy was a boor when he recounted the complete "horror" story of how the insurance company denied his claim for full replacement. But you know he'll buy another $5000 camera when that beagle has her pups.

How has this honestly changed the profession of photography? His friend probably felt uncomfortable with the rich man's effortless and pointless consumerism, but his friend wasn't actually denied other opportunities when it came right down to it.

The MMORPG is a smaller economy but it works the same way. The real issue is the design of that game, and whether it can withstand such tilted gamesmanship. If the gold farmers or the insta-knighthood characters are really clogging up the playground by camping at all the spawn points and inflating the price of dragon eyeballs, then I would point to the playground designers, not the farmers and not the insta-knights.

Re:Military commissions

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.

Time is Money

The difference due to putting people with either less skill, or less interest, in higher positions than they would otherwise occupy.

What about people with less time?

I quit MMORPGs after Everquest almost helped me flunk out of college. I played the highest level character on the server. It was exhilarating; people wrote fan-fiction about my character, people I didn't even know. They would travel across the world to buy my wares--always the finest available on the server. I set the prices and controlled the economy. It was a lot of fun. Also: when I wasn't sleeping (3-4 hours a night), I was playing. It took literally 18-21 hours per day to stay "on top."

I know MMORPGs have changed a lot, but so have I. Several times since graduating I have seriously considered picking MMORPGs back up. But "serious" players basically have a part-time (or full-time!) job playing the game. The main thing holding me back at this point is that I will never again allow myself to be a "serious" player.

Time is money, money is time... you can, in the real world, usually buy one for large quantities of the other. The "for pay" model is problematic in real life for a lot of reasons, not just because someone doesn't "deserve" what they get but because good ideas can (and are) often buried under piles of money. But in a game, what's the difference? You think because you devote 40 hours a week, you deserve to have more fun than a subscriber who can't find a good group because he only plays 4 hours every Saturday? Because the economy and society on the server makes it impossible for casual players to ever see high-end gear or end-game content?

I've thought a lot about this, because I absolutely do not believe that the real-life purchase of political positions or military commissions is right or proper. But in a game, I don't see how letting someone invest their money while you're investing your time is an imbalance. I don't think those who invest extra money should have access to better content, necessarily, but maybe if I could spend a few extra dollars to have as much fun as those who spend a few extra hours, I would get back into the MMORPG scene. I have the interest and I have the skill, but I don't have the time, so for the moment, the only multiplayer games for me are on my console, with my opponents sitting on my couch.

Blame the game!

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.

The disconnect is there because people want it.

I understand your point, but I think that your problem really ought to be less with the prohibitions on gold-purchase or other pay-to-advance schemes, but more with the fundamental design of the game itself. Most MMORPGs are designed to be time-intensive, such that your advancement is tied directly into how much time you can afford out of your day to sit in front of your PC and play them.

That may not be everyone's idea of a good time. It certainly is for some people, as the success of Everquest and WoW has demonstrated. But it's probably not yours, and it's not really mine, either. (I had fun playing WoW for a while, but it's just too damn slow to keep me interested.) But that's the game. That's how it's designed. And that's what a great many of the people who are playing it, are playing it for.

People play MMORPGs because they want to escape reality; they want a world that's disconnected from how much money they make in their day job (and, thus, how valuable their time might be). They want a place where the $12/hr UPS package handler can beat the shit out of the $650/hr attorney, if he can play the game enough, gather enough widgets, go on more quests, whatever. That's the whole point of the game. If you reintroduce a way to capitalize on real-life success within the context of the game, it stops being a game anymore, and instead just becomes a pastel-colored extension of real life.

There is room -- and probably, demand -- for 'games' that take different approaches on the amount of disconnection that they demand from the physical world. I think fantasy worlds like WoW are on the more disconnected end of the spectrum, and I'm not sure that there's any inherent unfairness in making it entirely meritocratic and letting people decide how much of their real-life time they're going to invest in advancement. On the other end, or more towards the other end anyway, you have Second Life type places, which have currency that's exchangable to real-life currencies on the open market. If you're rich in real life, you can be rich in Second Life, too -- from a certain point of view, you already are, in the same way that you'd be rich in any other country, subject to cost-of-living and exchange rates. There's no inherent unfairness in this, either, because it allows people to "play" SL more casually than WoW: if you have a successful RL occupation, you can spend your time doing that, and use the money you make there to buy nice stuff in SL, you don't have to spend 20-hour days questing to get mods.

Neither of these approaches is objectively better than either, at least in any way that I can really see or argue. (I suppose you could argue, depending on your feelings of the inherent fairness of our capitalist real-life economy and labor market, that the WoW one is a purer meritocracy, though.) They each have their strengths and weaknesses, and if you don't like the design of one, rather than trying to subvert the rules and "break the fourth wall" that's so carefully constructed (and desired, desperately, by many people who play them) in some online worlds, it's probably best to find an online world that's designed to be less disconnected from that giant MMORPG called Real Life.

Re:Military commissions

Why does this bother you that rich folks can pay to play. Why should they not if they can? It's the way of the world and always has been.

Always has been? You might learn a little bit about the history you misquote so freely.
 
Setting aside the use of influence and nepotism (which are fraternal - not identical, twins of outright purchase)...
 
Persons of wealth buying the positions (in the Church and in the Armed Services) isn't something that happened (or happens) in tribal societies - nor (in the Western) world does it happen today. (It was largely wiped out in the late 1800's to early 1900's.) It was rare in feudal Japan and virtually nonexistent in classical China. It was extremely rare in classical Greece and semi-common only in later period Rome. In fact in the Western world - the practice was only widespread from late medieval times to early modern times.
 
Or in short, no - it's not commonly the way of the world nor has it always been.

Re:Military commissions

Persons of wealth buying the positions (in the Church and in the Armed Services) isn't something that happened (or happens) in tribal societies - nor (in the Western) world does it happen today. (It was largely wiped out in the late 1800's to early 1900's.) It was rare in feudal Japan and virtually nonexistent in classical China.

Please define "classical". There are historical records going back to as far as the Han Dynasty of emperors or powerful ministers literally selling government positions. The same happened repeatedly in almost all the following dynasties as they drew to their respective end.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

i think, frankly, that you're just a loser and an asshole. you have no human conscience, you have no sense of morality, you don't believe in social progress, which does actually exist in this world

Or he believes in capitalism. A person is good at X, say banking. He works 12 hours a day doing X and make a good amount of money as a result. This person enjoys video games but like many finds the grind annoying. Now his time is worth a lot to society and he has money so he pays someone else to do the grind for him.

What is exactly wrong with him paying someone else to do this for him? To gain gold for him? To level a character for him?

I mean are maids immoral to have now as well? House cleaners that come in once a weak? Gas station attendants? Car mechanics? Computer repairman? Lawyers? Accountans? Cooks? All of them are paid to do a task which someone else could do but for various reasons chooses to "outsource".

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

The game is only fun as long as it maintains its illusion as a game.

For example.

Paying 70 million in salary for a team that usually beats other teams is acceptable.
But going the next logical step and selling "successful bat swings" destroys the illusion.

The gross mockery of baseball that has 70 million dollar "aces" pretending to be equals of a 4 million dollar team of 3rd stringers (yet winning year after year) still has just enough illusion left of the original game.

Likewise-- buying gold is okay and buying an experienced but used character is okay. However, the day Sony or Blizzard puts a price of $10 per level and a formal price on all items and expansion/zone flags then they will destroy the illusion.

What is the point of just giving Sony $850 and then saying "I win". The rich people NEED hordes of poor people playing the hard way to get the good feeling that justifies paying that much money to "win" and play.

put another way
What family would play monopoly when you could buy a thousand dollars in the game for a dollar. The parents could win any game because they have more money.

It's not a fair game when you let people buy a winning position.

---

Another example... because of this money issue many real world games have limits. For example: in nascar, the track has a right to buy the winning car for a set price (so you better not spend more than that set price) and in drag car racing, there is a maximum speed you can run (890 class is 8.9 seconds). Only in the 'unlimited' class can you spend any amount of money.

What we "890" game players want is a level playing field.

Unfortunately... you still have the 80 hour a week players-- so what I want is a game where you can't buy a position or gold and where you can't play more than a certain number of hours per week. ("This is the 20 hour a week server-- all players on this server are limited to 20 hours a week" "This is the 30 hour a week server".. etc.

Re:i look at it this way

$1.25 US per hour is probably not that bad of a wage for the workers although it certainly is no get rich quick scheme.

It is for the boss who makes 3 bucks for every one they get if I read TFA right. I'm surprised they don't revolt and go communist or something. Nah, that'll never happen.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

This is WoW related as WoW is the biggest game.

1g = 100silver = 10,000 copper

When you start. You start with copper coins.

Your mount at level 40 costs ~100g.
Your mount at level 60 costs ~600g.
Your mount at level 70 costs ~1000g.
Your fast mount at level 70 costs ~6000g.
6000g = 60,000,000 copper

The game is designed with a rudimentary economy that despite the unlimited gold from killing things is designed to eat up money for repairs and other equipment costs. It is easy to spend all your money on shiny objects.

Top end quests are worth 10-20g for completing.

Re:Wages misrepresented?

More importantly, economists need to start providing HBI (Hooker and Blow Index) numbers in these articles, so that we can adequately compare wages in different countries.