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In-Game Gold Farming a $500M Industry
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Aug 22, 2008 11:59 PM
from the blizzard-wins-in-that-market-too dept.
from the blizzard-wins-in-that-market-too dept.
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.
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[+]
The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer 553 comments
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.'"
[+]
China To Begin Taxing Profits From Virtual Currencies 65 comments
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Chinese government will collect a 20% personal income tax on any profits obtained through the redistribution of virtual currency. The legislation is intended to curtail speculation in virtual markets, which can be quite profitable. Quoting:
"The announcement, which was distributed to local tax bureaus, specifically takes aim at those who buy virtual currency from gamers and surfers and sell it to others at a mark-up. Taxation officials are granted the right to determine the original price of online virtual currency if the individual fails to provide proof of an original price, it says. The policy would cover China's legions of online gamers, who can use online virtual currency to buy better equipment and new powers for their online warriors. But it also affects millions of others who use virtual currencies on instant-messaging services and Web portals."
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Obligatory Penny Arcade post (Score:5, Funny)
Might as well get it out of the way.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/02/16/ [penny-arcade.com]
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/4/14/ [penny-arcade.com]
Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade post (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Parent
Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade post (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as WoW goes, the content doesn't suck but going through it multiple times is undoubtedly boring. Some measures have been taken to correct the situation, but they can't make it too easy for the players.
The only thing that really needs to go away is reputation grinding. WoW is a grinding game but there's a difference between running instances, leveling up and grinding one spot for a week straight (or longer) for reputation points.
Parent
Well the thing is (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people LIKE to grind. Don't ask me why, I'll never get it but I know a number of WoW players that enjoy grinding. So WoW provides grinding for them to do, and rewards for it. Blizzard's theory seems to be that whatever you like to do, they are going to give you plenty of it to do and rewards for doing it. You want to do 5-mans? Go to it. Want to PvP? Sure. Whatever you like, you can do it.
The problem comes from people who aren't playing the game for fun, but playing because they want to be better than other people. The want to have the best gear, most stuff, etc. Thus they run in to things that are grind rewards. They don't want to do those, so they buy gold instead.
The grind isn't the problem, the people who don't play to have fun are.
Parent
Re:Well the thing is (Score:4, Insightful)
The folks that like showing off and have and their egos at stake are a minor problem and easily avoidable - that's what guilds are for. The thing that made me leave WoW was the fact that the economy never really got easier despite getting epic gear. After playing the game for well over a year, it got really tiresome to constantly HAVE to grind, grind and grind some more just to pay for repairs, potions, etc.. I can understand making players do it when leveling up for the first time but not forever. That was a major aspect of the game I just never enjoyed and it was not possible for me to simply focus those aspects of the game I DID enjoy - raiding and group play with friends.
The whole farming industry would disappear overnight if they would just sell gold as part of the game. They can't get rid of it, they can't even really make a dent in it, so why not control it? In one fell swoop you rid the game of thousands of non-players AND open a huge stream of revenue for the company. Know why they won't do it? Farmers pay for accounts and it lets Blizzard pad out the numbers.
The hamster wheel gets rusty after a while, especially when watching gold farmers scoop up the resources you are forced to need just to play the game.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Mod parent up.
Blizzard should stop wasting time on anti-bot and anti-farming measures and instead put more effort into making the game not turn into a second job. When I used to play, being a level 60 was much less exciting than being a level 20. Too bad... It's a beautiful universe.
Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade post (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade post (Score:5, Funny)
> 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 [wikipedia.org]. 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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And to add something more, gold farmers have major marketing campaigns in WoW. An endless stream of seemingly different services are endlessly spamming capital cities, sending whispers and even in-game mail. Some spammers will first whisper something like "hello :)" and when you reply they ask if you want gold. I don't know if they're bots. Also, on one realm I encountered something way more irritating than that: group invites. Like, all the fucking time. It got so bad I simply had to get an addon that bloc
Oblig... (Score:4, Funny)
I think they have stopped now, or got kicked out, I havent seen any more similar activity from the bunch....
Tm
Re:Oblig... (Score:4, Informative)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8765585510&sid=1 [worldofwarcraft.com]
Parent
More proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Just another example that I don't deserve my nice house and cushy job. Some people are pretty desperate for the spare change that falls from American (and euro, there does that make you happy...) tables.
They worked all day for the same money I made reading this article at work.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
At it again (Score:3, Funny)
It's quite a paradox. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
THAT'S NOTHING (Score:5, Funny)
THAT'S NOTHING... I farm Karma on Slashdot for $0.12/hour
Re:THAT'S NOTHING (Score:4, Funny)
Not as an AC, you don't.
Parent
News flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
This just in! People get paid to do work others don't want to do! Details at 11.
Korean players do use bots and farm (Score:5, Interesting)
Excerpt from Brandon Sheffield article on Gamasutra :
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18510 [gamasutra.com]
It was Blueside who first introduced the idea to me, cynically stating that consoles won't succeed in Korea until players start just playing games for fun, instead of treating them as work. I laughed then, but subsequent meetings only served to confirm the theory.
Companies from Gravity to Ntreev to Nexon agreed that a very large number - varying from 30 to 50 percent, depending on who you ask - of players in South Korea are playing games as a job. Generally, people didn't feel too good about it either, which at least indicates that people aren't designing them with that as a goal. But it's still disconcerting.
And as any player of Lineage2 can attest, some Korean MMOs really ARE designed to be grindfests and farming prone.
From L2 official boards :
PushyCat on official boards:
So, Koreans play and sell in their own servers and it covers the cost of their PC Room and meals. This is a normal aspect of Korean games. Listen to me while I say this. Ebaying is NOT CONSIDERED CHEATING in KORea. It is an important element of mmporgs. With game money, not only can you sell it to make cash, you can also order pizza, buy computers and accessories (like auto mouses, keyboards, macroprograms), and pay for your monthly fee (for those who play at home). In Korea, game money is an accepted tender for Real Life. Noone posts on message boards about cheaters, ebayers, and bots because EVERYONE does it. In Korea, the game is played much differently than in North America, and asians have different cultural backgrounds that make gameplay different as well.
Easy solution... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:mmo's waste of time (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are games like that. They're call real-time strategy games, or first-person shooters.
Re:it shows you why happiness is fleeting (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:it shows you why happiness is fleeting (Score:5, Interesting)
why do people cheat in any game? its the triumph of ego over id.
You've got it backwards there. According to Freud, the (super)ego was the "higher" area of the mind, responsible for conscious, rational thought. The id was the subconscious, responsible for our baser impulses. Therefore, he would have viewed a cheater's conduct as the triumph of id over the ego, not the other way around.
Parent
Re:Growing problem that can't be fixed (Score:4, Insightful)
Gold farming is in some ways comparable to illegal immigration in the US. It is technically against the law, but covertly tolerated, because things would break down if it didn't happen.
The day that players start getting banned en-masse for buying gold is the day that Blizzard gets tired of making money.
Parent