A brief overview on the computing phenomenon of selling virtual currency for real money and how extreme it has become

Andrew Yeung

First picture this:
Log onto an online game. See a monster. Click on it. Kill it. Receive gold for the kill - If only it was possible to earn money like this in real life.
Now envision this:
Tons of workers are cramped into a stuffy room in a developing country, as they slave away to make products for the western world - Just another sad reality of a typical sweatshop.
Combine the two, and what do you get?

Hold that thought.
Ever since the breakthrough of the internet, one industry in particular has flourished: the online video game industry. This is especially the case for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) industries, who offer the player a chance to be whoever and whatever they want in a fictional universe. The chance to escape from reality for a while was too good to pass up.

However, so often is with humans, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur. And here’s another area in which the video game industry has ‘flourished’ – showcasing the ugly impacts computing has had on society. We’ve all read about the cases of gamers who have died from being too addicted and gaming for too many hours straight, neglecting their real-life body in favor of their virtual one. Also came the cases of people deciding that their virtual life was more important than their real ones, and committing suicide when their accounts got stolen. These cases, while tragic, have thankfully remained the exceptions amongst the myriad of gamers amongst today’s massive gaming community. Nonetheless they still serve as reminders of the extent to which humans can be influenced by a virtual reality.

Therefore, it should have come as no surprise when the aspect of economics inevitably found its way into the realm of gamers; when one day someone wondered if he could actually sell virtual items for real money, and somebody else wondered if it was possible to buy in-game items for cash, supply and demand was born..

Since then, this phenomenon, come to have been known as ‘gold farming’ has been commonplace in many of the world’s biggest gaming communities, namely Everquest, Eve online, Lineage, World of Warcraft, and even Runescape (!),  amongst others. Although it is a practice that is usually frowned upon, and in some cases actively opposed by the gaming companies, the ongoing demand for such a ‘service’ will ensure the survival of its supply, with this ‘industry’ worth an estimated $3 billion USD (infoDev, 2011) as of this year. Enter the words “World of Warcraft Gold” into the other computing phenomenon known as Google, and instantly around 46 million results pop up, a majority of them trying to sell you their virtual gold. Instant supply right there.

However, as I will examine, the nature of this supply has evolved in a way that one might have found hard to imagine a few years ago. The game I will investigate is the most popular MMORPG in the world today: World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft, otherwise known as WoW, has been a hugely popular MMORPG since its release in 2004, steadily amassing a huge player base that stands at 11.5 million players today (StrategyInformer, 2011) , a number even considered to be low, as WoW continues its 7 year reign over other games of the genre. Naturally, one would rightly assume that there exists a demand for WoW gold farming. But what one might not know is the face of the person farming behind the screen. He may be just a kid with way too much spare time on his hands, you think. Maybe that really is the case. Or maybe…

Allow me to draw you back to the scene presented at the start of this survey.

Welcome to the world of China’s gold farms.
 

In these so called “farms” that resemble sweatshops with computers, Chinese “gold farmers” hunch over monitors as they repetitively slay in-game monsters for money. Their shifts may go up to 12 hours or more, and it is not uncommon to find farmers sleeping on the floor, exhausted and resting for the upcoming grueling 12 hour grind.  Farm size and working conditions vary greatly from place to place, but the nature of the job is always the same - simple and mind numbing: Kill monsters. Earn gold. Kill more monsters. Earn more gold. Repeat.

Earning an average of around 100USD a month, an estimated 100,000 Chinese workers are employed on these farms in 2007 (UCSD News, 2007). While it is not easy to document the statistics of such an unconventional, under-the-radar industry, and statistics do vary, it is certain that this number will have increased since then.

At the end of the day, what implications does this have for the state of our society, where the life and income of a person in a developing country are determined merely by the computing parameters set for a piece of software, namely the game, by a gaming company in a developed country? Has technology reduced able-bodied people into mind-numbed mouse clickers whose wealth (or lack of it) is all determined by one simple line of computing code that decides how much gold a monster drops? For someone’s life to be defined by how many pixels he clicks on?
Despite this, it’s not all bad though. Workers on some of these farms have bonded together as they work, eat and game together – an interesting social advancement for a virtual community to transcend into a real-life one. Furthermore, it cannot be denied that this sector provides employment options for people and gives them an income opportunity. Mundane as the job may be, as one gold farmer describes: “Working in a room made safe for computers is going to offer better conditions than working behind a plough in some field” (The Times, 2006).
However, as is always the case with humans, there is a sinister side to things that not many know of.

The scene is set in a Chinese prison. As part of their labour regime, prisoners are forced to break rocks, dig trenches, carve chopsticks or assemble other products and…you guessed it. Play World of Warcraft. That’s right.

All across Chinese labour camps, prisoners are being exploited to farm gold, even getting physically punished if they fail to meet their work quota. The shifts are a grueling 12 hours ON TOP of the prisoners’ physical labour, making it hell to endure. It has been said that this lucrative operation could make up to 5000-6000RMB a day, earning from this gross fashion of exploitation (The Guardian, 2011). Who would have known that killing a virtual monster for virtual currency could have such corrupt implications behind it?

Whatever the case, computers and computing have definitely changed the world, in both obvious ways and less obvious ways such as the odd phenomenon of gold farming. While it undeniably brings benefits to select groups of people, there are also social and ethical considerations to explore, that implore us to take a good hard look at ourselves and the directions in which technology has allowed us to advance. The extent to which some people are reliant on small computing processes which we take for granted is seriously overwhelming, and as is the unfortunate case with humankind, survival techniques that lead to profit often lead into exploitation.

One thing is for certain. If you are a gamer, the next time you turn on your computer, log onto your game, kill a monster and pick up that gold…be thankful that you have the luxury of doing it for fun.

References:

Pictures retrieved from: http://www.newmedici.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/gold-farming-china-wow7go-530.jpg, and UCSD News (See below reference)
infoDev. (2011). Converting the Virtual Economy into Development Potential. Retrieved October 2011, from http://www.infodev.org/en/Publication.1056.html
StrategyInformer. (2011). World of Warcraft population dips to 11M subscribers. Retrieved October 2011, from http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/12312/world-of-warcraft-population-dips-to-11m-subscribers
The Guardian. (2011). China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work. Retrieved October 2011, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam
The Times. (2006). Gamers’ lust for virtual power satisfied by sweatshop workers. Retrieved October 2011, from http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article648072.ece
UCSD News. (2007) By the Sweat of their Browser. Retrieved October 2011, from http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/thisweek/2007/04/23_goldfarmers.asp