The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer
In the upcoming issue of Release 2.0 (which we'll discuss here in depth shortly), we extrapolate on Lawrence Lessig's notion of "code is law" in many different ways, and Radar's Brady Forrest has a piece on how laws play out in games. One of the topics Brady discusses in the piece is the gold-farm business, in which folks who need the work get paid to level up characters quickly for players who can afford it. In next Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Julian Dibbell has a fascinating article on the lives of Chinese gold farmers, which you can read here. And, since it's now Wednesday and not Sunday, you can (a) read it before everyone else and seem smart, and (b) get yourself an extra 20 minutes on Sunday morning to scour the "Styles" section.
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Fair enough. It's open to everyone on Saturday, I'm told. Sorry for any inconvenience.
"...gold-farm business, in which folks who need the work get paid to level up characters quickly for players who can afford it."
That isn't *quite* the definition of "Gold Farmer". The term usually refers to players who repeatedly earn ("farm") in-game rewards (such as gold or other items of varying rarity) for the purpose of selling such items in exchange for real-world money.
Pre-leveled characters could fall into that, I suppose, but gold farming is really about "harvesting" in-game currency and/or items that can be difficult and/or tedius to acquire. Some players are then willing to pay a premium (in real or virtual dollars) for that in-game currency or item in order to avoid the difficulty or tedium of acquiring it on their own.
Some players see gold farming as a huge problem in the online-games in which it is possible, and there have been reported statistics that demonstrate how gold farming can indeed negatively impact the game.
It's Sunday, but the article is still pay only.
Ah, well. Money's easy, life's short.
sabadash.us
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Anonymous [06.13.07 09:23 PM]
I could read it Wednesday, if you hadn't linked to a subscribers-only pay site....