Gold Farming
I love the blurring of the line between virtual and physical when economics are involved. I get a great kick when people sell items from online games in the real world for real money. It makes terms like "real world" and "real money" much more confusing. Its amazing how fast these markets are filled. Check out this article at BB. Gold farming, exploitive (because its China) but quite a line-blurring concept.
Matt
3 comments:
I too find this deeply fascinating. It's not at all surprising though. If you had the choice between earning $1 a day farming rice (standing in cold water all day), or $5 a day farming gold on the Internet (sitting in an office, albeit small), which would you choose?
I'm glad you're signing your posts. I was going to ask you to do the same but Anonymous beat me to it. This gold farming thing is crazy.
Maybe I've been doing this too long, but that doesn't even seem weird at all to me.
How is that different from getting a haircut? Are haircuts any less virtual? "Real money" is an awesome oxymoron, btw (I think I might steal that).
Really, the part that seems weird is that the game creators/managers haven't pre-empted this market by selling the currency (or rare game objects) themselves. Or maybe they do, but the price is still high enough to allow this kind of operation.
Finally, which part is exploitative? Is this prison labor?
ps- i think you mean "economics is involved"?
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