Gold farming: The $500 million dollars a year industry
Gold Farming: -verb- A general term for an MMORPG (Massively Muliplayer Online RPG) activity in which a player attempts to acquire (“farm”) items of value within a game, usually by exploiting repetitive elements of the game’s mechanics. This is usually accomplished by carrying out in-game actions (such as killing an important creature) repeatedly to maximize gains, sometimes by using a program such as a bot or automatic clicker. More broadly, the term could refer to a player of any type of game who repeats mundane actions over and over in order to collect in-game items. An organization which organizes farmers is known as a sweatshop.
The BBC has reported that gold farming, a practice much despised by most MMO players, is a $500 million dollar global business, employing a half-million people.
They cite research conducted by Professor Richard Heeks of Manchester University, reporting that 80% of worldwide gold farming is based in China. Workers there earn about $145 per month for their efforts.
Explaining his research, Heeks said:
I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry. In a way that is still true. It’s just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands. I was drawn to write about gold farming due to my perception that it’s a significant phenomenon that academics and development organizations are unaware of. It is also a glimpse into the digital underworld. Or at least the edges of a digital underworld populated by scammers and hackers and pornographers and which has spread to the “Third World” far more than we typically realize.”
Heeks maintains that the worldwide gold farming business has already surpassed the annual revenue of India’s booming software outsourcing market!
Meanwhile, Secure Play exec Steven Davis doesn’t expect an end to gold farming anytime soon:
“When you get people with more money than time and time than money the two will find a way to meet. You could get rid of it, but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction.”
Via GamePolitics
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