Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese - NYT

I'm just speechless...

I'll bet the Onion wished they made this up...What is satirical anymore????


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html?ei=5094&en=cb84a49a8cf998d7&hp=&ex=1134104400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print


<snip>

FUZHOU, China - One of China's newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. Posters of World of Warcraft and Magic Land hang above a corps of young people glued to their computer screens, pounding away at their keyboards in the latest hustle for money.

The people working at this clandestine locale are "gold farmers." Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they "play" computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash.

That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them.

"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day."

</snip>

Not the Chinese aspect, but the cold, hard cash business this has become.

It seems to me like more corporate slavery. I mean, who would allow a gamer to PROFIT from that which he is addicted to?

It's totally antithetical to any business model.

Paying people to play a video game for you???? That's really, Really, REally, ReAlly, REALly, REALLy, REALLY pathetic.

There is a side that is sympathetic to them. And there is the side that is not, because they take up all of the resources and make the game economy crap.

It's been going on since Ultima Online.

Ughh these people ruin the in game economey or at least dmg it quite a bit.
its like 80$ US for 1k gold ingame.

every time I see a famer I report him or at least try to slow the little bugger down.
they never group they never add any thing to the sever in any way except a aborent amount of purple items on the ah all for over inflated prices and or do to large quanitys of the same item lower then adv prices.

Some days I wish I could be a gm so I could just track down famers and take all there gold away each night till the quit.