Outsourcing Distraction

How pathetic does one have to be to effectively subcontract one's online gaming to unskilled laborers in 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.

While I admire the resourcefulness of the Chinese entrepreneurs who cater to this market, I have to question the sanity of those who would short-circuit the very process which is supposed to give them pleasure for the sake of reaching game levels they otherwise couldn't have attained on their own. The whole thing makes as much sense to me as hiring someone else to do one's drinking for one - I fail to see where the value proposition lies here. Surely large numbers of people can't be so starved for ego-stroking that they'd resort to cheating in order to acquire kudos from the "Half-Life 2" set.

Comments

[dsquared]

the only circumstance in which I could see this being a worthwhile thing to do was if all your mates were really into the game and you weren't (if I was an economics bore I would start talking about network externalities here and write a popular science bestseller). Even then it would probably be better in the long run to get new mates.

[Mycroft]

Everybody gets their kicks out of their games differently. Some people enjoy building a character (or a civilization, or whatever) from the beginning, taking it through all its painful teething stages. Others ... just want to enjoy the godlike power of the final result. As long as they can afford it, I don't see anything wrong with it.

[Jim]

The value is that they get some gillies to beat the bushes and carry the weapons until the the hunt becomes fun, in this case, when the more interesting higher levels are reached. This is a new version of something fairly traditional.

[Abiola]

"Everybody gets their kicks out of their games differently."

Yeah, but some means of getting kicks are lamer than others - paying someone else to play your *game* for you is the height of lameness.

"Others ... just want to enjoy the godlike power of the final result."

Which makes them sad, sad excuses for human beings. What "godlike power" is there really to be had in an online simulation, for goodness' sake? One might as well talk of a horny guy's "godlike power" over his blow-up sex doll.

"As long as they can afford it, I don't see anything wrong with it."

Nothing whatsoever - other than potentially spoiling the whole experience for those decent souls naive enough to think their opponents retained enough sportsmanship to be willing to compete fairly. Would you be so quick to endorse this sort of thing if we were talking about, say, some rich bugger hiring Colin Montgomerie or Andre Agassi to be his partner in an amateur golf or tennis competition you were participating in for fun?

[Mycroft]

Nobody has a right to a completely fair and Eden-like existence when dealing with their fellow human beings.

And I applaud the entrepeneurialism of the people who use this as a great opportunity to transfer money from those who don't need it that much, to those who do.