Gold Farming is a HUGE Business
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
This whole thing pretty much blows me away. Manchester University released the results of a study on “Gold Farming” and it pegs the profits of the whole venture at about $500,000 per year.
From the start of the 21st century, a new form of employment has emerged in developing countries. It employs hundreds of thousands of people and earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet it has been almost invisible to both the academic and development communities. It is the phenomenon of “gold farming”: the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games. China is the employment epicentre but the sub-sector has spread to other Asian nations and will spread further as online games-playing grows.
BBC news talks about the study and says that Gold Farming employs about 400,000 people world wide who make about $145 (£77) a month. Simply amazing stuff.
“I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry,” said Professor Richard Heeks from the University of Manchester who wrote the report.
“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.”
In many online games virtual cash remains rare and many people turn to suppliers such as gold farmers to get money to outfit avatars with better gear, weapons or a mount.
Some gold-farming operations offer other services such as “power levelling” in which they assume control of a player’s character and turn it into a high-powered hero far faster than the original owner could manage themselves.
This type of stuff and the fact that it would consume most of my life is one reason why I try and stay away from these games. The fact that you can hoin and thousands of people out there are cheating or paying to get ahead just blows the whole “have fun” aspect of it for me. What are your thoughts on this stuff. I’d love to know.
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