Online gaming’s economy: real money trading (R.M.T.)
The NYT Magazine has a detailed look into the life of a Chinese gold farmer. As long as there are online virtual communities from gaming (e.g., World of WarCraft, EverQuest) to alternative realities like Second Life, the practice of selling virtual goods for real money, real money trading (R.M.T.) will continue to exist.
The premise of these games are to collect loot for character upgrade or to get past the next stage. For those players with little or no patience or skill, online marketplaces such as IGE, BroGame, and Massive Online Gaming Sales have loot for sale. The source of the loot comes from gold farming1 by Chinese migrants. Another practice called power leveling2 has also come to support their livelihoods.
a rudimentary workers’ dorm, a half-hour’s bus ride away, are the entire physical plant of this modest $80,000-a-year business. It is estimated that there are thousands of businesses like it all over China, neither owned nor operated by the game companies from which they make their money. Collectively they employ an estimated 100,000 workers, who produce the bulk of all the goods in what has become a $1.8 billion worldwide trade in virtual items. The polite name for these operations is youxi gongzuoshi, or gaming workshops, but to gamers throughout the world, they are better known as gold farms. While the Internet has produced some strange new job descriptions over the years, it is hard to think of any more surreal than that of the Chinese gold farmer.
Global participation of online gaming and alternative realities will increase in number and just about ensures the grey market-driven economy called R.M.T. not only for the Chinese but for citizens of other emerging nations.
- acquiring virtual loot and selling them for real money↩
- paying a skilled player to play and upgrade the customer’s character↩
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