MMORPG Gold: Funding the Asian Economy
- "Sack" is the only name I'm given for the person I'm supposed to contact. He lives in the Fujian province of China, but his place of business is online—he plays Lineage II. He's paid about 56 cents an hour to work in a videogame "sweatshop
If you haven't seen it yet, James Lee of 1up.com has been doing a lot of research into what some people are calling "MMORPG Gold".
So what is this fabeled gold?
Simple: Its a online sweatshop of video gamers who earning their Chinese and Indonesian bosses over 500 million dollars a year.
This ain't Dungeons and Dragons anymore.
This isn't anything new.
Chinese farmers may be on the cutting-edge of the global economy. But not the Chinese farmers you're probably imagining -- rural agriculturalists in the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese farmers I'm talking about sit in front of computer screens for hours on end, killing video game monsters online, over and over again.
Sweating the details a blogger named Wagner Au profiled a young woman hired to generate in-game money
World Changing talked about this on July 9th.
You can check any number of game forums (such as my own and see the general response is disgust and anger.
What should be a fun, and entertaining game, becomes just short of outrage and outright fustration because of the difficulty placed on the regular gamers themselves.
So just how much money is made in this scam?
A priemere online game resource GameSpot reported the following recently:
- According to data gathered by Advanced Economic Research Systems, a company that tracks eBay sales, through April more than $2 million was spent on World of Warcraft (WOW) gold this year. Most of the company's employees are dedicated WOW players, and CEO Anthony Sukow began to examine the statistics after making a questionable purchase of his own. [...] Sukow discovered that the top seller of WOW gold made more than $23,000 in April, just on WOW gold. And that wasn't even a good month--in January and February the number-one seller took home more than $44,000 each month.
Look at those numbers again. 44k in one month. For nothing more than bits of data lying on a server. Neutrons and electrons compiling bytes and bits for use in a GUI 3d game that hundreds of thousands of millions of people play.
So what makes these guys so much money?
Or why even create your own charatcer when for $300 you can buy a character, already equipped, already leveled, with all the bells and whistles?
Further more the lack of action taken by the Gaming companies themselves is also disheartening.
PlayOnline for instance has told its gamers that selling of characters is illegal.
4.2 Restrictions. To the maximum extent permitted by law, you may not: (b) rent, lease, loan, sell, sublicense, distribute, transmit or otherwise transferWe need the definition of "Software" that the EULA provides to clarify this... Article 1: Definitions 1.9 "Software" means, collectively, all computer programs made available to Users for use with the
the Software, your User or other account-related information (including, but not limited to,
your User ID or password information) to any third party; (d) use the Software or your PlayOnline user account to provide service bureau or time-sharing services,
or for any other commercial purpose. The PlayOnline Service and the ability to access PlayOnline are for the personal use of Users only
and may not be copied, resold, leased, transferred, exchanged or bartered.
PlayOnline Service as embodied on any one or more discs or other media provided to a User, or as incorporated into any one or more electronic
files provided to a User. So you can't sell any software that uses a PlayOnline account (Namely Final Fantasy XI in this case). Also, while we're here, this probably should be considered... From the Final Fantasy XI EULA Article 3: Prohibited Activities and Indemnification 3.1 Prohibited Activities.
You may not use the Game or PlayOnline for any activities that are illegal,
fraudulent, or a violation of the rights of any third party. Without limiting the generality
of the foregoing, the following acts and activities are strictly prohibited and shall,
without prejudice to any other rights or remedies that SEI may have, be cause
for immediate termination of your PlayOnline account and your right to play the Game (or any other services) in
connection therewith: (a) Any activities consisting of selling, purchasing or exchanging “gil” or any other
currency that may be used in the Game from time to time, characters,
and/or Game items for value (including, but not limited to, any payment
in kind and any payment in any currency recognized as legal tender in any
country, state, territory or other jurisdiction anywhere in the world) through any means or venue, including, without
limitation, Internet auctions or other online exchanges;
To date they have taken no legal action against any 3rd party corpoartion engaged in this practice. However they have banned over 800 accounts engaged in purchasing and in selling of their equipment and characters.
The big picture tho, is that with over 1.5 million players 800 is a drop in the bucket. Add to that the over 2 million players from World of Warcraft plus the other countless MMORPG's on the market, and the results are staggering.
So who are the folks doing this? And how?
Lee and others tell us, that the majority takes place in China.
For the whopping salary of .56 cents an hour you sit at a computer and play the video game for 12 hours straight. The congolomerate based in Asian aircraft hangers then sells the results online.
Out of this is a combined revenure from the US, Britain and Japan straight to the Chinese Economy
Economist Edward Castronova, at Indiana University, has been tracking the intersection of virtual and real-world economies In December of 2001 he wrote an article entitled "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier" opened the eyes of many scholars to the lively economies in these virtual worlds, and the ways in which they connect to -- and compare to -- the offline global economy. Castronova has joined with a group of other scholars, virtual world specialists and social observers on a weblog entitled Terra Nova, which dives deep into the implications of online gaming worlds.
They have even began estimating the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of online gaming worlds in direct relation to a countires economy.
The result?
Worldwide MMO GDP, therefore, is $540 million times 13.5, or a booming $7.29 billion. Thats Billion, boys and girls, with a B.
$880 Million of that is from the United States alone.
IGE is one of the largest supplies of online gaming money, equipment and characters. Their official stance, however, is somewhat hypocritical.
- IGE president Steve Salyer tells CGW, "We don't farm assets, nor do we endorse any type of cheating or abusive farming practices. IGE is leading the way in efforts to help prevent these abuses. We spend a lot of time speaking with sellers and educating people involved in the secondary market. IGE is against abusive farming practices wherever they are taking place."
Thay may be so, but it doesn't stop then from generating over in 800 million in online game revenue.
So where does it end?
The bad news is, it doesn't.
Unless the gaming companies themselves take some sort of legal action, much like Hollywood and the RIAA, the amount of online money flowing over sea's will remain unchecked. Unfortunately that may not be an option. Too many hard core open medium people are stifling any act of Internet reglation under the guise of open source. Meanwhile China continues to get rich, fast, and companies like IGE smile while handing over the money with their own cut.
Some of you may remember the Ultima days where $30,000 dollars to buy a house via E-bay was something spectacular. We saw the warning signs, but we did nothing.
Those people who could have made a decent living off this seldom have access to computers and very seldom know what kind of money is really in this. Some clever business men in countries like China and India has realized this and the potential of money farming and has thus started these MF factories. They employ poor people, often children, train them in how to use bots or how to farm cash manually, pay them little to nothing and sell the money farmed on E-bay for real life cash.