Gold farming

A farmer is a general term for a MMORPG player who attempts to acquire ("farm") items of value within a game, usually in order to exploit the game's virtual economy. This is usually accomplished by carrying out in-game actions (such as killing an important creature) repeatedly to maximize income. More broadly, the term could refer to a player of any type of game who repeats mundane actions over and over in order to collect in-game items.

Professional organizations

In the beginning of online gaming, most gold farmers worked independently, but as the market for their services has increased, a greater number of gold farmers are becoming affiliated with a gold farming organization of some sort. The largest gold farming organizations operate like real life industrial producers, with low-ranking employees performing the actual production work, supervised by managers, and delivering their products to centralized repositories where they are then sold either directly to the customer or to a gold reseller like IGE and OffGamers. Some organizations even impose quotas on their employees or tie wages to production. In addition several of the more prominent gold retail sites are actually owned and operated by the same company, and share customer service staff, tech support staff, and managment, though if they share the same ground level employees doing the actual 'farming' is open to debate as such information isn't required for them to make publically avaliable and there is currently no way to verify it through outside means.

A great primer on this issue is here: http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?name=news&id=1545907

Gold farming in China

According to estimates, around 100,000 people in China are employed as gold farmers, as of December 2005. [1] This represents about 0.4% of all online gamers in China. Chinese gold farmers typically work twelve hour shifts, and sometimes up to eighteen hour shifts. Wages depend heavily on location and the size of the gold farming company. One gold farming operation in Chongqing in central China with 23 gold farmers was reported to pay its employees the equivalent of about 75 U.S. dollars per month, while workers at a larger gold farm in Fuzhou earn the equivalent of about 250 U.S. dollars per month. The rising prevalence of gold farming has led to the creation of gold farm brokerages, such as UCdao. [2]

Because of reports indicating many gold farmers are located in China they are sometimes referred to as "Chinese farmers" or "China farmers".

There are "gold farmers" or "gold farms" in other countries as well such as Romania, the Philippines, Indonesia and Mexico. However, they do not approach the scope and scale of the Chinese farm industry. China's abundant labor, availability of high-speed Internet connections and cheap computers have made it a powerhouse in collecting virtual assets for online games, fueling the market among the 30 million or so online gamers worldwide.

China is in fact dominant in this industry and Jin Ge, a 30-year-old Shanghai native has done a documentary on "gold farms" in China as part of his doctoral research at the University of California at San Diego.:[3]

He is one of the many researchers who has invested his time in investigating how farm owners manage their production and distribution of virtual commodities across the border between the virtual and the real as well as the border between nations. His main aim in his research was also to delve into the background and lives of these workers "I also tried to find out what this job, combining work and play, means to Chinese gold farmers and how it feels like to live at this peculiar intersection of the virtual and the real."

Ge Jin's research is also documented in his periodical online news articles which can be found at Consumer Studies Reseach Network.

Public opinion

Gold farming is a very controversial subject in the MMORPG community. Supporters argue that the practice brings jobs and money to those who might otherwise not have them, that it levels the playing field for those who have less time to play or who joined the game later than others. Those who oppose the practice usually do so because they feel it violates the spirit of the game as an enclosed virtual world or that it is unfair to those who are unable or unwilling to purchase gold, not only because they are at a disadvantage in relation to players who do buy gold, but also because greater availability of gold causes a rapid increase in prices, or Mudflation. Players are also vocally against gold farming, but the continuing health of the in-game currency market indicates there is a large segment of the players who are willing to purchase gold. PC Gamer, a popular pc gaming magazine, recently decided to deny all advertisements of gold farming in their magazine [4], and other companies have joined them in their boycott.

Game economy impact

Gold farming by definition entails the harvesting of gold or gold equivalents such as items desired by the community to be sold for gold. As the vast majority of gold farming takes place as a solo activity, the range of gold equivalents that may be acquired by the gold farmer is limited. Items such as materials utilized in crafting professions, quests, and low to mid-range equipment makes up the bulk of gold equivalents introduced by the farmer. Equilibrium value of crafting materials, quest items, and low to mid-range equipment is reduced due to the extra supply. Player crafted equipment may be produced at cheaper rates as a direct result of reduced costs from additional supply and greater availability. Once gold accumulated by the farmer changes hand to a second party the primary visible impact is increased demand for items perceived to be at the top-end of what is available in the game. DAMMIT I DONT WANNA PAY 5 GOLD FOR 20 COPPER BARS!!!!!!!!!!!

The common perception by the community is that gold farming is somehow damaging to the economy as a whole. For those interested in manually laboring to farm gold via solo activity or when purchasing top-end items this can be true. On the other hand activities tailored to take advantage of excess supply created by the gold farmer, such as crafting from materials they increase available supply of, tend to be more profitable as a result of farming activity. Sale of top-end items also allows for those who choose not to purchase in-game currency with real world funds to leverage the impact of farmers to their own benefit.

Ultimately the influx and outflux of game currency is controlled by small quantities of raw currency collected from dispatching NPCs or completion of game tasks, and money-sinks such as travel or repair costs. Gold farming activity skews the cost of a variety of game items by increasing supply of those easy to acquire while increasing demand for the more difficult however otherwise the overall impact is typically negligible. By focusing on activities that take advantage of cheap labor the regular player may turn the farmers efforts to their own benefit.

However, it can also be said that by doing so, gold farmers make the game more difficult for less frequent players who do not spend as much time in-game. By increasing the supply of these cheaper items, the gold farmers make it more difficult for amateur players to "grind" their way to in-game wealth.

Discrimination

The prevalence of gold farming has also led to claims of discrimination against players with poor English on English speaking servers. There have been complaints, especially from Chinese players on English-speaking servers, on how they have been groundlessly labelled "Chinese farmers" and treated with contempt. [5] IF YOU DONT SPEAK "ENGRISH" YOU GODDAM CHINKYS GO HOME!!!

eBay and auction sites

Although buying gold in an online game is often referred to as "eBaying", most farmers do not actually make sales through online auction services. More commonly, sites such as eBay are used as a system of advertisement for gold sellers who manage their own websites.

Price comparison and other tools

Tools for the comparison of this secondary market have recently become more numerous. Eye On MOGS (Online since December 2005, source NetCraft. Also created in 2005 was GamePriceWatcher.com. See also this October 2005 Slashdot Article), was the first site to tackle comparison of Gold sellers, however 2006 has seen similar sites appear - for example GamerPrice (Online since mid-2006, source NetCraft), MMOFX and Gold Price Watcher.

GameUSD also provides an interesting vantage on this market and shows an interpretation of the exchange rate between virtual currencies and the real-world Dollar (USD).

Verigame critiques the gold sellers.

Rules and enforcement

In most games, gold farming is specifically prohibited by the game's EULA or terms of service and is grounds for termination of the account. However, enforcement is generally sporadic, due to the manpower required to perform investigations of that kind and the large negative impact that the termination of a compliant user account has compared to the minor positive impact of the termination of a gold farmer. As well, most MMORPGs require players to spend large portions of their time on repetitive actions or "farming", making it difficult to distinguish between characters that are farming for their own use and those that are farming for real-life sale.

Publicity

Guilds in World of Warcraft highlighting the gold farming community have risen in popularity. On the World of Warcraft server, Bleeding Hollow, for example, a popular guild by the name of "i farm gold or family dies" has formed mocking the profession.

External links

• Gamespot article on gold farmers
• 1UP article on slave wages
• Criticism, hints and rating of ingame business possibilities
• Eurogamer on the stereotype of Chinese players as gold farmers
• Yi-Shan-Guan - An article from The Daedalus Project by Nick Yee that deals with the racialized narrative we tell about gold farmers and what that typical narrative leaves out.
• Ge Jin - a PhD student from UCSD makes a video documentary of gold farming in rural and suburban China. A video link to youtube can be found on this website.
• In Cory Doctorow's short story Anda's Game, an elite player discovers she is being paid real-world money to disrupt sweatshop gold-farming operations.
• NYTimes article
• World of Warcraft EULA