Gold Farming

In this new digital age a real price has been put on virtual coin.With the rise in popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) video and computer games a new type of sweatshop has evolved called gold-mining. In gold-mining sweatshops workers sit for up to 10 hours straight playing MMO's collecting in-game gold and coins which are then sold for real money. These facilities are very similar to those of the "classic" sweatshop we are used to seeing, in that they are very run down, cramped, and the workers are subjected to little to no wages, harassment, and the the withholding of their rights.

According to an article in International Herald Tribune, there are now roughly 100,000 young people working in factories in China, working 12 hour shifts, earning roughly $250 a month playing MMORPGs focused purely on leveling up characters. Some might be playing purely to earn gold which is then sold in the real world for online gamers to buy better items whilst others will be logged in as another player’s character, ‘buffing’ up that character’s stats, level and abilities.

Many of these workers are employed by larger companies from the United States. One of the largest names in online gaming products is Gamersloot.net, a company which sells gold and other items for MMO's such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and dozens of others. Because of the driving demand for these products in the US and other Western countries companies like Gamersloot.net have exploited the "cheap" labor which is available in China. Although the products produced through gold-mining make up a relatively small amount of the online gaming products sold, this is just another example of the subjugation of others for our profit and happiness.

"'What we're seeing here is the emergence of virtual currencies and virtual economies,' said Peter Ludlow, a longtime gamer and a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 'People are making real money here, so these games are becoming like real economies.'"

In this sense, as a society, we have not only taken over the real world with capitalism and slavery, but now we are moving towards the online world as well. Although this can also be argued to have already happened with the emergence of online advertising but I feel in this sense we would be controlling peoples lives and actions through the playing of these games.

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