When Work is a Game 45
Ever willing to explore the hidey-holes of thought, the Terra Nova blog has a discussion up this week talking about play as production. IE: What makes people willing to engage in 'productive play', like the crafting mini-games of Star Wars Galaxies or A Tale in the Desert? They also touch on the more pragmatic 'productive play', gold farming. From the article: "The outsourcing of labor is another interesting trajectory. We know that people outsource, for instance, 'Adena farmers' in Lineage, low-wage workers who farm for game currency to sell on the 'black market.' This creates interesting class and even race tensions, such as the Lineage 2 scenario described at State of Play 2004 by Constance Steinkhueler. Here, Adena farmers typically took the roles of female elf warriors (primarily for farming efficiency reasons); as a result, this race/class in the game began experiencing racial slurs and attacks by players who associated it with Adena farming."
Re:coming soon (Score:3, Informative)
Gold Farming. (Score:4, Informative)
Why lump them together? (Score:5, Informative)
For example, lumping crafters in the same pot as gold farmers strikes me as outright stupid in its over-simplification. One is done for personal fun and achievement (yes, surprise, one of the four player categories identified by Bartle is "achiever"), the other is actual RL work done for no other reason than RL money. One is someone's idea of fun (warped as it may seem to you), the other is just someone's RL "job".
Surprise, some people do stuff for fun that involve investing time and effort. Some people go fishing IRL, others work on their car, others tend their own garden, or take their pet for a walk. Some of those may involve the same activities that other people call work, yet some people do it for fun. E.g., working on tuning your car is the same thing a mechanic calls "work". E.g., taking photos in the park with your cool new digital camera is the same thing a professional photographer calls "work". E.g., taking your pet for a walk, well, some people walk someone else's dog and get paid for it. For them it's "work". For others it's "fun." Maybe I actually enjoy spending some time with my pet. Do you have a problem with that?
It doesn't even stop there. Even if you move away from stuff easily associated with "work", "effort", "time-investment" or "producing something", most things people do for fun and relaxation _still_ are someone else's "work". Watching football? Well, some people get paid for that, you know. E.g., sports journalists. Watching the news? Well, you know, some people are paid to do that. E.g., secretaries and assistants. Reading a novel or watching a movie? Yep, some people would call that their "work" too. Anyone making a living as a critic or reviewer, for a start. Going swimming or dancing? Yep, you guessed, some people get paid for those too. Is there anything that _isn't_ "work" then? Not much left.
Making the mental bridging between virtual worlds and real worlds, "you're doing X in a game, X is a RL profession, ergo you're doing work" is even more shaky. I hate to break it to some people, but that kinda extrapolation makes most game genres be "work sims." Do you enjoy playing a round of Counter-Strike maybe? You know, that's what SWAT employees call "work". Do you enjoy a racing sim? Yep, some people call driving "work". Do you enjoy running around with armour and sword in a medieval game, engaging people in melee? For some millenia that's what mercenaries did. Do you enjoy a WW2 RTS/RTT game in the evening? (E.g., Silent Storm.) Yep, some officers did that as work, not for fun, IRL.
And even comparing it to other activities in the same MMORPG, what's the difference? Player X spent 4 hours grinding swords to level-up their crafting skill. Player Y spent the same 4 hours grinding NPCs to level-up his fighting level or skill. Player Z spent those 4 hours in the battlegrounds, grinding up his PvP rank. What's the fundamental difference there? What makes some of them OK and some of them "work"? From where I stand, all 3 invested the same time and effort.
From where I stand, actually the _only_ question is: did they have fun? That's all. If they did, sure, keep doing it. If they had fun, who has the right to tell them "no, see, _I_ define that as 'work', so you can't possibly have had fun"?
What makes people do all that? (Including the RL and the game stuff.) The simple fact that humans are not made to sit and watch the walls for hours, or not without going completely out of their minds with boredom. So we all find something to do with our time. And each is free to set their own goals, and have their own likes and dislikes when it comes to filling their free time. That's why it's called "free time."
In fact, if anyone really is looking for a line to draw between "fun in your free time" and "work", I'd propose the following definition: if you're free to choose how you spend it, and you do it because you
Re:Gold Farming. (Score:4, Informative)
First, there are rules within the gameworld much like there are rules within reality. They operate differently, but just as you can't go printing as much money as you want in real life, you can't give people as much gold as they want in the game. It would simply unbalance the economy.
The second thing you need to take into consideration is the time spent on this, which is quite real indeed. These farmers are being paid for their time to play this game. Not very much, but they are still being compensated.
I'm not saying gold farming doesn't suck, or that it does not harm the games that it invades...but these people most certainly DO contribute something to society in terms of spending since this involves the transaction of REAL money. And while it is asinine that this flourishes, it is definitely not ridiculous when you look at the systems in place that allow for farming to continue.