Gold Farmer Documentary Preview 167
There's a preview up on YouTube of an upcoming documentary on Chinese Gold Farmers. Terra Nova links to the video in a discussion on the hypermobility of labour in the 21st century. From the discussion: "In watching the video, I am most struck by the intertwined empowerment/disempowerment that is occurring simultaneously for these Chinese workers. Their lives in these virtual worlds are brighter, but yet their interactions with American players (and associated slurs) are a constant reminder of their inferior socio-economic status. The disembodied hypermobility granted by these virtual worlds is, to a certain extent, dispelled when they are labeled as 'Chinese gold farmers'. For them, it is a double-edged sword."
Empowerment? (Score:2, Insightful)
How is this empowering? Sounds more like selfish to me. Stop playing my game! You're breaking the rules and making it worse for everyone!
Re:Empowerment? (Score:2, Insightful)
No. They're making it better for people who find making money boring but are willing to pay for the more rewarding experience of having a rich character.
Well, thats what goldfarmers deserve (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is a documentary wise? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think many folks on Slashdot would agree that 50 hours non-stop in any game doing the same thing over and over and over and over is really boring. And yet, watching a documentary about someone else doing it was actually very enthralling. (Of course they didn't just point a camera at the screen and leave; the filmmaker actually made a film.)
Anyway, so I think that the gold farmer documentary, if done well, might also be interesting. And I think that the gamer Slashdot crowd ought to check out High Score. (Both the star and director were quite nice; they invited me to the after-premiere party, where I had a chance to talk with them, and get autographs and a free T-Shirt.)
Re:Empowerment in real money that is (Score:5, Insightful)
If you live in China or some other nation where $.25 per hour for a job is a dream come true, this is very empowering. Its either this or work a slave wage job in an unsafe factory or mine. That or turn to crime...
Sure it ruins our games, but we are talking about people who don't have it good as us that have more money than we know what to do with so we spend it on "virtual" items.
These people aren't doing this for fun... They are doing it to feed their families or eek a living. (well maybe not all of them)
I don't blame them because they found a way to exploit a living.
I blame the game companies for making a game that is so tedious to play and level that people are willing to pay others to do it for them.
Re:breaking of rules = OK! (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh-wha?! Correcting the spelling and grammar mistakes, I still can't parse that into anything meaningful. I'm going to assume you meant "paid for fairly" and not "paid for unfairly" because that makes more sense. So, presumably, you meant:
Well, there's the obvious answer, which is "because it's a game, and we don't send people to jail for cheating in golf." Suggesting that stealing actual money is on the same par as selling gold in games is - well - ludicrous.
Besides, it's the responsibility of the game company to police their virtual world. If they decide not to spend the effort to crack down on people "disrupting other's gameplay" then your only recourse as a player is to simply not play the game. Since it is, after all, a game and not real life.
Re:Empowerment in real money that is (Score:3, Insightful)
I Don't See Why Farming is Bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Granted, WoW's EULA forbids your from both purchasing gold from a 3rd party and allowing someone else to play your account, even your brother (the account is considered exclusive and non-transferable). Also, it's obvious that any online "gold" is Blizzard's possession, not the player's possesion. But other than that, I surely don't see why farming, leveling service and gold selling is bad.
By the way, the argument that gold farmers disrupt the server economy would be valid if they farmed only for gold, with the offer of goods remaining the same. This, by standard monetary inflation rules, would push prices up. But the actual fact is that they also obtain lots of items, many of which end up in the Auction House, what by the same logic makes prices go down. Actually, if those tons of itens did not go into the AH, the farmers wouldn't obtain lots of gold in the first place. So, things end up in a more or less balanced state, and the gold farmers interference in the economy isn't all that big.
The only thing that some gold farmers do that is very wrong is to cause social disruption (read: spam). Other than that, their presence is almost inocuous and hardly noticeable.
Blizzard and other MMORPG manufacturers would do well if they simply regulated this market so that it wouldn't be a black one anymore. If done right it might become a new profit source for them, a way to not discourage casual players who're unable to farm by themselves, and a means to make farmers behave in a more appropriate way.
Re:No, we are tired of the grind. (Score:5, Insightful)
Truth be told, I don't play MMOGs anymore, but I can tell you that it results from the following two reason (which are related to gold farming).
1. I'm tired of killing things over and over again to level.
2. I'm not willing to spend money on paying other people to do this for me.
I've been playing MUDs since Legend of the Red Dragon and I'm sick... so sick and tired of the same old formula. Kill 1,000 rats and get to level 10. Kill 10,000 Goblins and get to level 20. Kill 30,000 orcs and get to level 30.
After Muds, UO, EQ, Shadowbane, and WoW I am just sick and tired of killing things with not a simple damn end game or something like direct player interaction.
Truth be told, Ultima Online was the funnest MMOG I have ever played until they care beared and tried to copy EQ down to every last detail. I want to play a game for at the most 3 months and have my characters stats to what I want to be. The rest of the game should be a sandbox and player interaction (housing, crafting, player vs player, factions and basically player made content).
If I want to kill things over and over again to get a higher level so I can get a more powerful sword so I can kill more powerful things so I can level to get a more powerful sword yet again... You are right, I can play Diablo 2 or Baldur's Gate... Or maybe Fallout 2 which has more story and enjoyment than most of thes MMOGs today.
Ralph Koster is right... We need to shift focus away from mass genocide of rats and orcs and make the games more than just leveling. We need virtual worlds. Not single player hack and slash games with a chat interface with other players.
The games are broken and until they find a better system of advanment, neither the MMOG companies nor the gold farmers will see any of my money.
Welcome to the free market economy (Score:1, Insightful)
I see your point (Score:2, Insightful)
From the way I see it, they don't do anything that I can't do myself. Can we reprehend them from doing something the game allows them to do ?
Of course its annoying when you meet one because they literally camp the place. so you're confronted to either stay and compete for the grind and leave and find another place.
For the few times it happened to me, you know what we did ? we brought a few guildies and camped the place too. The place quickly became not profitable for the farmer so he went elsewhere, probably came back later but it did leave us some room too.
As long as they're not actually hacking the game to steal kills/items from me, its can only be called competition, as annoying as they get, its no different than we do (and tolerate) in real life.
Don't think I just approve what they do, I believe blizz could possibly tweak the game, the farmers farm a little less and the gamers tolerate a little more. This is not a simple problem and there's no simple solution.
Re:breaking of rules = OK! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, yes, I think it's $14/month for my two characters in FFXI. By the way, FFXI is a lot more fun when you don't take it so seriously.
Who made the game like that? Did the gilsellers? Nope. Did Square-Enix? Yep. I remember years ago people were complaining to GMs about players monopolizing spawn points, and Square-Enix's response was "that's fair play." Take it up with Square-Enix, not the players playing within their rules.
I disagree that it's extortion. Poor game design, maybe, but not extortion. It's a game! You don't have to play it. You can just quit, like I've done twice and my brother does weekly. (It's becoming a bit of a joke. "That's it! I'm never playing FFXI ever again!" Fast forward to the next day. "So, whatcha doin'?" "Um, hunting pirates in FFXI." "I thought you quit FFXI?" "Yeah, well, shut up.")
Back when it was released in the US, FFXI was set up such that it made gilsellers able to monopolize content. Square-Enix has slowly been changing the game to try and make up for this flaw in their game. But it's Square-Enix's job to police their game and not the courts. If the player's get fed up with the game world, they can just quit! No one is making you play FFXI. You're free to play any other MMORPG. Maybe World of WarCraft is more your speed. Maybe you'd rather play EverQuest II or Guild Wars. If you're that upset with the way Square-Enix is handling gilsellers in Final Fantasy XI, stop playing!
But please, don't involve the real-world legal system in a problem caused by poor game design.
Re:Fascinating (Score:2, Insightful)
The game's economy was designed to accomodate the average player who plays a few hours a day. When you have a concerted effort with people playing 16 hours a day, you are essentially inflating time, and therefore, money. This devalues the currency of normal players, causing prices to rise, and thus forcing the average players to resort to buying gold in order to keep up.
Re:Fascinating (Score:2, Insightful)
How did you afford that 100-stack of water you bought for the instance run?
The mage made it for free. Or maybe the fact that I can buy a stack of vendor water for what I get from mob drops because neither of those things suffered from inflation.
So the ironic thing is that farmers actually give everybody more buying power.
No, they don't. There are at least a dozen Foror's Compendium of Dragonslayings on the AH on my server.
Gold farmers are selling them between 1000-3000g. If a legit player puts one up for a reasonable price (say 500g), there is a very likely chance that the farmer will buy it before another legit player even has the chance to see it... and then they'll immediately put it back up for 1000-3000g. They can do this because they've got bot programs running their main farming characters, and have a lowbie alt constantly refreshing the AH at the same damn time. VERY FEW are buying them for the price the farmers want, but the farmers refuse to lower their prices because they are trying to increase demand for their gold selling services. Find a sucker who will pay $150 for 3000g, sell him the book, resell the 3000g you just earned to another sucker...
On my server, the prices of even green items on the AH are inflated enough such that a legit new player (who doesn't have help from a high level buddy who's been playing a year) will have a more difficult time acquiring decent items for their level. The reason is that their primary source of money, quest rewards, mob drops (both money and vendor trash) has not increased with inflation. It is still the same as it was in November when WoW shipped. So they either need to get a lucky drop, get some veteran players as friends, OR give in and buy gold from the very people who are ruining the economy.
If China's citizens are forced to actively ruin a GAME to earn a living, then maybe they need to consider blaming the government that keeps them in such a sorry state (despite billions of US dollars being funneled into their economy).
Lineage II - The reason to block "Chinese Farmers" (Score:2, Insightful)
You can get banned for reporting farmers or disrupting any activities they do (with them able to do whatever), with the rare mass ban to cycle the low revenue farmers out, coincidentally with a predicted rise in gold cost. Items, crafting, and quests all are engineered to be accomplished in only one way, botted farming. It is either risk being banned or being illequipped against those who buy adena and use third party programs.
These are the same kind of farmers that in countries that run legitimate adena sales(e.g. South Korea), will steal identities to "legitimately register" farming accounts as additional insurance to keeping their business.
To go through the game since beta testing, it clearly has shown itself the primary reason you must enforce the rules to the point where you have cut China out of a US / European game.
Very similar concepts can be applied to the other MMO's - There is no free market system, only the illegitimately run Chinese Farmer market that is sanctioned.
Re:Gold Farmers give Chinese players a bad name (Score:3, Insightful)
On a similar note, I've been trying to explain to Europeans that not all Americans are Bush-loving assholes either. It seems that we all get pigeonholed one way or the other.
-Eric