Gold Farming Lab

Check it out.

As a way to explain why we did this, here’s the blurb we used to promote this ARG.

‘Stop Gold Farming!’ is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) developed for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival. It could be called an experiment in collective storytelling, a radical new media project, or an internet ‘hoax’ with a social message! Anyone can play (participants interact with the narrative in real-time using a variety of communication technologies such as email, blogs, SMS, digital video, podcasts, etc.), and therefore anyone can shape the outcome. The game revolves around a fictional controversy unfolding at Ithaca College related to the issue of gold farming, or the practice of selling virtual goods that can be used in massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy. These goods are often produced under sweatshop conditions in developing countries for the consumption of First World clients. ‘Stop Gold Farming!’ is the story of a student organization demanding that an IC student engaged in the distribution of virtual goods be expelled from the college. As part of the ‘Trade’ stream of FLEFF, the goal of this ARG is to engage students and festival participants in an exploration of gold farming as an embodied economic practice in a gaming context characterized by virtuality and disembodiment, and in the context of globalization and trade as a process that reinforces “unequal human relations rather than merely intensifying connectedness” (Biao, 2008). By framing the experience as an ARG, this FLEFF LAB involves various communities in analyzing a real-life problem, collectively articulating a multitude of realistic and possible responses to it, and examining the ethical question of what form action should take after the game. This FLEFF LAB was conceptualized and is being coordinated by Prof. Ulises Mejias from SUNY Oswego, and produced in collaboration with FLEFF interns. You can join the experience by visiting stopgoldfarming.wordpress.com.

Many people were involved in making this ARG and FLEFF LAB possible. Thanks to the following individuals:

Ithaca College FLEFF Interns:

Peter Srinivasan
Michele Maciejewski
Giovanni N. Colantonio
Mohit Kukreti.
Michael Kmet

SUNY Oswego Team:

James Bolen
Michael Molina

Shanghai Team:

Laura Kissel
Remko Tanis

Special Thanks To:

Patty Zimmermann
Tanya Saunders
GreedyAlgorithm

It was a pleasure to work with you all.

-Ulises Mejias

In case you missed it, GreedyAlgorithm helped us formulate a concise definition of gold farming as “any portion of the entire process whereby someone plays WoW/etc with intent to resell some portion of the earned gold, the earned gold is through some process made available to be resold for some amount of hard currency, and someone accepts the offer and buys the gold.”

He then asked the following questions:

• Is buying farmed gold unethical? When yes and when no?
• Is coordinating efforts to farm gold intrinsically unethical?
• Is coordinating efforts to farm gold by providing X social and business connection, Y economy of scale, etc. and paying yourself $D + $G/gold for your efforts unethical? For which values, and why?

Professor Laura Kissel and journalist Remko Tanis posed some additional questions:

• Do Westerners believe that workers involved in gold farming are victims?  Is there another way to understand the work that gold farmers are doing?
• What role do western businesses play in encouraging the low prices for virtual gold or other products?

And (former?) ICSAGF member Peter argued that perhaps “instead of discouraging this new economy, we should treat it as, well, a new economy. Perhaps we should find ways to feed it?… legitimizing ‘gold farming’ might make it into a stable, useful economy” [BTW, I hope you stay in the group, Peter, and help us change its name and its mission].

Here’s an idea: Should gold farming be legitimized along the Fair Trade model?

Fair Trade is defined as follows:

Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in the South. Fair Trade Organizations, backed by consumers, are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade. Fair Trade products are produced and traded in accordance with these principles — wherever possible verified by credible, independent assurance systems.

Given the lessons learned from the Fair Trade exchange of other products like coffee and chocolate, these are some of the benefits we could expect to see:

• Workers engaged in gold farming earning a fair wage
• The work is legitimized and those engaged in it are respected
• Raises awareness in the consumer about UNfair gold farming practices
• Employers see a business case for treating their workers better
• Governments are forced to recognize the industry and grant workers the same rights
• New economic possibilities, new opportunities for development, etc.

What do you all think?

I hope you can join us tomorrow, Friday April 3, at 9 AM in the Park School soundstage (Ithaca College) to continue this conversation.

When: Friday April 3, 2009, from 9:00 to 10:30 AM

Where: Soundstage, Park School of Communications, Ithaca College

What: A discussion of the issues raised by this ARG, plus a gold farming demo, and a teleconference with Laura Kissel and Remko Tanis, live from China!

Gold Farmer or Professional Gamer?  打金者 or 职业玩家?

Yesterday in Shanghai journalist Remko Tanis interviewed a 26 year old man, Mr. Wang, who runs a gold farming business in Shanghai called Company 580.  Mr. Wang sees nothing but potential for growth in the gold farming industry. He believes that gold farming should be considered a professional industry and hopes that the Chinese government will legitimize it one day.  His employees prefer not to be called gold farmers, but to be referred to instead as professional gamers.  Mr. Wang insists that his gold farming business fulfills a demand in the marketplace.  He now sells mainly to Chinese customers.  These customers may be middlemen– that is, they may turn around and sell again to westerners, marking up the price of virtual gold.  On Friday when we skype with your FLEFF LAB group, Remko will tell you more about Mr. Wang, his workers, and what he has learned from Mr. Wang about gold farming in Shanghai.

A few things to consider:

– Do Westerners believe that workers involved in gold farming are victims?  Is there another way to understand the work that gold farmers are doing?  Perhaps workers choose this career out of desire to make money at something they are already doing.

– Chinese labor laws are quite strong; Remko indicates that they are almost as strong as labor laws in France.  It is quite common for laborers to strike in China for back wages or increases in pay.  The government supports worker strikes, and there are strikes all the time.  Can we say the same for workers in the U.S. ?

– Young people in China are extremely ambitious.  There is high turnover in the gold farming business.  Workers may work for a few months and then move on to another job.  Workers across industries also commonly work 12 hours a day and give up their one day off a week to earn more money.

– There are now 27 million people unemployed in China (this is the newly released, official Chinese government statistic).

– What role do western businesses play in encouraging the low prices for virtual gold or other products?  If the price quoted by the western company is extremely low, companies here will try to meet the price.  Whose fault is it, then, if workers suffer from low pay?  Is it the fault of businesses here, who are trying to stay in business, or is the fault of western companies who offer an increasingly lower and lower price for the production of goods and services?

We look forward to skyping with you on Friday morning, 9:30 am — Friday night, 9:30 pm Shanghai time.

An interesting question was brought up during a discussion between me and another member of ICSAGF. I mentioned that instead of stopping gold farming, perhaps it would better serve all communities involved if gold farming processes were built in to the business models of the games themselves. Perhaps, instead of discouraging this new economy, we should treat it as, well, a new economy. Perhaps we should find ways to feed it? (at this point, I’m pretty sure that my best bet is to leave ICSAGF, since this is directly against their views) To legitimize it, to make it thrive and become useful to a wider population.

As a response, a member asked me (loosely quoted) “Don’t you think it is wrong for people to be buying this stuff? I mean, it gives those who are rich an unfair advantage over those who don’t have money. Isn’t that unethical?” Essentially, this question leads to: if you feed gold farming you are feeding intrinsically unethical buyers (Greedy, that would be a little of issue 3).

My answer is “no.” It is capitalist (this isn’t about whether capitalism is “bad,” such is out of the scope of this blog). When personal computers first came out, I’m sure people complained about unfair advantages to the wealthy along with the question “why would anyone want one anyway?” Well, had we stopped PCs there, instead of feeding the “unfair, unbalanced” system, it would have either died, or never found the balance that it has. Now PCs are available for $200 if you know where to look. MOST people, at least in America and other decently affluent countries, have computers. Yay.

Well, legitimizing “gold farming” might make it into a stable, useful economy – it may develop business models for widespread, completely virtual products and services, able to cross country borders without customs. There could be numerous benefits from the current phenomenon known as “gold farming.”

Ulises recently had a good response to GreedyAlgorithm. Go read it.

This got me thinking: Is gold farming always exploitative? What do you think?

GreedyAlgorithm wrote to say:

Gold farming is incredibly far down on the list of things you should care about. To compare a Chinese gold farmer’s life to your own and on that basis determine that gold farming is deplorable enough to fight against is to make a category error – destroying the practice will not turn the exploited worker into a middle class American, it will turn the exploited worker into another exploited worker. And even that’s far better than being a “free” subsistence farmer.

Additionally, as felix & andaleeb’s write on their blog (looking at virtual gold farming):

the game world can be a space of empowerment and compensation for them [gold farmers]. In contrast to their impoverished real lives, their virtual lives give them access to power, status and wealth which they can hardly imagine in real life. This is a reason why they are so addicted to their job. This is a paradox that the term “sweatshop” cannot convey: in the gold farms exploitation is entangled with empowerment and productivity is entangled with pleasure.

BTW, they produced an awesome video that helps summarize the issue. Check it out.

It was also interesting to read the comment by Bolen, a gold farmer here in the US (I presume) who defends the practice in terms of the dynamics of a free market economy.

If you know how much someone will pay for an item, you can corner the market on that item. And if you corner the market on that item, you can control the distribution, the price, and the amount. so that’s what i did. I began buying up all the text i could find on the auction, while continuing to farm them. Soon enough, the market for these texts became fever pitched. People began to grab them for whatever price they could get them on the Auction hall because they were so sparse… So I decided what the hell, lets really go nuts. I inflated my product by more then 20 gold a stack, ballooning the price to more then 200% its original price. I held the market, so there was no danger of losing out among lower bidders. I was making enough gold that anytime someone did try to undercut my prices, i simply bought him out of everything he had. I OWNED this market.

Bolen does not employ/exploit workers in developing countries. He does all his gold farming himself. While I guess I have no beef with that, the problem I have is a) with the re-sellers who exploit cheap labor abroad to make a profit, and b) with gamers who outwardly condemn the practice of gold farming but secretly support it. According to an article by Nick Ryan (Gold Trading Exposed: The Sellers), gold farming is “a shady business that’s outwardly condemned by players whilst being supported by 30 per cent of them.”

Perhaps the contradictions behind the opinion that gold farmers in developing countries are better off having this ‘fun’ job  than no job at all is best illustrated by the passage below from the article Chinese Gold Farmers in the Game World by Ge Jin:

Most of the gold farmers I talked to love the job. In the gold farms, you can see they are enthusiastic about their job and they got a sense of achievement from it, which is rare in any other sweatshops… However, the virtual lives of gold farmers are not perfect either. Many gamers are hostile to gold farmers… many gamers see gold farmers as spoilers and intruders of their game world… many gamers assume gold farmers are Chinese and often call them “rats”, “disease” or “commies”. There are even gangs of gamers who systematically harass and massacre suspected Chinese gold farmers.

Exploiting and abusing workers while benefitting from their cheap labor. Where have we heard all that before? Is this something really not worth caring about, GreedyAlgorithm?

Ryan has started a blog, apparently for the purpose of discrediting this organization. Nevertheless, he does spend some time explaining some of the issues surrounding gold farming in the gaming community. I encourage you to visit his blog, and tell him what you think of him!

i can haz gil?

photo by stacina