This topic, it seems, refuses to die down. First we had the amazing story of Eve Online, which precipitated the question: How far are we from a virtual world? And now, we have an answer to that question. The virtual world is already upon is, if gold farming is anything to go by.
Gold farming, basically, is the very real ‘work’ of selling virtual items (mainly virtual money) for real cash. I cannot do any better in explaining this phenomenon than the New York Times in this interesting story about Chinese gold farmers.
These words perhaps capture the spirit of the whole article, “… something curious has happened to the classic economic distinction between play and production: in certain corners of the world, it has melted away. Play has begun to do real work.”
Check out the video(and here is a link to another one) :
I find gold farming quite interesting obviously because I’m an avid gamer myself but also because of something else. Can such a business model work in Kenya? I certainly know very many excellent Kenyan gamers so the ‘workforce’ is there already. I think it is yet another wonder of the Internet.
What do you think of Gold Farming, and virtual worlds?
Speak your mind