Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Gold Farming in games means real income in China
A couple of years ago, as part of our work on Cybernomadics, IFTF forecasted the blending of the real money economy and virtual economy. I'm amazed at the growth and magnitude of the trend of creation, aggregation and sales of virtual assets for video games:
"A vast shadow industry has mushroomed in rural China. Savvy entrepreneurs harness teams to play popular online games, gathering magic spells, battle hammers, armor and other virtual assets. " ...
"There are thousands of these little companies,'' said Peng Wen, another young businessman who employs gamers. In rural areas, the companies have no trouble finding workers. ``There are so many idle people. What I mean is, some of them are high school graduates who haven't found a job yet. They like to spend many, many hours at Internet bars.''
There are ``gold farmers'' in other countries, primarily Eastern Europe, the Philippines, Indonesia and Mexico. But China's abundant labor, availability of high-speed Internet connections and cheap computers have made it a powerhouse in collecting virtual assets for online games, fueling the market among the 30 million or so online gamers worldwide." ...
"A good conservative estimate of global annual sales of virtual items for real money is $200 million a year,'' said Edward Castronova, an economist who specializes in the study of virtual assets at Indiana University."
The full article is here.
Earlier this year, Lyn Jeffery, leader of IFTF's Virtual China program posted a two very interesting related blog posts on the topic:
"I realized that exporting virtual items through the Internet is the same as transmitting Chinese labor to America." So says Tietou, the owner of a Chinese virtual item factory, also known as a gold farming factory or gaming workshop, in a fascinating video clip from a documentary film on Chinese virtual item production by Ge Jin, a Ph.D student in at UCSD.
(via Stanford's Nick Yee on Terra Nova)
In the extensive comments on Terra Nova, Ge says: One farm owner told me that there are more than 2000 gold farms in China and more than 200,000 gold farmers. I find it possible because in the forum of 1t1t.com (a large Chinese portal for gamers) I saw recruitment ads for gold farmers from gold farms all over China."
China's virtual goods business booming
"A new profession for the Internet age" is a newspaper article from the Harbin Daily [for those who don't know, Harbin is a major city in China's extreme northeast], via Chinese IT community Donews. The article chronicles the ins and outs of owning, working at, and regulating businesses that sell virtual assets. Rough translation, sometimes paraphrased, follows. The article is too long for me to translate every sentence.
After two years of hard work, business at Chen Xiao's "proxy player" business -- selling virtual currency, equipment, and game characters -- is on the rise. Chen is one of Harbin's first group of virtual goods merchants. As the article explains, proxy player shops