The main premise of the novel, For The Win, by Corey Doctorow involves an economy that strives from both the virtual and real worlds. This is accomplished from the process of gold farming, with real money being traded for virtual goods and services. Doctorow helps us arrive at this conclusion through the main characters that come from very different backgrounds, but are interconnected through online multiplayer games. Eventually, they go toe-to-toe with corporate and union heads and things get violent. After lives are lost, the media broadcasts their situation and they shed light on the issues of the company.
The story was more interesting than I had anticipated and is somewhat scary of how the economic future for some will unfold with the increase of online multiplayer games to more and more people. Other than economics, this also opened my eyes to just how harsh some of the working conditions of some countries can be. It frightens me to know that there are people working like slaves for things that so many take for granted.
When I say working like slaves, I am referring to the working conditions for those participating in gold farming. Doctorow points out how bosses force their workers to get as much game currency as possible so they can sell it for actual money. Also surprising is the fact that they actually make money doing it. People who buy in game currency may not realize how their sellers actually got it. And the people who work for this barely receive proper pay at all.
Other topics brought up in the novel were interesting as well, such as gaming addictions and online networking. Also, this may not relate exactly to gold farming but in one of my other classes we talked about Zynga, the developer of Farmville and other social networking games. Pretty much, this company made an incredible amount of money selling virtual goods for real money for people’s farms, etc. I remember my professor mentioning how they made more revenue than EA (Electronic Arts) in a span of time because of the low cost to make the virtual goods and the amount of people buying them. In my opinion, this is insane considering how popular EA is. However, Zynga banks on people trying to establish their virtual properties as classy as possible and they are obviously willing to pay to do so. I know this may not fit the exact definition of gold farming, but it is just amazing how a company is making so much money off of virtual goods that essentially have no value.
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